Gear

I promised to update my notes on what I defined “my final camera”.

So that’s what I want to do in this very short post.

Yes, the Fuji XT2 is still my main camera. The newest iteration (XT3) is not interesting to me. Nothing that has come out in the photographic world has been interesting to me, to be honest.

I have only slightly updated my lenses, selling the 55-200mm and replacing it with the lower-spec, ultra-cheap 50-230mm f5.6-6.3. The reason? I was often getting slightly fuzzy photos with the supposedly “great” 55-200, something that I have never experienced with the other tele-zoom I used to have on Nikon, another mid-range lens (70-300mm). Maybe it was a slightly defective unit, but I told myself, for how much I use these kind of lenses, let me try the plastic-fantastic 50-230mm; I bought it (new!) for around 160 Euros. And guess what? The optical stabilization works better than on the 55-200m (never had a fuzzy photograph), and overall the quality of the shots are on par with the more expensive Fuji lenses I have. Plus it’s so much lighter!

This is it, my final camera. Meaning that for the next foreseeable future I’m sticking to this camera, no matter what. This decision comes after a year where I have tried many different tools, perhaps driven by the lack of a true photographic project in my mind (and yes, the usual lust for new shiny things that affect all men).

a confused mixture of camera bodies and lenses

My Nikon DSLR and lenses were always there, a mixture of old and new that covered all my needs (85mm and 35mm f/1.8G, an old 50mm f/1.4 AF, an even older manual focus 28mm f/2.8 and a cheap and light 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G). Together with a first-edition full frame D600, this is a kit that have never failed me, but I was feeling the attraction for lighter, funkier equipment.

That’s the Nikon D850 I’m referrring to. But it can also mean the Fuji medium format GFX’s sensor, or any of the latest Sony full frame mirrorless.

Anyway, the point is that I played with a couple of raw files from a D850 and the experience left me cold. I distinctly remember when I first saw what my Nikon D600, my first full-frame camera, could do. I was upgrading from a D7000 with smaller APS-C sensor, and the richness and modulability of the files blew me away. How easy it was to extract the colors I wanted from the raw files; the amount of information hidden in the blacks; the endless possibilities!

I think that camera reviews should be written either within 3 months from initial purchase or after a much longer time, like 5 years maybe. After a few weeks of use, any average photographer would know by heart button locations, quickly change the camera settings, know what’s the highest ISO and the minimum usable shutter speeds, how the autofocus works and so on. And obviously shot a few hundreds photographs in different locations and situations.

The long Norwegian September is a period of the year when I’m still very much in holiday-mode, with my skin still burning from the southern italian sunshine, and at the same time dreading the dark winter ahead. It is a period when my congenital hatred for office life and rituals reach the highest peak; it is a period where all these first-world problems are channeled into the research of a new camera to play with¹.

I wanted to get a Leica this time. For real.

You know Leica: stupidly expensive cameras that are more likely to be kept in a closet or worn like a piece of jewellery than actually used (it wasn’t like that before, when actual journalists back in the fifties used it as a fast, robust little camera to be used in the field).

Anyway, even if now they seem to be more of a fashion statement, I have always liked the impression of solidity, their simplicity, and that funky way of setting the focus¹. But I would have never considered one for real if I had not played with the original Monochrom; that really changed something, the simple pleasure of using and holding this rather large, deceiptively simple and “dense” camera changed somehow my perception of Leicas. I will be honest and declare it right now that none of this matters when it comes to photography; but I’m talking about something else here, I’m talking about very elementary pleasures that are tangentially related to the actual making of photographs; the same pleasure that I get from using bycicles or a Faber-Castell pencil for example.

I have had this Nikon FM2 lying around in my house for some time now. It has not seen much action though.

You see, I started taking photos when I was sixteen or seventeen with a Yashica FX3, and I don’t really have any kind of nostalgia for those times when I had to wait days before realizing I missed a certain shot, or that I focused on that insignificant detail behind my subject.

First things first: it’s not at all a D7000 with a large sensor inside!

If that’s the impression you have from reading the rants in the dpreview forums, well it’s wrong. And you should stop reading those forums (I know, I should too! It’s just that sometimes something really clever comes up like the Dot Tune workflow to do AF fine tuning on Nikon DSLRs).

It’s actually a bit larger, not uncomfortably so however; it’s still sized very reasonably, but it’s more squat than the D7000 probably because it needs to accomodate that wonderfully large viewfinder. The overall feel is of a tougher and more grown-up camera than the D7000 (and the D7000 in my opinion is a perfectly mature body, a perfect compromise between the small and plasticky D3xxx/D5xxx and the hulky D700/D3/D4).

Last Sunday Fuji organized a test event in Milano, so I grabbed the opportunity to play with the XE-1 for a good fifteen minutes.

The event was a crowd-pleaser; a perfectly lit¹, beautiful model striking sexy-annoyed poses for all those who were interested in this type of photography (a good number, from what I could see). Two street/documentary photographers leading hour-long walks in the surroundings. The possibility to use any camera you wanted², and play with it at will, in the gallery or outside on the streets.

It might be quirky and it might be cool but I would argue this is something which should not appeal to anybody apart from facebook photographers.

I’m talking about the 15mm Olympus body c(r)ap lens.

The reasons are two:

1. judging from the shots which you can see here the quality is abysmal. But you have to look at 100%, and while I’m against pixel peeping, when it comes to a technical choice, there is no other way to judge objectively the quality of a lens. This is why I think it may only appeal to facebook photographer, because reduced to web size all photos are sharp and correctly focused (there is a law waiting to be expressed: the lower the resolution of your final output, the less you can spend on equipment, or something like that).
2. the price is ridiculous ($110). I would then happily recommend buying a Pinwide which sells for forty dollars and makes a completely different kind of photo (real quirky here!, not crappy-quirky) or the wonderful Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 which can be found used for $100 and is tiny (I recently bought this lens to replace the Olympus 17mm f/2.8 which was starting to get on my nerves with its plasticky silver color).

It’s almost a year now that I have the Nikon D7000. It’s time to write something up about this camera.

I arrived at the Nikon D7000 after a long apprenticeship. I started with a Yashica FX-3 and its 50mm f/1.8, then I moved to a Nikon F70 (we’re still in the ancient film era). After a few crappy compact digital cameras (and one less crappy than others, the Canon G5) I got my first DSLR (a Nikon D70s) which was excellent until it broke down.

[Click here for italian version.]

It’s been quite some time now that I have gone back to DSLRs, but the little Panasonic GF1 is still a constant presence in my backpack. In the meantime, Panasonic has churned out countless other iterations on the same micro four/thirds concept; but to me it has somehow watered down the concept and only the latest one (GX1) seems to be the true successor of the GF1.

I swear it was unintentional. Second post straight after [this one where I blurbed about my next camera]((/2010-08-19-my-next-camera.html), and here it is, the GF-1 in my hands.

So how did it happen: I spent last weekend in Livigno for some mountain biking. On Sunday afternoon, half an hour before end of business, I went into a shop and asked for the Panasonic GF-1. They had only the body, as they sold separately the 20mm lens which was part of the kit. So I asked, maybe you have a spare lens like the 17mm from some Olympus body?