Inside My Camera Bag | Niki Boon

I’m Niki Boon, mother of four wild and wonderful small humans, living in rural South Island of New Zealand, former physiotherapist and now self-taught photographer.

My work is focused predominantly on my children and their days in our corner of the world. My work was initiated with our decision to educate our children alternatively at home. At first a visual diary, it has expanded, for me, into an exploration of childhood, motherhood, memories, and how we all exist in this world.

I confess to being no expert with things technical – cameras included – but I also think that a camera is really just a machine through which a vision is transformed into a picture.

Having said that, and having recently bought a new one, I knew there were a few things I wanted in a camera.

I wanted it to be smallish and portable, with a minimal physical barrier between me and my children.
It also needed to be reasonably robust. My camera goes everywhere with me, and we are often exploring in wet, muddy, sandy , weather-hardy areas.

I have to admit to not being particularly precious with my kit, so it had to be able to handle being thrown into a backpack and taken out in a variety of weather conditions. The weather resistance of the Fuji X-T2 with 35mm f/2.0 was fantastic.

It also needed to be reasonably affordable, and although it was still a significant investment, the Fuji X-T2 was attainable for me. Buying both lenses second hand also helped a lot with the financials.

Like I said, I am definitely no expert on all things technical, but I needed to know that the files were decent enough to be used in a variety of ways, and I feel like the X-T2 delivers in this area.

I have to be honest and say it has taken me a while to learn to love this camera, but there are definitely things that appeal, including the reasonably simple setup. It has only a few, easy to access dials to change exposure settings.

I have two lenses, and I bought both of them second hand, to keep costs down.

The Fuji 23mm f/2 is small and light, and a focal length I love for documenting the world I see in front of me with all the details I want to include in the frame.

I also have a 18mm f/2.0. This is not reputed to be a great quality lens (and it is a little noisy) but, I love it. I find it challenging to use it well, and am still trying to improve on this all the time, but it is so wonderfully small.

It allows me to make intimate pictures and include so much detail in a frame, including all the background that is so important for telling a story (although admittedly just how to use all this information in a frame is still an area that I need to work on… but I love the challenge.)

Fujifilm X-T2
Fujifilm 23mm f/2
Fujifilm 18mm f/2

@nikiboonphoto