The photo above is one of my favorites of the summer. It was taken at one of the lakes around Munich on one of those glorious Bavarian evenings. The sun was setting, the sky turned into a blue-ish pink and the water was calm. Photographically, everything worked as I wanted. I could point my spot light meter to a place that represented what I wanted in terms of tones, autofocus worked and I am truly happy with this photo. When everything works, the Fujifilm system has so much going for it. Its cameras are fun to use and they offer different style bodies for different people or different circumstances. You can use all the retro inspired bodies like the X-E5 or X-T5 or X-T50 and more, or you can opt for a completely different shooting experience with the X-H2, or X-S20 cameras. All with the same lenses. I think that is amazing. I think OM System is the only other company out there that does the same.

And the lens options are pretty terrific. One of my absolute favorites that I used over the summer has been the Zeiss Touit 32mm F1.8. The color rendering is just stunning. I know this is an old lens and the AF struggles, and I did not have so much of an issue with that because this is simply the age of the lens showing itself. So I was a lot more tolerant of what to expect. But when you got it right, this lens delivered.

Soooo, if I liked the camera bodies, the lens options, and the output.... what's the problem here? Well, I can be pretty short about it. Auto-focus. That's it. That is the problem. In it's current state, as of summer 2026, it is just not reliable enough. Even for me as a simple amateur. Let me give you some examples.

What you see below is one of a few photos where I used several ways to try to focus on the boat and it just ended up missing it completely, every single time. Single-AF, or Continous-AF both kept missing the focus point which was the boat. If this was under terrible light with hardly any contrast to work off, I would be a bit more understanding. But this was in broad daylight with a modern lens (the Viltrox 90mm F2.2).

Or, from the same trip, another example. Here, I shot using the Zeiss 32mm lens at F5.6. Nothing exotic. In this case, the focus was nowhere. This was not a case of drifting focus, there was no focus at all. Disappointing.

This kept happening time and time again. So much so, that I could not just rely on taking one photo and move on with my life, I had to take multiple photos and check to make sure one of them was in focus. Such a shame. Because when it does work, life is great. See below the capture of the lake with the Alps in the background.

Two more examples to underline this problem, I don't want to overstress the point, but it simply is not a system that works for me, at this point. I often don't take a lot of time taking photos which is why I need a system that can reliably focus. I don't need to the latest amazing AI-powered pre-capture and all that. But when I am on my bike and I see a lady with a plastic inflatable flamingo on the back of her bike, I want to capture it. And in this case, after giving me clear focus lock info on the screen that everything was good to go with a green focus point on the flamingo, the focus ended up being on the roof in the background.

You might say that I need to shoot with the latest Fujifilm lenses for optimal autofocus performance instead of older lenses or 3rd party options. Well, I did. I used the Fujifilm 16-55mm F2.8 mk2 and I had similar issues. Less than with the Zeiss, I admit that, but far too many nevertheless. Look at the photo below. This was taken on a bike ride and we had a moment of beautiful light. This was THE photo from that day for me, that I could not wait to see on a proper screen. Unfortunately, even though I was focusing on the middle of that hill at f8 or so, all the trees in the middle are a blurry mess. Somehow the house at the bottom ended up in focus-ish.

I will root for Fujifilm. I want them to recover. Maybe the processor or chip in the upcoming X-T6 will solve it all and provide a platform to build on. But I am not going to wait for that.

I will leave you with some more photos taken over the summer. These all worked and I loved capturing them with Fujifilm gear.

I've been using the Zeiss Batis 135mm F2.8 over the last year or so and it is a great lens. It is not particularly fast for a prime, with it being f2.8, and I might as well use a 70-200mm if we are looking at just the aperture.

But I like two things about it very much. One is how it renders, I find it very pleasing at f2.8, which is pretty much the aperture I shoot at 90% of the time. The second thing is the weight. It only weighs a little more than 600 grams. Slap it on any of the Sony A7C cameras and you have a combo that weighs a little more than 1100 grams. Pretty good.

The downside, and this is where the itch began, is that 135mm is just a bit too long for my taste. I like to use short prime telelenses in combination with a second camera that has a lens on there ranging from 28mm, like the Leica Q's, or 35mm, like my current Sony RX1R iii. The megapixels in the tiny Sony give me an effective range of 35-50mm which is great for that standard human-eye perspective type of thing. Having a short telelens perspective next to it works wonderful.

There is something about that short tele perspective that draws my eye. Whether it is isolating something in a scene, or the beginnings of compression, I don't really know what it is but this view that is not yet true tele, but has the characteristics of tele, is very distinct. It also allows you to choose leaving things out. Whether it is landscape or more urban scenes, being able to focus on a single aspect often leads to interesting compositions.

However, 135mm is often too long when you are in an urban environment, and most of the time it is too short when you are out in nature. I feel like I need to optimize on either end of the 135mm. This means going longer or shorter. Going longer means I need to either sacrifice light if I want to keep the weight down, or go to the gym and bulk up.

Going shorter brings me in the domain of one of my favorite lenses of all time, the Nikon 105mm F1.4E. The pull is strong at the moment to just get it. I love that lens. The only thing, and I really mean the only thing, that is keeping me from buying it, is the weight in combination with a Nikon full frame body. The lightest option would be the Z5 ii or the Zf. The latter would have terrible ergonomics for the beast that is the 105mm. The Z5 ii would work but it still puts the combination at a bit under 1700 grams. I even looked at pairing it with the last DSLR Nikon ever made, the d780 but even without the FTZ adapter, that combo is heavier at over 1800 grams.

But boy what a lens it is. For those of you willing to deal with the bulk and weight, I'd say this remains the best short tele option for the Nikon system. In my honest opinion, I think it is a better choice than the Plena 135mm F1.8 or the 85mm F1.2 (more on that below). On a modern body with the FTZ adapter puts it in the same size but it is even a little lighter than its native Z alternatives.

Another shout out has to go to a very different, but wonderful optic in its own way; the Zeiss 100mm F2 Makro. I owned this lens twice, once pairing it mostly with the Nikon Df and I also shot with it on the Pentax K-1 Mkii where the lens mount was changed to K. It is a manual lens and being a macro lens, this means a very long focus throw which very useful for that purpose, but less so in everyday use. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this lens with that lovely 100mm perspective. It is a very sharp lens, almost too sharp, and it lacks the creamy soft sharpness the 105mm Nikon has.

I can of course go a little shorter still and look at 85mm. There are many more options available here. When reviewing the photos I took with 85mm lenses, I noticed that this is just not long enough for me. I have not shot with a lot of 85mm options. The lens I used the most is the Zeiss Batis 85mm F1.8. I still think that is a wonderful option for the Sony E-mount system. Outside of the 85mm F1.4 options from Sony and Sigma, I think the Batis 85mm is probably the third best option in this focal range. But I personally find 85mm to be too short.

In some way, 85mm lenses feel to me like neither meat nor fish, as we say in Dutch. Maybe it is time to become a vegetarian. I don't know. What I do know is that this focal length just doesn't gel as much with me. Despite the amazing lenses available in this range. Arguably, some of the best lenses out there are 85mm lenses.

Back to the Viltrox 75mm F1.2. I bought it. I actually owned it once before but for some reason, it did not gel with me at the time. Looking back at the photos, I fail to understand why to be honest. I think they look great.

I recently took the Viltrox on a trip to Rhodes in Greece and I think it ticks a lot of the boxes I mentioned above. It has the right perspective with 75mm being about 112mm so in my beloved range. It is heavy for a Fuji X-mount lens but the combination with the X-T5 puts it at about 1200 grams which means I can take my Sony 35mm RX1Riii and still remain under the weight of a Nikon full frame body with the Nikon 105mm F1.4. The F1.2 aperture means it can create some wonderfully creamy background and it is very sharp as well.

The focus performance on any Fuji is not as great as it is on Sony or Nikon but it is decent enough. If I could make it work with my miles long focus throw on the manual Zeiss 100mm, why would I not be able to make the Viltrox work? Outside of sports photography, I think we are all a little delirious about how great auto focus needs to be to be workable. I admit, I do feel spoiled by Sony auto focus, but come on, most camera systems these days are more than good enough for 99% of situations.

I never know how long my enthusiasm lasts, but I will enjoy it for as long as it is there. Right now, I like the Viltrox and X-T5 combo. Shooting it on the an X-E5 is less comfortable, you really do need a little grip like the X-T5 has for a lens with this weight. For the X-E5 there are other options, like the Viltrox 75mm F1.8, which I also bought. Did I already say I really like that focal length?

In closing, here are a few more photos, all shot on the Viltrox 75mm F1.2.

My wife and I are big fans of biathlon. We follow the season on TV (thank you ARD/ZDF) and root for our favorite athletes from a distance. But this year, we got a chance to see them up close at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

I was really looking forward to photograph the event and it lived up to the hype. Seeing the athletes go from a heart rate well north of 180 bpm and calm themselves down before they shoot the 5 targets in either standing or lying position was impressive from up close.

I took two Sony A7C bodies with me. A Sony A7CR and an A7Cii to be precise. On it, I had the Sony 24-50mm F2.8 and the Zeiss Batis 135mm F2.8. This gave me great coverage with a relatively compact setup and I was also not being the overeager amateur, annoying everyone in the stands.

If you ever have the chance to see a biathlon event, I can highly recommend it!

Here are some of the photos I took:

Buy hey, I guess that is part of the fun. I feel reacquainted with an old friend. And that friend has been working out and doing a lot of self-improvement! Holy moly, the X-E5 is an amazing camera! I ended up putting the good old 35mm F1.4 on it and I am loving that combo at the moment. However, I did not remember just how much chromatic aberration that lens has, but I guess that is what nostalgia will do to you. Still a super nice combo.

Anyway, back to the missing brands for this part 2: Sony FE-mount, Pentax K-mount, M43 mount, and a little bit of Hasselblad X and Fujifilm GFX.

We kick it off with Sony. Picking my three favorite lenses was rather easy because I just don't feel so much when it comes to Sony lenses. So I could pick from a short list. I know this is ridiculous. Lenses are just glass, metal, and plastic. What is there to feel? And yet....

But let's not talk about the more sterile part of the Sony FE-mount catalogue, let's talk about the juicy bits. I will do this ranging from wide angle to short tele-photo. Where does wide-angle begin? The internet seems to not be able to agree. For me, I would say that 24mm is in the wide-angle camp. But without the funny business in the corners. Anyway, the Sony 24mm F1.4 is an absolute gem of a lens. You can find dozens, if not hundreds, of raving reviews about this lens and I totally get why. To have F1.4 on a 24mm full-frame lens is already amazing, but this lens also brings that soft sharpness that is so unlike Sony which usually borders on the outright clinical.

It is of course amazing in low light but I think it also shines in the wide angle background separation. This is also the appeal of a camera like the Leica Q. Given that the lens on that camera is quite a bit wider than the 28mm it says on the barrel, I think these two can be compared. The lens was released in 2018 and these days you can buy it for around 1300 euros, but second hand prices still hover around 1000 euro which shows how much this lens is loved.

Sigma makes a 24mm F1.4 that is comparable in weight and length for Sony FE-mount. Canon also has one on offer. Nikon used to make an F-mount 24mm F1.4 but as far as I know has not designed one for Z-mount. And then there is Leica which offers a manual focus 24mm F1.4 Summilux. But that is in a league of its own in terms of manual focus, size, and.... cost. The Sony 24mm F1.4 is a beautiful lens. If you like that focal length, it is one of the best options, if not THE best out there.

I owned the Sony 50mm F1.4 GM lens for a while and shooting with that lens made me realize that the Sony 50mm F1.2 GM is truly something special. The F1.4 GM is..... fine. It has everything you need. It is maybe a bit big but all modern full frame lenses that operate at amazing-miraculous-outstanding levels are big(ger). The F1.4 does not make me look twice at an image the way the F1.2 did. That lens makes you look at a photo on your screen, then click to the next, and immediately return and go 'hold up a minute.... wow!'. It has a specific painterly touch, while not sacrificing anything on sharpness and removing unwanted items (I am looking at you Fuji 35mm F1.4).

I mean, come on! Just look at the easy contrast between the sharp in focus part and the blurry background. I am getting impressionist vibes from this lens.

Another example to show that it can be clinical when it wants to be. The reason I got rid of this lens has much more to do with the camera attached to it, not so much the lens itself. It's heavy, yes that is true. And I would only recommend to carry this lens in a one-lens setup.

On to the third lens for the Sony FE-mount and this one is a short tele. I have always loved 135mm as a focal length and the Zeiss Batis 135mm F2.8 is a great option. More than great. It is actually has lens stabilization built in, and while F2.8 isn't all that special, it makes up for it in how it renders and how lightweight it is. You could argue a Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 is a much more rational choice as you would get so much more focal range. And... you are right. But this is not about rationality. If it was, nobody would write or read blogs like these to begin with. This lens speaks to me. In ways I can't explain. Let me show you.

For me, the Batis 135mm produces images I want to look at. In a way, I find the rendering very similar to the Sony 50mm F1.2 GM. I could pick so many photos, but this blog can only be so long, so I will add one more from the Batis and let you decide whether it is worth it. For most people, carrying a 135mm F2.8 prime makes no sense at all. And I get that. Then again, I just see something special, something I can't put to words when I look at photos taken with this lens.

We are saying goodbye to Sony now and moving on to the quirky Pentax K-mount. I like Pentax. I like that they are holding on to what they believe in. It will be an uphill battle but they have created some momentum with the K-3 iii monochrom and with Ricoh being part of the company, the GR cameras are doing well. But we are not here to discuss the economic feasibility of digital single lens reflex cameras in a market that has clearly chosen for mirrorless. We are here to talk about lenses.

Modern Pentax SLR lenses weren't so much my thing. What pulled me to the K-mount was the limited trio of 21, 43, and 77mm. The 31mm never really spoke to me. The limited series lenses are all beautifully made. I loved holding and using them. What was less cool but somehow part of the experience was the focusing mechanism. The camera powers the screw mechanism and it is an noisy and inaccurate experience... I did enjoy the manual focus experience with the beautiful viewfinders of either the K-1 Mk2 or the K-3 Mk3.

Say what you want about Pentax but Leica choosing to go with 43mm for one of their most important cameras in recent years, shows that the engineers from Japan get it right, a lot of the time. They don't play by conformist rules. The Pentax 43mm F1.9 is a great walkaround lens.

We move to the longest lens in the limited range, the Pentax 77mm F1.8. Again, the parallel with Leica is more than clear. These are companies that look at what makes for a great focal experience and then they just build them*. I think 75mm or 77mm is such a sweetspot. The Pentax 77mm is such a small lens for what it can do. The beauty of the K-mount is that you can use the lens on full-frame and APSC and create a 112-ish mm lens out of it.

Finally, there is the Pentax 21mm F2.4. Not as amazing as the other two I mentioned, a bit more clinical. Maybe even just a better lens, but there was not as much excitement in it compared to its brothers. But if you are looking for a strong wide angle option for K-mount, this is it.

Now... let's talk about the last lens mount I have extensive experience with: the Micro Four Thirds mount. This was actually the system that got me into mirrorless, after shooting Nikon in DLSR times. I was amazed by the portability, and..... disappointed by the levels of noise. I have dipped my toes into the system a few times over the years. I still have a weak spot for it.

The lens that is just so easy to recommend is the Panasonic 20mm F1.7 - both versions. It's the kind of lens you have on an M43 camera with you when you go ziplining in South Africa and a small chameleon jumps on your face. Once you succumb from the shock and the little fellow is on the wooden ledge, this lens is what you use to capture it.

A similar focal length lens was made for M43 later, the OM System 20mm F1.4 lens is much better, but it is also about twice the size. I did really enjoy that lens thought, that 40mm FF FOV being a great option as an everyday carry camera. The photo below was taken with the advantage of that silly stabilization that you get from modern M43 cameras. To get this effect handheld is still incredible to me.

I talked about 75mm being a great focal length and even though on M43 the FF equivalent is 150mm, it still is 75mm on M43. The Olympus 75mm F1.8 is so good. It is quite an older lens but if I was to build a M43 kit today, this would be one of the first lenses I would buy. Beautiful rendering.

Finally, a lens I only really used on Safari, because who uses a M43 200mm lens for anything else if you don't shoot sports? So this is a bit of a one trick pony and by now also surpassed by OM System's 50-200mm F2.8, but the Leica 200mm F2.8 is a joy to shoot with. Fantastic and true Leica build quality and what it produces is very yummy.

OK, I will do a final shout out to two lenses from the digital medium format realm. The first one is the stunning Fujifilm GFX 110mm F2. I've written about this lens before. I have no words. It is a beast.

And then a nudge to a slightly shorter telelens from the competitor camp, the Hasselblad 90mm F2.5 V. Again, painterly rendering. I'd put this in the same camp as the Sony 50mm F1.2, the Leica 50mm F1.4 and 75mm F2 in terms of how it brings a special spice to your images.

So there you have it, my favorite lenses ever..... These two posts have been interesting to write and made me reflect on what truly matters in photography. It has become much more than a list of amazing lenses. It has helped me see that what I seek in photography is not ultimate image quality. I want gear to help me see the moment, to frame it, to capture the light that reveals it. I also want to feel a sense of accomplishment when I shoot something. Some lenses help here, and some you almost actively have to overcome to get a result. Both can be enjoyable. I want my photos to invoke or reinforce memories of time well spent. Any lens that helps me do that is a great lens in my book....

*shoutout to Viltrox and Tamron for doing exactly that

I am not sure whether writing this series of posts is a good idea as it makes me want to get reacquainted with some of these lenses all over again... But anyway, here we go:

Let's start with the mount that I used when taking this hobby a little more seriously, the Nikon F-mount. I used APS-C and full frame Nikon DSLRs and I used these lenses across them. But here are a few of the F-mount lenses that I think are so good that they still make me consider buying a Nikon DSLR to this day.

The first lens I want to highlight is easily in my top-3 best lenses of all time, across any mount. It is that good. I still want to own it. Even though it is a bit big and it probably would not see much use. Even now, I quickly browsed to MPB.com to see what the price of this lens is these days. I need to stay strong and not buy it. Or should I do the opposite? Anyway, I digress. The lens is the stellar Nikon AF-S Nikkor 28mm f/1.4E ED. Quite a mouthful as always with Nikon.

I used this lens on F-mount DSLRs as well as adapted to Z-mount cameras like the Z6ii and Z7ii. I don't even know what to say about this lens. It does everything so well. It is sharp, much sharper than the Leica 28mm Summilux that comes with the Q. And not in a harsh way because the out of focus area is so creamy and almost dreamy to go with that sharpness. If you like 28mm and you are okay to carry around a bit of weight then this is your lens to use. It weighs 650 grams or so and you'd need an adapter if you want to use it with a mirrorless camera. Again, I am so close to picking up a Nikon camera just so I can use this lens again.

The next lens in the F-mount that I absolutely adore is the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 58mm f/1.4 G. Those who know their way around an F-mount can probably guess what my third legendary lens pick will be. But before we get to that, let's talk about the 58mm. This was always a weird lens and it has a following of people who loved it for all its flaws, and a group who despises it because of the same flaws. What are these flaws? On a DSLR I really struggled with getting focus right. This has probably been one of my lenses with the worst autofocus performance I have ever seen. On Z-mount mirrorless cameras it is like a different lens, autofocus wise. It performs admirably and then you can really get the lens to do what it does best, create this soft sharp fuzzy warm atmosphere when you shoot wide open. Close it down and you have a pretty good performer. But this lens needs to be shot at 1.4 or 1.8, otherwise you might as well shoot with a lens that is not so fickle.

To close our the trio of stunning performers in the F-mount, I have to mention the lens that has no equal; the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 105mm f/1.4E ED. Sigma made a lens like this but it was so heavy and bulky it is barely usable. The Nikon 105mm F1.4 is not light, but also not ridiculously heavy and bulky. You actually can take this out. And when you do.... magic happens..... Holy moly this is a special lens. The images that come out of it are rather similar in look and feel to the 28mm F1.4. The same stunning sharpness and somehow warmth and richness that never feels too much happens at the same time. Again, sometimes I dream of going back to Nikon just for this lens. Like the 28mm. And as much as I loved the 58mm, this one is on a lower rank compared to the 28mm and 105mm. These two are in my top-3 of all time, across all mounts. More on that later. Maybe just these two lenses is all you need. But they are too heavy. I have to admit it. Image quality wise, I have not found any better alternative. It does not even come close.

On to the second mount that I stepped into, early in my hobbyist endeavors; the Leica M-Mount. Boy oh boy, there are a lot of contenders here. I will stick to three like I did for the F-mount. The first is an easy choice as any Leica shooter will tell you the same thing; the Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH is nothing short of incredible. Which ever version you pick, there might be some small differences between them but this lens is stellar. Is it that Leica look? I don't know but it sure looks good. And so incredibly small, albeit without autofocus of course. But this is probably the best 50mm I ever used. And I did own the Leica 50mm F1 Noctilux as well but that was a weirdo with super unpredictable bokeh. I also used the Sony 50mm F1.2 which is great but lacks that gooyiness of the Leica. I currently own the Sony 50mm F1.4 and it is a fine lens but no comparison to the Leica. Hmmm. No, don't go there, stay strong. I have to note something about Leica lenses in general and it very much applies to the 50mm Summilux ASPH; the feel of these things is incomparable. The build quality, the slide out sunshade, the aperture ring. Photography is a very tactile hobby and Leica lenses are among the best to enjoy that part.

On two my second pick for M-mount. I thought long about this but then I ended up with two very clear winners. And they actually make a nice three lens set, just like the F-mount trio. Let's start with the Voigtlander Nokton 21mm f/1.4 VM. It's wide. Much wider than I normally shoot. And yet, I loved it. I used it on my Leica SL as on a Leica M you are just guessing most of the time with the framing going beyond the viewfinder. Anything wider than 28mm is a really challenge for me and I have deep appreciation for anyone who can shoot wide. And I don't mean focus stacked landscape stuff, because that is pretty boring.

I mean, in theory, taking a 20mm-ish lens into an urban environment should present great framing opportunities but mine somehow all look like an uncoordinated mess. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the Voigtlander 21mm for what it was and I think it is a stellar performer. It's sharp, it's creamy and it is not even that bulky given it's aperture.

My last pick for the M-mount has to be that unique focal length that only lives in the Leica realm; the Leica 75mm f/2 APO-Summicron-M ASPH. Probably my most used Leica lens across various bodies. I never quite understood while all the photography manufactures have standard zooms with 70mm or 75mm as the cutoff point, like in 24-70mm and 70-200mm, that none of them build primes in this focal length. But Leica sure did. And this one is a winner. Compact and reminiscent in build of the previous mentioned Leica 50mm Summilux ASPH, I love this lens. Just a little more tele than a fifty but still super versatile and a great longer option for a two-lens kit with a 28mm or even a 35mm. I rocked this combo for a long time with the original Q on the wider end and the 75mm Summicron on an M-body. Amazing lens.

By now, I realized this post will have to be split up as I only covered two mounts and there is more to come since I shot with pretty much all mounts except Canon. I don't know why but somehow that just never happened. Many friends shot with Canon and when I handled their cameras for a bit, I was always confused about how to operate them. I feel a fundamental mismatch with the Canon design philosophy. I am sure it's me, not them.

Let's do one more mount in this post and pick up the rest in part 2. The third mount I want to cover is the Fujifilm X-mount. I find Fujifilm cameras and lenses very sympathetic. You could even say likeable. Why? I don't know. Sony is just.... competent. Very competent, I might say, but fun is not something I would quickly use to describe the world of Sony. But it does apply to Fujifilm. Maybe it is a size thing. Anyway, I digress. Let's talk about lenses for Fujifilm X-mount.

Fujifilm does make 75mm equivalent primes. The tiny 50mm F2 and the humongous 50mm F1 never really did it for me though. But there are two other lenses in the shorter tele range that I think deserve to be in this list. The first one is the longest, it is the Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR. This is a 135mm equivalent lens and pretty compact for what it is. The performance is stunning. Bright aperture gives you beautiful separation and the lens is built like a tank without becoming very heavy. It is sharp and a joy to use. I can't really say more about it. If you like 135mm lenses and want them not to be too big or heavy, look here. The second light 135mm option comes from the world of Sony, more about that later.

Another shout-out in the Fujifilm realm for a short tele option has to be the Viltrox AF 75mm f/1.2 Pro. This gets you to about 115mm FF equivalent. It is nowhere near as good but this lens did remind me of the before-mentioned Nikon 105mm F1.4.

For something completely different, on the wide end, Fujifilm makes an amazing 24mm equivalent lens, the Fujifilm XF 16mm f/1.4 R WR. Beautifully creamy with nice separation for such a wide lens. It is great for scenes with lots of context but when you do want to highlight a single thing. I am not good at this focal length but this lens seduced me to keep trying. Can't give more praise than that.

Finally, the Fujifilm lens I want to include here is the Fujifilm XF 35mm f/1.4 R. I do realize that the Fujifilm lenses that made my list are all a bit older and that has everything to do with the time I used the system of course. But I did go back to Fujifilm for a brief while when they released many more smaller F2 lenses and I have to say that I just did not find them so interesting. The older lenses were flawed but there was something about that rendering. The 35mm F1.4 being one of those lenses that just delivers dreamy sharpish results no matter what you point it at.

This leaves the Sony FE-mount, the Pentax mount, and the M43 mount for part 2. I will also mention some spectacular glass for L-mount, Hasselblad X-mount and Fujifilm G-mount. Oh, and I will reveal that final spot in my all-time top-3 lenses used.....

Sony's bar for image quality is the same 61 megapixel sensor and the supporting software that can be found in the company's fifth iteration of the R(esolution) version of the A7camera. With that as the starting point, the task was to keep the camera as small as its predecessor, the RX1R ii. To achieve that, compromises had to be made. The result is a camera that is remarkably small given the high end sensor it packs. Even when compared next to the compact version of Sony's A7 cameras, the A7C, it manages to look and feel significantly smaller. It is in a league of its own.

Even the Leica Q series of cameras, of which I owned several, is way larger and much more comparable to a Sony A7C with a small prime. The RX1R III is like no other camera. The singular focus on size makes this an everyday camera that does not compromise on image quality. I found the Q series of cameras even a bit large when carrying it all day. The III is a different story. You barely notice you have it with you, and that was exactly the idea in creating this camera. I have seen some people add grips to the camera for a better hold but in my opinion that just defeats the purpose of this camera.

Having the III has allowed me to take photos I would otherwise not have taken, or would have resorted to use my phone which I hate doing. The III is a wonderful camera to handle. I also own a couple of Sony A7C's but the build quality and materials of the III are miles better. It feels robust and chunky, in a good way, without compromising that sense of smallness. The feel can be compared to a titanium watch, there is density despite the lightness of the materials used.

The placement of the buttons is all as you'd expect on a Sony. With time, I have come to appreciate Sony's philosophy here, especially how they have made backbutton focusing a central element in the design. With Sony's tracking AF being so good, it makes sense to lock backbutton focus on your subject and then compose however you like. You can program all the buttons to do whatever you want which means I have ISO settings, metering and focus modes instantly available when I need them.

And then there is that lens. Once again, I have to applaud Sony for sticking with the wonderful Zeiss 35mm F2 that featured the very first RX1R. I see no issues whatsoever with the 60 megapixel sensor and the lens design has always brought that warm sharpness to the RX1R models. To my surprise, the older lens design can keep up relatively well with the newest AF software. Of course it is slower than the latest lens designs, but it focuses more than fast enough for my needs.

While writing this post, I realize I actually have little to further add to the first impressions post, so I will let the photos do more of the talking here. If you are looking for a true everyday camera that brings you ultimate image quality with files that have everything you need, and a lens that has character as well, look no further. The Sony RX1R III is that camera and Sony has stayed true to the concept for which they deserve praise.

I love the Q series. These are amazing cameras. I owned a Q3 43 when the RX1Riii was launched and for a while I tried to look away. I really wanted to ignore it. I had a Leica Q3 43 that I liked, even though it has its niggles (what camera doesn't?). But I could not resist the call of this tiny beast. My curiosity got the better of me. The main question was simple: would the RX1Riii spark as much joy for me as its predecessors did?

Many people have complained on the internet about the price of the RX1Riii. And yes, it is expensive. I am a little confused about what people were expecting to be honest. I think the price is fair, but I decided to buy second hand anyway which made it a pretty good deal, as it tends to be with newer cameras sold after a few months. A barely used RX1Riii popped up a few months after launch and I jumped on it. I bought it while I still had my Leica Q3 43 (spoiler alert: I don't anymore) because I wanted to be sure. I will write a more detailed comparison post about the Q3 43 versus the RX1Riii at some point. For now, this post is about my first impressions.

Let's start with the main attraction of the camera: the size. Boy, this thing is small. It exists in a different size category from the Leica Q series. Much smaller. Even smaller than a Fujifilm X100VI. In the category of high-quality compact cameras there is only one king when it comes to size and that remains the Ricoh GR series, though that camera has other tradeoffs. The main point is that the RX1Riii is truly small and light compared to other options. You can carry this all day and not even notice it. I use a small bag but you might as well toss it over your shoulder on a strap without worry of neck or back ache. Now, let me remind you that I am a 50+ year old man and my back is not the best, so what is optimal weight for me may be different for you.

The other comparison often made when looking at the RX1Riii is another camera from Sony's stable: the A7C with a small compact lens. I own an A7Cii, and an A7CR as well, and I can tell you this is not a comparison at all. The RX1Riii is in a different league in terms of size, and that extends beyond just dimensions. I read a lot of reviews that talked about the RX1Riii build quality being disappointing. I honestly do not get that. I have used both the Q3 43 and the RX1Riii with my own hands and both are really well made. They are just made for different purposes. The RX1Riii is made to be as small as is physically possible for a full-frame 60 megapixel sensor with a 35mm F2 lens on it. The Q3 43 has been built with less focus on size alone, which has allowed dials and controls to feel more robust when they actually aren't. The RX1Riii is very well built. It is a step above the A7C.

About that lens. This was another thing the internet complained about. How could Sony use the same lens as the original RX1R? I've read similar comments on Leica and Sony user forums, and these might be the same people who write love letters to 30-year-old Mandler-designed lenses. Don't get me wrong, I love Mandler lenses, like the 50mm Noctilux F1.0 I once owned. The point about the Zeiss 35mm F2 on the RX1Riii is that it simply is a stunning lens. Why change that? It is more than good enough for the 60 megapixel sensor. Sharp when stopped down, but at F2 there is that soft edge to the sharpness I loved so much in all RX1R cameras. I was happy that Sony stuck to the same lens and did not introduce a newer, more modern lens design. It is part of the appeal of this camera.

This is just a first impressions post, but there is one more aspect to mention that makes the RX1Riii potentially a keeper for me: its role in a two-camera setup. This was one of the main challenges with my Leica Q3 43. It was just not wide enough to be my wide option in a two camera/lens setup. That meant carrying the Q3 43 with a Sony A7CR with an 85mm, but on top of that also a 28mm for a wider view than the 43mm the Leica gives. That meant switching lenses which slows me down. This is clearly a first world problem, but it is a problem nevertheless. The RX1Riii allows for a lighter setup in this dilemma, and the reason extends beyond the camera itself being lighter. I can just about get away with 35mm being my wide option next to a second camera with an 85mm lens. In case you are wondering, my weapon of choice for 85mm is the lovely Zeiss Batis.

There are more benefits to that combination. First, the back of the RX1Riii is almost the same as the Sony A7C series, which means I can switch seamlessly between cameras in terms of operating them. My recent commitment to taking control of how I meter for light has me switching metering modes all the time, and being able to do this in the same way across both cameras is a benefit. The other benefit is that both lenses in my lightest two-camera setup are Zeiss Sonnar lenses and I do like the consistency in how they render.

To conclude, I more than like the RX1Riii. Enough to sell my Leica Q3 43, a beautiful and amazing camera with just a few small issues that led me to part from it. In its place I now use the RX1Riii as my main camera. This time, I hope it stays this way for a while.

I actually don't know what got me looking deeper at my light metering settings. Occasionally shooting film probably has something to do with it. The absence of the 'what you see is what you get' perspective from modern EVF cameras forces you to look elsewhere to understand whether you are capturing the light as you see it in front of you. I have had to discard many photos on film that got the metering all wrong.

This led me to go back to the settings and understand the light metering options on my cameras. I even read the manual. My take away is that there is no 'correct exposure'. It all depends on the scene and what you as the photographer want to create. But your camera does not look at it that way. It is programmed to look for the average. That is, if you leave your camera on the standard metering setting. Nikon calls this 'matrix metering' and Leica does too. Sony and Fujifilm use the term 'multi metering' but it is essentially the same.

Matrix or multi metering measures light across the entire frame, splits the scene into multiple zones, and then compares those brightness patterns against built-in reference scenes to arrive at an exposure it considers reasonable. It prioritizes balance over precision, often protecting highlights and giving extra weight to faces or dominant subjects if the camera detects them. The result is usually a usable exposure without intervention, especially in mixed or changing light. The tradeoff is that you rarely know which part of the frame the camera decided mattered most, which is why matrix metering can feel reliable until it suddenly is not.

Especially when you have big contrasts in lighting, the result from matrix or multi metering can be a washed out compromise. In most situations, the default metering mode on your camera is fine. But there are many more situations when taking control of your metering mode means taking more control of the photograph you intend to create. This is the world I stepped into the last year and it opened up new possibilities for me. It helped me create photos that somehow felt more my own.

I guess that makes sense. Cameras today are so capable that sometimes just holding up the camera to a scene and clicking the shutter makes the resulting photos somehow feel less valuable. Don't get me wrong, I don't go out all the time and just focus manually while interpreting the light without any help from my camera. But there are moments when doing exactly that is fun and results in an image that is closer to how I interpret a scene.

What surprised me most is how quickly metering became a default creative choice in how I approach a scene. Switching away from matrix or multi metering did not suddenly make my photos better, but it made them more intentional. I usually use spot metering when I want to be more deliberate in how I expose what in the frame I think needs priority. Just point the spot to the light source you want to meter for and that is all there is too it. You can play with the nuance by shifting ever so slightly.

Whenever you take a step forward in photography, you realize that many of your earlier photos could have been better. It's no difference with my journey in learning to embrace light metering. I feel my earlier work is not always exposed poorly, but some were exposed vaguely. Those earlier photos still work, but some could stand out more. That is okay. This belongs to the process and acceptance of becoming better at something.

I also noticed that learning to meter manually slowed me down in a good way. It introduced a short pause between seeing and shooting. In that pause, I have to make another deliberate choice on top of aperture and shutter (I rarely play with ISO) and decide what metering will help me expose proper. But it is starting to feel more and more natural. In all my cameras I have used the last year, I assigned metering mode to an available custom button to have quick access. I found that being able to switch and see the difference was a great learning experience.

Mastering photography is an endless journey, which is one of the reasons I find it so enjoyable. Despite having pursued it as a hobby for quite some time, there remains a wealth of aspects within the craft yet to be discovered. I am looking forward to it.

I know that readers of this blog appreciate gear related blog posts more than other musings about photography. And you know what? I agree. It is part of the hobby, to wonder why this constellation of plastic, glass, and chips works so well, and this other one not so much. All with a limited shelf-life of course. But I digress, let's talk about the Q3 43.

The Leica Q3 43 is pretty big for a small camera. I keep forgetting that. Every time I pick it up, every single time, I am surprised buy its bigness. It somehow manages to look small without actually being small. It's bigger than an M of course, another thing I keep forgetting. Does this matter? Well, kind of. Part of the design principles for this camera is to be that 'everyday carry' camera. Now, this is a very subjective topic, of course. Coming from a Mamiya RB, the Q3 43 is incredibly small. But putting it next to a Fujifilm X-T5, or X-E5, or a Sony A7C or a Sigma BF, etc., the Q3 43 is not that small. It's actually pretty big. That does make it nice to hold, I must say. But it is not small.

Small or big, what is clear is that the Q3 43 is slow. I am not talking about the autofocus which is.... fine. It's nothing to write home about but it is perfectly reasonable. No, the slowness has to do with the startup time. And shutdown time but that is less relevant because that does not make you miss any shots. The startup time certainly does make you miss shots. Now, I can already hear people saying "just keep it on and let it wake" but I just don't understand why this is necessary. Pretty much every other camera I use is significantly faster to turn on. And again, when you ask the kind of prices that Leica asks for their products, I think you should at least meet the average startup time. The Leica Q3 43 certainly does not.

The lens is phenomenally sharp. And I love how it renders the fall-off. But there is something about the colors. I think this has to do with the sensor and the Leica software as the problem seems to be present in the M11 as well. The issue is a slight magenta undertone, particularly in skin-color. It's big enough to be annoying and require work in Capture One or whatever you use. I thought it was a mismatch in Capture One profiles so I also tested this in DxO Photolab 9 and it shows the same magenta undertone in RAW files. I think a firmware update should have resolved this but I still see it. Pretty annoying.

And then there is the screen. Yes, it is a tilt screen but it the way it has been designed makes it hard to actually flip it up or down. There is a indented area that runs across the screen above and below it which is what you are supposed to use to flip the screen but in reality it takes some work to get it out. Now, how important is this really? Well, it adds to the lack of speed and when you are not out with the sole intent of capturing magical photographic images at a slow pace, but simply want to capture life around you, you are always too late. This in combination with the startup time is pretty annoying.

I know Leica is a special brand. In the sense that no rational argument can be made for using it, and that is part of it's appeal. But there is a minimum bar of functionality it should hit. And for my use case, it barely does. But I still love the camera. Humans are weird.

I've been to Spain many times but there are many parts unknown to me. The goal for this trip was to see the Basque coast with its sharp cliffs and pintxos culture, the green folds of Asturias where the mountains tumble into the sea, the wines of Rioja after a long day of hiking. We also wanted to include Navarra and Aragón, rugged and a little raw, and finally Castillia y León, where there is so much visible history. A trip with many elements, landscapes, cultures, and people. I wanted to bring what has become my main camera, my Leica Q3 43. But where for shorter trips and every day use, the single focal length is helping me in its limitations, I did want more focal versality for this trip.

But I did not want weight to bother me. And I needed some focal range extension on both the wide and tele side. I opted for an OM System OM-3, paired with the Panasonic Leica 12–60mm F2.8-4.0. This was the “possibility.” On paper, it looked like the perfect companion: light, flexible, computationally clever, able to cover everything the Q3’s fixed 43mm couldn’t. Wider streets, longer views, the in-between situations that always sneak up on you when traveling. But all of that was theoretical. I’d never actually used this combination before. The question was simple, and also not simple at all: would this pairing really work? Spain, as it turned out, would provide the answer. But still leave me with questions. More on that in a later post.

The whole idea was that both could live in a Patagonia hip pack without breaking my back. This sounded like the kind of solution you dream about when planning trips: no compromises on range, no shoulder-killing weight, no temptation to overpack. Earlier this summer, I went to Wales, where pairing the Q3 28 with the Nikon Z7 Mark ii and the Nikon 70–180mm F2.8 somehow felt too heavy. Or did it? Let's go back to Spain.

Basque Beginnings: Bilbao and San Sebastián

The Basque Country was our starting point, and it greeted us with extremes. Bilbao arrived in full summer mode. It was hot and sunny, and left us searching for shade. It is an interesting city with the Guggenheim and riverside standing out. The Q3 43 worked wonders, as always. And the OM-3 surprised me, in a good way. I forgot how I enjoyed working with the computational features, freezing time in broad daylight without a hassle.

Especially in urban settings, it is really fun to bring some dynamism to a photo by capturing motion blur. The Leica is about presence: it freezes moments with clarity, capturing gestures, light, and expressions exactly as they are. The OM-3, though, invited me to bend time.

With its built-in ND simulation and stabilization, I could stand at the famous spider in front of the Guggenheim and watch the scene transform. Motion blur became frictionless, part of the everyday kit. No need to mess with filters, just a touch of a button.

When the scene called for a more tele-perspective, the OM-3 came in handy as I had hoped for. The shot above was taken in the evening sun and when the light starts to fade, the limitations of the sensor start to show. But that is all part of the trade-offs with the insane stabilization and small package balancing out the equation.

I always enjoy venturing into the touristy less obvious parts of a city which is where I took this photo of a basketball court. What caught my eye was the blue color sandwich of the basketball court and the sky with the tones of the apartment building in between. I could have taken this with the OM-3 as well but when small details matter, the Q3 43 is the much better tool for the job.

The road to San Sebastián took us past a place that is recognizable to many who have seen the Game of Thrones series, where it served as the pre-CGI foundation for Dragonstone. In reality it houses a 10th century chapel. The view is what makes it interesting though with its walkway to the mainland. Here is where the focal range extension from the OM-3 came into play. Below is the photo I took with the Q3 43 and then the wider perspective using the 24mm equivalent on the OM-3. Adding the second island made it a much richer shot. There is nothing wrong with the Q3 43 photo but compositionally, I like the wider view here so I am happy I had that option.

San Sebastián, just an hour away from Bilbao, could not have been more different. Where Bilbao had been bright and sweaty, San Sebastián was damp and grey, its beaches veiled in rain. The only photo worth sharing was one where I tested the OM-3's built in digital ND filters again. This time, I turned the zoom ring during the long exposure which captured the density of San Sebastián's crowded old town streets well.

Along the way to Asturias we stopped and looked at the dramatic coastline. It reminded me a lot of Northern California's coast, with similar colors and vegetation. WYKYK.

There are many beautiful towns along the northern Spanish coast but one that stands out is Ribadesella. The is something about how the river bends as it discharges water into the sea, flanked by cliffs and beaches. Definitely worth a stop. Here, I used the 65x24 perspective with the Q3 43 and the Leica M43 lens at 60mm to compress the scene. I liked how these two turned out to capture the essence of the place.

A Change of plans: from Asturias to Castilla y Leon

The weather had not been in our favor so far, except for one nice day in Bilbao. When we looked at the forecast for out next stop in the Asturian mountains, both our moods soured and we quickly decided to change our plan and head south where better weather was to be found. This meant skipping getting to know Asturias and what we've seen from it warrants a return visit.

Our quest for warmth and sunshine led us past various towns north of the Sistema Central, Spains central mountain range with Madrid placed at the middle part of its southern side. If there is one thing we learned on this trip, it is that Spain is a very mountainous country. I always knew Spain had more mountains than just the Pyrenees, the Picos de Europa, and the Sierra Nevada but I did not realize just how much more mountains there are. It makes for great landscapes. Together with the rich history of the towns in Castilla y Leon, you are set up for a great road trip.

The history is rich in the towns of Salamanca, Avila, Segovia, and others. I don't know it was because of the time of year but all these towns were not overcrowded. This made spending time there very pleasant.

The OM-3 seems to work

So far, the combination of the Q3 43 and OM-3 worked well. Of course, every time I pixel peeped on the images, I could not help to be slightly underwhelmed by how quickly the OM-3 files fall apart. This however, is the thing with compromises. Something has to give. I am glad it is not my back.

Our trip also led us through the Bardenas Reales national park which has a geology that reminded me of what we saw in New Mexico some years back. I will let you judge for yourself if you agree on the similarity. The light was very different though, and this was not a case of white balance settings....

The OM-3 also did some macro work in the park capturing this dragonfly. It was very windy and I am normally terrible at macro so I was happy to get this. Manually focused, nonetheless!

One of the last towns we visited had more than a few surprises up its sleeves. Having so many stops makes you sometimes lose track of what you booked, where you booked it and why. So as we headed to Alquezar in the Aragon province, we did not really know what to expect. When we turned the corner and the town showed itself to us, we were delighted.

We did quite a few hikes and I must say that the Q3 43 is a pretty excellent landscape machine. The APO lens has a way to make the scene come alive with detail without feeling over-rendered as I have with some Sony lenses. I find that metering is often overlooked in landscape work and I have only started to appreciate how important that is not too long ago. When metered well, the 43mm lens really shines. When you get it wrong or rely too much on what Leica calls 'multi-field', you can easily get overcast images.

And the OM-3 was no slouch either. It misses the crispness and detail of the Q3 43 for sure. But having a small zoom really does come in handy.

So what have I learned on this trip? Is the OM-3 indeed the best companion camera to flank the Q3 43 with its small sized lenses and enough focal range in a zoom like the Leica 12-60mm (24-120mm FF eq.)?

But what about the digital zoom on the Q3 43? Well, in theory that could completely take care of the short tele end of the M43 12-60mm lens. Besides that you would miss out on the wide end, even the digital crop of 120mm on the Leica is not exactly a replacement for the OM-3 with the 12-60mm. The first photo below is the Leica Q3 43 in 120mm crop. The second is the OM-3 at 60mm, so 120mm in FF equivalent. The OM-3 file is 5396x4122 vs the Leica at 3380x2610. You lose quite a bit of information when cropping that deep. And then there is the lens perspective which does not show so much on these examples but will create a slightly different feel although the difference is not that big with 43mm vs 60mm. Next to that, it is simply nicer to compose when you see the scene as you want it through the lens at that focal length on the OM-3 vs a crop on the Q3 43.

The OM-3 turned out to be a very capable companion to the Q3 43. The size worked: small body, small lenses, easy to carry alongside the Leica without adding weight or bulk. The computational features did exactly what they promised: built-in ND, excellent stabilization, tricks that let me experiment without filters or tripods. And the Panasonic Leica 12–60mm delivered solid image quality across a wide focal range, making it a true one-lens solution.

But there’s still the question that hangs over the whole setup: does the Micro Four Thirds sensor hold up enough against the Q3’s full-frame files, or is the gap too much of a compromise? I don't know yet. I will explore this option further and come back to this in a future post.

The tower is everywhere as a symbol of the city. Cakes, keychains, bags, t-shirts, mugs, and so on, all show this icon.

As a newcomer to the city, I enjoyed shooting the Dom tower from various angles. Below are some of my favorite photos:

Yes, I bought the Leica Q3 43.

I have waited long enough to state that I will hold on to this camera for a while. Readers of this blog might be familiar with my fickle nature when it comes to camera equipment. While I am still not completely sure of some of my other gear choices (here is looking at you D-Lux 8), the Q3 43 is my anchor camera. All my other gear choices remain in flux, as they tend to do. But the Q3 43 stays with me.

I wanted this review to be slightly different. I am going to let the photos speak for themselves. You will find 43 photos I took with the Q3 43. I will use the photos to briefly touch on some of the features and shooting experience with the Q3 43.

I am going to cheat right away and start with a few photos that I took with the Q3. One of the main attractions of the Q3 43 (and the Q series in general) is its size. It is not a small camera. Not if you compare it to a M43 or even a Panasonic S9. But it is small for what it is, a full frame monster with an amazing lens. My camera bag of choice for the Q3 43 is perhaps an odd one, but the small size makes it possible. I opted for a Fjallraven Kånken Hip Pack Plus. The Q3 43 fits perfectly. I just sling this around my shoulder and can carry the Q3 43 all day without even noticing it. The fact that it doesn't scream 'camera bag' is a bonus.

Before I show you the photos I took with the Q3 43 we need to give some homage to its true predecessor in my opinion. Being a fan of the 40mm-ish focal length, I own a Leica CM film camera. A more detailed look into this camera is in the works but for now I want to show the direct connection between the Q3 43 and the CM. The latter was the last high-end 35mm film compact camera that Leica made. Well into the digital age, this camera had a short production run and was the successor of the Minilux models. You can see the philosophy similarities in the Q3 43; small, 40mm-ish high quality lens, clean interface yet full control over its features.

With that out of the way, let's dig into the photos I took with the Q3 43.

#1

Below is one of the first photos I took with the Q3 43. This was taken during a classical performance in my home town of Utrecht, the Netherlands. On my 60 million mega-pixel high-res version on my laptop you can read the Nutcracker music sheet with plenty clarity.

#2

Another day, another classical music performance. This time it was the chamber music festival in the same concert hall. It was rather dimly lit in the hall and I wanted to see how much I could brighten it up. Fair to say the Q3 43 give you a lot of room to play with.

#3

December is a month where fog is always around the corner in the Netherlands and the next photo was taken on a foggy evening as we walked past the iconic cathedral tower. The Q3 43 handles the noise very well in this challenging lighting situation. I shot this at ISO 1600 with 1/15th shutter and F2 aperture. The stabilization made it easy to get a nice clean shot even though it was very dark and foggy.

#4

During another dark winter evening walk, I stumbled on this food truck that had two massive stuffed Miffy dolls on the front bench. The creator of Miffy comes from Utrecht and there is even a Miffy museum. I thought the dark tones gave the normally sweet Miffy a rather sinister look. I like it.

#5

I am a fan of reflections in windows. They create a twisted version of reality. The double glazing provide layers to an otherwise single pane perspective. For these kind of photos, I like to switch to manual focusing as the camera is easily confused here. The manual focus experience on the Q3 43 is second to none. So well done.

#6

Just some nice light in a café in Amsterdam. The good thing about the relative portability of the Q3 43 is that you actually take it with you.

#7

One of my favorite photos so far with the Q3 43. We had a nice frost overnight and that resulted in beautiful patterns on my parker car. The macro mode of the Q3 43 helped to create this abstract perspective. It almost looks like a fossil feather, captured in frost. The level of detail here is very pleasing.

#8

I like foreground blur. This is not the strongest point of the Q3 43 lens but it is good enough for random shots like this one.

#9

Another reflection photo.

#10

The inside of a tapas bar, as seen through a mirror.

#11

Yours truly as captured by Mrs. Hartenberg. Put the Q3 43 on intelligent AF with face/eye recognition and handing over the camera to other people makes it a lot easier for them to capture a good shot. The AF still is lacking in my honest opinion. A camera with this price point and meant to be used with AF really needs to do better. A little bird told me the AF update in the SL3-S might come to the SL3 / Q3. Let's see.

#12

Utrecht's central library. Strong effort to get people to come in and start reading more.

#13

Yes. Still winter. This time capturing the Utrecht Central Station bus terminal.

#14

Hey, whaddayaknow. A reflection photo. Could not help my self to capture the red fiat 500 in the mirror of this old bus.

#15

Black and white. It's hard.

#16

I think every camera should have a 65:24 preview in the EVF. You might have noticed I shoot my Q3 43 in 4:3 as I simply much prefer this to the stretched 3:2. If I really want to capture a wide perspective, I switch to 65:24. Unfortunately, I need to do this with my imagination while I take the photo because Leica does not offer this as a view. Seems like such an easy software adjustment to make.... One minor point on color. I found that woodland scenes in RAW tend to drift to magenta and I was not really happy with trying to adjust this in post. Oh well.

#17

Using the macro mode again on the same forest walk as the photo above. It is a cool feature to have.

#18

Another 65:24 guesstimated composition.

#19

This cat, his name is Ghost, was kind enough to sit still as the AF struggled to find its eyes....

#20

Our neighbor baked us some amazing sourdough bread. I do like how the Q3 43 picks up the details in the crust. My eyes have been forever spoiled with the detail coming from the Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad X2D but for 95% of the time, the Q3 43 is perfect.

#21

This is an old Volvo that is still used as a daily driver. Not by me. But kudos to the person that does.

#22

Catching the last of the snow in Austria. Come on Leica, bring that 65:24 perspective in a firmware update...

There you have it. A glimpse of my journey so far with the Leica Q3 43. I feel strong about this camera. I think I want to keep it. I really do. Stay tuned for part 2 of this post that will feature 21 more photos taken with the Q3 43.

Hello readers. It is time for the second half of my first 43 keepers with the Leica Q3 43. Before we jump in, let me appreciate some of the smaller things about the 43 that I like. The on/off switch is the best ever. I sincerely hope Leica stays away from that nonsense button like on the SL3. The physical on/off switch on the 43 is perfectly weighted with just enough firm resistance. Does it help take better photos? No, of course not. It is still nice to have, though. And then there are the two function buttons on the backside under the exposure wheel. One button stands out every so slightly more than the other one, making them super easy to find by tactile feel alone. So well done. There is the Macro ring which actually does help you take better photos. Finally, the manual focus release mechanism is still the best manual focus experience I have ever encountered. Focus clutch rings are nice as well but they are a little too easy to engage. This small button press combo with a small movement of the focus ring is just intentional enough to not do this by accident and yet very easy to engage when you want to shoot manual focus.

But enough with the words, let's see some photos!

#23

We walked by a rather ridiculous looking hotel in Austria and the morning light brought out the pastel tones nicely against the deep blue sky that day. On days like these the 43 proves its worth because this was just an errand run and I was happy that I threw my small pouch over my shoulder to be able to take this photo.

#24

On the same errand run, I noticed a reflection where all the different blue hues came together.

#25

Same trip but on an evening as the sun had just set behind the ski slope our balcony faced out on. Not an easy shot to get right. I wanted the yellowish tint from the sunset but I did not want to lose the blue-ish darker tones of the snow.

#26

Some fun as a passenger on the way back. The framing of this shot takes you with me in the car. The 43mm focal length is perfect for this.

#27

Testing some of the stabilization capabilities of the 43. I know there are limitations because of the sensor size but how cool would it be if the 43 would get some of the features that OM System is putting into their cameras? I would love an in-camera ND filter on the 43.

#28

This one is top 5 for me so far. The colors were indeed vivid and to have this bar with that name in a setting like this, I love it. Again I am pushing the stabilization of the 43 to get a bit of motion blur from the bus that was driving past.

#29

Just a shot at home of my work desk. Greens and reds are always a good test and I like how the 43 renders here.

#30

A slightly different self-portrait of yours truly. I definitely had to use manual focus here and the macro mode because the camera had no idea what the hell I was trying to do...

#31

Not much to say about this photo. It is very sharp, the APO lens doing its job here.

#32

The light has been difficult to work with the last few weeks. This was on a trip to a small town where I had training and because I have the 43 with me, I can take photos like these. Nothing remarkable, just a nice look. And for me, a micro happiness moment when taking the photo. Part of the appeal of the 43.

#33

Playing with the Macro ring.

#34

It took me a while to get this shot. The cat was moving around and the AF on the 43 is still...well...just ok, but lacking by quite a bit to other camera manufacturers. I do hope there will be an update because this is probably the weakest aspect of the 43.

#35

I came across a place where they rented out old VW beetles. The 65:24 works well here.

#36

More VW Beetles.

#37

Spring is here. The details are so crisp. Very nice.

#38

An abstract perspective of the roof of the Utrecht Central Station.

#39

The local music venue. It is one of the more expressive modern buildings in the town where I live and houses many different sized performance halls. The cool thing about this venue is that everything comes together, classical music, dance, pop, rock, jazz, and performance art.

#40

I find Black & White difficult to shoot. But somehow this streetlight with the shadow of the cyclist seems to work.

#41

I took the next photo while out on a run. I would not do this on a regular basis but the light was very nice so I took the Q3 43 in a small pouch with me. The portability proving itself useful once again.

#42

Some more nice light. Not the best composition but I like how the buildings on the right seem to want to fully soak in the early spring sun. But perhaps that is just me projecting.

#43

Another atypical black and white photo. The tree branches give this photo a weird vibe. It reminds of what a print of an etched work of art looks like. Not that this is art, but you get my point.

We have reached the end of the first 43 keepers of shooting with my Q3 43. It has firmly established itself as my go-to camera for everyday use. For a single prime shooting experience it ticks all the boxes. The focal length works well for me, better than the 28mm. It is small enough to carry all day. The lens and sensor combo work tremendously well. And the feel of the camera is a joy.

I am still searching when it comes to the Q3 43 in a setup where I want to have more versatility. When going on hikes for instance. Or when I want to have a wide and a short tele for some vacation walkaround. I do own a Q3 28 as well. That is much easier to combine with a 75-100mm-ish prime on a second body. But owning two Q's feels excessive. I bought my Q3 28 second hand to see whether I would indeed prefer the 43. It turns out I do. We'll see where this goes. At risk of stating 'famous last words', I don't see the Q3 43 leaving my side any time soon. Even if it still raises questions for a two camera setup...

Compromises need to be made. Weight is one element. Focal range versatility another. And then there is the image quality. Whether you can operate the camera with one hand is a bonus. Between these there are many, many options. I've tried a few. I wrote about the Ricoh GR as a cycling camera and I stand by my words that this is a good option. I compared it against using my phone for taking photos and even though the phone cameras have gotten even better, I still don't get along with them and get little joy from using them.

The thing about the Ricoh as a cycling camera was that I felt limited in focal range. The big plus is of course that it is so small that here the compromise is almost non-existent. But I didn't stick with it as my main cycling camera. I experimented with a Sony RX1R and an A7 with a 135mm Zeiss Batis on a bike-packing trip. This was a bit too much in terms of size and weight. I loved the image quality. I even lugged a Nikon 105mm F1.4 up a mountain. Fantastic images, but very impractical. I also dabbled with the Nikon 24-120 F4. Amazing lens. Sadly, a little large for this purpose.

I gave the Ricoh another try in 2023 when I had the chance to take my bike while working from San Francisco for a month. The compactness is truly unbeatable. This time, I opted for the Ricoh GRiiix. The 40-ish mm focal length worked better than the 28 from the original GR. The good thing about the GR is that there really is no excuse to not take it. You will simply always have a fantastic camera with you.

In 2023, I tried using a OM System OM-5 with the Leica 12-60 F2.8-4 (24-120 FF). I actually quite liked that combo. I am not sure why I parted with it. Looking back, I think this is a great option. The combo is small and the image quality is decent. I did notice a much bigger noise impact when the light was fading. I might need to look at this camera again if my current choice turns out not to be the bullseye choice I hope it will be. More on that further down.

I had a Fuji kit for a while and used one of the bodies for cycling as well. It was the Fuji equivalent of the OM system + Leica lens setup; in this case the Fuji X-E4 and the 16-80mm lens. The M43+ Leica lens was a much better choice. I didn't get a bump in image quality from the Fuji and the setup was significantly bigger. It also lacked a stabilized sensor.

Last summer when I took my bike to the Dolomites in Italy, I went all out. I took a Sony A7C mark ii with the 24-105mm F4 Sony lens. I could just about wiggle it in my bike frame bag and I loved the image quality. The size was a bit of an issue, especially the lens. But if you have the space for it, this is a great option. The A7C ii is very small and delivers great results. I wrote about Sony cameras before and I don't like using them so the A7C ii was only going to be my cycling camera and for that, it was way too expensive. So I sold it. But I am glad I used it for this cycling trip because I really liked the images I got from it.

By now, I have landed on a bike bag setup for all my normal rides. It is a frame bag from Mission Workshop and it has enough space for my camera and other stuff like my wallet and keys, a phone and something to eat. I even managed to squeeze in the Sony A7C ii with the 24-105mm into the frame bag. I did need another top tube bag but it worked.

When I go backpacking, I can bring a little more. But even in those situations, for the next cycling adventures (when are we going Marco?), I might keep my smaller camera. The gear I lugged around on other bike-packing trips might have been a bit overkill.

So what am I using now? Well, I saw a second hand Leica D-lux 8 pop up for a decent price and I decided to give that a try. One of the things that it has going for it in the context of cycling is that I can operate it with one hand, including the zoom, albeit rather slowly. The focal range is decent although I fear I will miss the long end which is great for isolating a cyclist with some compression. I'm not sure about the image quality. Time will tell. As always, I love the simplicity of the interface and the Fotos app is a joy to use. Will I keep it? I don't know yet. It's a great little camera.

I worry the D-lux 8 will be in between two of the options I enjoyed most; the compactness of the GR series or the versatile focal range of the M43 body with a Leica 12-60mm (24-120 FF). The other options have given me beautiful images, but too much hassle. For now, I will test the D-lux 8 and see where it takes me.

Writing this post reminded me how much I enjoy taking a camera with me when I ride my bike. I usually do this alone, because I don't want to annoy the group if I stop too often. Taking photos on my bike was a part of another gear choice that only cyclists will understand. I even changed my pedals on my road bike from SPD-SL to the more mountainbike SPD system which allows me to wear shoes that are easier to walk in. That makes it easier for me to move around as I am trying to find a composition for a photo. It also makes me feel a bit more secure as I don't want to drop my camera while walking around on slippery cycling shoes....

Below are more photos I took over the years on my bicycle. Enjoy!

By now, I need to accept that playing with gear is as much part of the enjoyment of the hobby of photography for me as taking photos. And to some extent, that is ok. But not when my appetite for gear is overshadowing everything else. I feel I have reached that point and I need to find a way to dial this back. Because it annoys the $^#% out of me. But anyway, here we are, and the least I can do is share my learnings in case any of you is going down the same route that I went.

Shooting medium formal film made me curious what a difference in output I would get from a digital medium format sensor compared to a full-frame or APSC sensor. In the film world, medium format is a massive jump in quality. As always, it comes with a cost. Size, weight, and speed are challenging when shooting medium format film. I don't know why I thought these would not apply in digital medium format. At some point, I am sure I will look back and smile at my naivety. But not quite yet.

I shot with a Pentax K-1 in 2023 which is quite a chunky and hefty camera so I thought that a digital medium format body would not be so much of an increase in weight and handling. I found a reasonably cheap Fujifilm GFX 50S ii. Before I realized it, I owned it. I bought a few lenses as well. I went for the 30mm F3.5 for wider landscape and the 110mm F2 for a more tele perspective. This was a bit stretched on both sides of my usual focal range, but it would work. If I only wanted to take one lens, I would take either the smallish 50mm F3.5 or the amazing but humongous 55mm F1.7.

Filled with excitement and enthusiasm, I started to take photos with my new gear. Immediately, I was blown away. I won't go over my early ravings as I captured them in a separate blog post. I stand by those words. The image quality cannot be beat. The depth of details, the soft sharpness, it is all gorgeous, and truly different from full-frame or APSC. Even if the sensor size difference is much smaller when compared to 35mm film vs medium format film. Even 645 film is much bigger than 35mm in comparison to digital full frame and the size difference to the 'standard' digital medium format sensors in Fujifilm's GFX and Hasselblad's X system. I loved looking at the images.

So if it is all so wonderful, why this post? While I was lugging my Fujifilm GFX system through Slovenia and Croatia this summer, the downsides started to appear. The post-honeymoon phase was kicking in, and that is when I am at my most vulnerable. Digital medium format bodies are too big and too expensive to carry two of them around. I don't like zooms and I don't like changing lenses which means I usually work with two bodies. Given the size and weight, that was not an option with digital medium format. I am not someone who takes a lot of time to shoot, I move pretty quick. That is where the lens changing becomes cumbersome, especially if they are as big as the Fujifilm GF lenses. They are very hard to change simply because of the size and it introduces serious risk of dropping some expensive glass.

The overall weight was also becoming a factor. I wrote about weight before on this blog and somehow I stepped into the same pitfall. Other than the weight, the Fujifilm GFX system is pretty impressive. The user experience didn't gel with me as much but that wasn't a deal breaker. The size and weight were. Instead of looking for smarter options, I somehow managed to maneuver myself into an even deeper investment into digital medium format when I saw an opportunity to trade into the Hasseblad system. The Hasselblad X2D would be a serious upgrade compared to my Fujifilm GFX 50S ii and the weight would remain the same. The newer 'V' prime lenses are significantly smaller and lighter. Pre-honeymoon me did not take long to convince myself that this really was the best system for me. Portable, with lighter lenses, and even better image quality.

I emptied my pockets and traded in my Fujifilm GFX set and there I was, the owner of a Hasselblad X2D with a 38mm F2,5 V and a 90mm F2,5 V lens to match. And then the usual cycle kicked in. I loved the camera. Of course I did. Who wouldn't. It's so much nicer to shoot with than the Fujifilm. The simplicity of the user experience is even better than Leica. And the output was glorious. The 38mm and 90mm lenses are phenomenal and it is incredibly impressive how they kept them so small. The leaf shutter means benefits for people who need high flash sync, but for me this was more of a downside because the maximum shutter speed on the 38mm is 1/2000. However, this was much less of an issue than I expected, also because the aperture, exposure, ISO triangle feels slightly different because of the depth of field changes with similar aperture. The in-body stabilization of the Hasselblad sensor is insane. I could handheld ridiculous shutter speeds. I always thought that sensor size was a big reason for why full frame camera manufacturers couldn't match the Micro Four Thirds stabilization but I was clearly wrong. So far so good.

And then, it was time to pack my bags and come home from the honeymoon. AF is very slow. Even with all updates, I felt the much older GFX 50S ii had better AF. And then there was the issue of the missing joystick. The Hasselblad designers went one step too far in my opinion here, choosing form over function. Having neither a joystick nor a wheel or pad for moving your focus point is wildly impractical. You can use your finger on the touch screen but I did not enjoy this one bit.

The changing of lenses also still annoyed me. And even though the Hasselblad lenses are smaller, the thought of dropping them freaked me out because they are so much more expensive. I also did not have an alternative for an everyday camera as all my funds were now in the X2D and two lenses. That bothered me more than I realized. I did not take the X2D with me as much. Maybe it was the size. Maybe it was the feeling that digital medium format isn't made for snapshots, although this is nonsense. Yes, the files are that big. But storage is cheap so this wasn't really a problem. I did have another issues with the files though.

Due to some historic spat, Hasselblad files are not natively supported by Capture One Pro. The software is owned by Phase One and they have a dispute with Hasselblad. Neither company is willing to place customers first and therefor there is no native support. There are workarounds but I found them all super cumbersome and much more of a dealbreaker than I expected. I even briefly went back to Lightroom but there is clearly no going back to this as I am very happy with Capture One Pro. This turned out to the the final straw that made my camel say "enough already". So I switched. Again. Goodbye Hasselblad, it was great to get to know shooting with the system but sometimes what you love isn't what you need.

I am not yet ready to talk about what I am shooting with now. I need to be sure that what I have now is a keeper. I learned that at least.

I wish you a wise 2025 and may your photography gear related needs and desires be fulfilled, albeit with a healthy dose of restraint.

If you want the best of both worlds, get two lenses. Or a zoom, but that is not my thing. Wide and short tele are a perfect two lens setup, but if you want one lens, you are usually stuck with a 35mm or a 50mm. Until recently, that is. Because many more lens manufacturers are bringing out lenses in the sweet spot between 35mm and 50mm.

Leica has released its Q3 43 with the wonderful APO 43mm F2 lens. Sony has a great 40mm F2,5 option for its lens mount. Nikon does a nice pancake 40mm F2. And Ricoh also has a 40mm equivalent option with its Ricoh GRiiix.

Even though it has been missing as a lens option for decades, the 43mm focal length has a long history and can be seen as the first true standard lens. Here is what Leica has to say about it as background for the release of the Q3 43.

“A 43 mm focal length sounds surprising at first. But it is one of the most natural to use together with a full-frame sensor or 35 mm film. The inventor Oskar Barnack recognised this in the early 1920s when he picked the Leitz Milar 42 mm ƒ/4.5 as the first lens for the original Leica.”

If I could have one prime lens to shoot with, it would absolutely be a 43mm lens. Of course there are compromises, like with any focal length, and it is a personal preference. I know people who love their 35mm and others who would never part from their beloved 50mm. Some use the original Leica Q 28mm lens as their one lens option. To each their own.

My love for 43mm became clear when I was shooting Pentax for a while. The Japanese company, that likes to do things their own way, released their FA 43mm F1,9 lens in 1997. A few iterations were made over the years and I ended up using this lens quite a bit with my Pentax K-1 mkii. I loved shooting this lens and carry it as the only prime and nothing else. If I would go out and do landscapes or more elaborate shooting, I would go for a two lens option with something wider like a 21mm and a short tele. For just taking one lens, the 43mm is by far my favorite focal length. The K-1 body was a bit chunky for an everyday carry so I got rid of it eventually.

This year I was reintroduced to the 43mm focal length when I was shooting Fujifilm digital medium format for a while. The 55mm F1,7 is about 43mm in full frame. It is a beautiful lens. Despite its size and weight, I did go out and use it as a one lens kit. The output is spectacular, but digital medium format is still too clunky to justify the gains you get from that bump in sensor size and glass. The thing that stuck with me though, was the 43mm equivalent perspective. Again, I felt right at home.

It is great to see more options around the 43mm focal length coming on to the market. One of them seems like the obvious choice for me. More on that later.

For now, enjoy some more shots taken at 43mm.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, let me tell you briefly what the book is about and why I am creating it. I don't have a title yet but the book will be about the reinvention of the dream that was the driving force behind the creation of a new Amsterdam neighborhood in the sixties and seventies of the last century; the Bijlmermeer (or Bijlmer). Lofty ideas coming from the Modernist movement took firm root in the idealistic architects and city planners, determined to turn this addition to the city into a new way of living, an egalitarian community with a level of comfort that would be incomparable to the difficult housing conditions many Amsterdammers were still dealing with at that time. Large spacious apartments in honeycomb grids of nine floors that were to be surrounded by green space and elevated roads that would reinvent urban life.

But it all didn't work out that way. After a promising start where many true believers of Modernism moved into the Bijlmer, things took a different turn. There was tunnel vision of the architects, failing to do justice to the needs of the people living in their grand masterplan. Simple things like wanting to have local shops to do your groceries were not provided for as the Modernist ideal had other ideas about how and where you should buy your food. People missed having a space where they would come together. The communal space in the buildings that the architects envisioned would be the meeting place of the community turned out to be a dark corridor that people avoided as much as possible. The planed infrastructure of how to get from a to b also proved difficult in reality, a planned metro line was severely delayed for instance. The Bijlmer was one of the later Modernist mega projects in the world, and construction began when other cities already decided that this idealistic novel approach just wasn't working, with some projects being cancelled and others already torn down after only a few decades. When the first shovel went into the ground in the Bijlmer, the fate of the Modernist approach already seemed doomed.

The start of the Bijlmer also coincided with a crucial moment in Dutch history where the independence of one of its colonies, Suriname, resulted in a large group of Dutch citizens who decided to leave the South American country, needing a place to stay in the Netherlands. The Bijlmer was one of the places that had the capacity to take in people, more than 100.000 people left Suriname for the Netherlands right after 1975, many of them found a home in the Bijlmer. They were used to a very different way of living and were now taking residence in this futuristic Modernist project. The merger of the different groups living in the Bijlmer proved to be difficult. The area became less attractive and soon the grand ambition of the project lost its appeal. On the other side, because it became an unpopular neighborhood, prices dropped, and this meant it quickly turned into a haven for people who had difficulty finding a place to live elsewhere, either for economic or societal reasons. The result was a big mix of people with all kinds of backgrounds coming together in one neighborhood, and all of the beautiful and challenging aspects that goes with it.

The eighties and nineties were a time of de-investment and the low point for the Bijlmer. There was drug abuse and the neighborhood has a serious challenge with crime. The design of the honeycomb grid concrete structures and the way the roads were elevated one floor above the pedestrian level created many overpasses which turned out to be hot-spots for criminal activity. On top of that, the Bijlmer was the site of a horrific accident when a Boeing cargoplane crashed straight into one of the honeycomb apartment buildings. Dozens of people died in this tragedy. It seemed like the Bijlmer just couldn't catch a break at that time.

This is when I grew up in this area. Despite the difficulties, I cherish having had the experience of living in an area with so many different nationalities and cultures. It has been the basis for a tolerant and inclusive worldview. And while I remember finding heroin needles around my apartment building where I was playing, I also felt the joy of what the architects had in mind when they designed the massive green spaces. As a kid I could explore hours on end with my friends. The Bijlmer holds a special place in my heart. After I moved away, I moved back to the neighborhood at a later stage in life. I lived in a new apartment building that was part of a major refresh of the Bijlmer that is still going on today. The City of Amsterdam deserves credit for this long-term approach to diversify the area and take on the difficulties but leaving some of the elements that makes this area so unique intact.

This is why I want to create my photo book about the Bijlmer. I want to show how the neighborhood reinvented itself. From the Modernist ideal to a new, more realistic approach to how you create cohesion in a massively diverse community. The Bijlmer is about sixty years old which is super young if you compare it to some of the other neighborhoods in Amsterdam. I feel the Bijlmer is only now finding its true identity, after rebelling against its architect-parents and overcoming a lot of adversity it didn't ask for. I am excited to see the way the new houses are merging with the classic honeycomb blocks. There is more buzz on the street, good vibes instead of watching over your shoulder vibes. Not everything is perfect, on the contrary, but the Bijlmer is on the right path.

That is what I want to show with my book. I want to show the raw beauty of the place, but also the green spaces and the contrast in buildings that is now starting to become a positive feature. And then of course, I want to show the people that live there. I want to do portraits of people that have been living in the Bijlmer for forever as well as newcomers and capture what the Bijlmer means for them and what they mean to the Bijlmer.

So far, I've started my work on capturing the buildings, the parks, the infrastructure. I still have many places I want to capture. The next phase will be interviewing and making portraits of people. The narrative will come from those interviews and they will guide me how the way I captured the buildings and surroundings will bring color to the stories of the residents, just as it should be.

I will keep you posted and wish me luck! If you know people that you think would be great for a portrait and interview, let me know at photo@erwinhartenberg.com

PS: One of my favorite podcasts did 2 episodes on the Bijlmer which are a great introduction for my international readers who are less familiar with the Bijlmer. Check it out here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bijlmer-city-future-part-1/

Have you ever had a moment where it feels like you are observing yourself from the outside for just a short while? Perspective is a funny thing. As humans, we are able to rationalize many contradictions. I noticed myself rationalizing the opposite angle of the argument that led me to look for a smaller kit with M43. Suddenly, the increased size and weight of the GFX system vs M43 or even APSC or Full Frame wasn't that big of a deal after all.

Depending on the facet we are focused on, many things become fluid in reasoning, once a gut feeling convinces ourselves of something. This can be a dangerous thing in other aspects of life. In photography, this is all not so bad, but it can be costly. Before making the same mistake of finding rational arguments to a case I was already locked in to from an irrational standpoint, I decided to test out the GFX system before jumping into it.

Before I go into the image quality and features, let me discuss an element of any photography system that is quite important to me, the ergonomics. The GFX system now only has one shape, the SLR-like body of the 100 series. But once there was the much loved GFX 50R, a rangefinder-styled 50 megapixel medium format camera. I knew I was not going to be interested in Fujifilm's latest GFX cameras. I don't want the 100 megapixels and even though they are competitively priced, I still find them too expensive for my needs. So I was looking at the before mentioned 50R and the 50Sii. I tried both and, spoiler alert, I bought both second hand for less money than a mid-range new full frame camera. Both GFX cameras are very different but each has qualities I wouldn't want to miss. The 50R is arguably overpriced for what it offers today but it has gotten a bit of a cult following which is keeping prices high.

While I convinced myself that I did not need a smaller camera kit after all, size still matters. I think it is a shame that Fujifilm discontinued the 50R form factor. I guess the set of features that made its way into the newer models cannot fit the slimmer body of the 50R. Fujifilm's decision to stop making them won't have been made because the 50R wasn't popular, because it was, and it still is. Rangefinder style cameras seem to be popular nowadays anyway, with Sony offering the A7C, and Fujifilm's successful range of X-series APSC cameras. I have shot with Leica rangefinders for years and I love the ergonomics. And even though the 50R isn't really a rangefinder, the placement of the EVF on the top left feels very natural to me. The rest of the body is also set up like a rangefinder as well with a simple shutter speed dial, aperture control on the GF lenses, and a few dials you can program to do the rest. Simple. The 50R is big, but somehow not too big. It reminds me of my Mamiya 6 film rangefinder. The size and sturdiness of the camera feel inviting rather than off-putting. The camera is lighter than you'd expect. This is a theme throughout the GFX system, everything is not as heavy as it looks.

When you pair the 50R with one of the smaller lenses like the GF 50mm F3.5 or the GF 63mm F2.8, you have a relatively compact combination. I can fit this camera in a small North Face fanny pack and treat it like an everyday carry camera. For occasions when I really want to travel light, I revert to my Fujifilm X-T5, more on that later. While technically not really an aspect of ergonomics, I have to mention the shutter feel and sound of the 50R. Shutters in the SLR era were always quite loud because of the mirror. The mirrorless revolution made them a lot quieter, and recently I feel that newer cameras went even further. I quite like a comforting thump of a mechanical shutter and the 50R has one of the most satisfying shutter sounds of any digital camera I have used. It is a beautiful auditory confirmation that a moment in time has been captured. I love it.

The 50Sii does not have this wonderful shutter sound. As a matter of fact, you barely hear anything at all. This is useful in some occasions but I still prefer the noise of the 50R. Think of it as the comforting sound of a car door, this used to be something that brands would differentiate with. And weird as it may seem, I get it. The tactile experience of things we interact with is so important in the evaluation of the experience, an aspect I find not always given the attention it deserves. Case in point; I bought a new TV recently, as well as an audio streaming device. Both devices cost about the same. The TV remote is made from the blandest, and perhaps cheapest, plastic. It feels terrible in your hand. Like there is nothing there, and yet there is, making it akin to the feeling of some dead insect in the palm of your hand, something that feels off. The buttons are too shallow and the remote is way too slippery. Compare that to the remote of my audio streamer. This remote is sturdy, it has some heft to it. This makes it comfortable to hold, with some carved out slots on the back for better grip. It's mostly plastic as well but it is solid, a little bit of metal here and there makes this remote very nice to operate. Someone who designed this did this on purpose. Tactility is important. Samsung, you can learn a thing or two from Cambridge Audio. But I digress.

Fujifilm's 50Sii is about the same size and weight as a Leica SL. This is quite remarkable given the significantly bigger sensor and lens mount that need to fit in those dimensions. The Leica SL is a benchmark in my book when it comes to ergonomics. Nothings comes close, and the 50Sii is no different. It handles fine but there is nothing really great about it. I think Fujifilm put a lot more attention to ergonomics, and build quality with premium materials, with the newer GFX cameras. But the 50Sii behaves like you expect it to and it is fine. This camera shares the ergonomics design language that the X-H cameras have in Fujifilm's X APSC line-up. There are plenty of options to assign buttons and dials to do whatever you want. It also has a large top display which I actually like more than I thought. This again, is similar to the Leica SL.

What is unique to the GFX series is something I wrote about in another post; the ability to see the XPan aspect ratio in the viewfinder. If you are into that aspect ratio like me, you will get a lot of benefit from being able to frame your composition in camera instead of doing it in post. Seeing this narrow window onto the world which is such a great aspect ratio is a wonderful move by Fujifilm. They of course had their own 65:24 camera, the TX1. I use this aspect ratio a lot, and there is no better system to shoot it with than the GFX system. Firstly because they give you that ratio in the viewfinder, and secondly because the sensor is so big that this crop is perfectly fine without compromising on image quality at all.

Let's discuss lenses for the GFX system. Fujifilm has slowly been expanding the lens lineup and now in 2024, there are many options available. Third party options are sparse. Many people rave on about the Mitakon 65mm but since Fujifilm released the 80mm and 55mm F1.7 lenses, I see no need for a manual lens that weighs a ton. But to each their own, of course. I have also not played with adapting vintage lenses to the GFX system. I get the impression that this is popular to do on the 50R. Perhaps the vintage rangefinder look is what people find appealing. I don't really see the need. I have only used Fujifilm native GFX lenses. I have so far also only used prime lenses, although I am interested in the 32-64mm F4 zoom. This is comparable to a full frame equivalent of 25-50mm. I tried the Leica 10-25mm on my M43 kit and found it to be much more usable than I expected, from a focal range perspective.

The lens I use a lot is the before-mentioned 50mm F3.5. For one because it creates a setup that you could almost envision as a daily carry camera. But also because it is full frame equivalent to about 40mm. For a one lens setup, something in the range between full frame equivalent 40-45mm is hands down my favorite focal length. The 50mm F3.5 is not a fast lens at all. But is is fast enough. As I mature as a photographer, I find myself shooting wide open less than I did a few years back. Composition and timing are becoming the ingredients that define a good photo, shallow depth of field less so. And with the outstanding ISO performance of most camera systems these days, you are not that dependent on a bright aperture lens like before. Leica's Noctilux range was born out of the desire to shoot in very low light, hence the name. But these days, you can shoot in very dim conditions with F2.8 or even slower and your ISO still won't negatively impact your photo with too much digital noise. I also need to mention that, where the 50R does not, the 50Sii has pretty good image stabilization. The photograph below was taken in dim conditions at 1/42 of a second which considering the sensor size is pretty impressive.

Regarding shallow depth of field, if you really want it, a lens that is outstanding in this area is the 55mm F1.7. I don't use this lens as much as I anticipated for the reasons explained above, but when I use it I am blown away by how it performs. The bokeh is phenomenal and the lens is sharp at all apertures, it does not matter what you pick. This lens is extremely well controlled.

The 55mm F1.7 is probably the best example of the lens characteristics of all GFX lenses. It's one of the factors that has really pulled me into the system. The sharpness and clarity are among the best of what is on the market today but there is something in the photos that I cannot put to words but I will try nevertheless. The best thing I can come up with is that the sharpness and clarity has a certain 'gentleness'. The photograph below is a good example. It is so clear and has so much detail in it, and yet it doesn't strain the eyes. It's just.... there.

I know this doesn't make a lot of sense so perhaps it is best to just look at the photos and decide for yourself, but when I zoom in to a portrait or landscape, I see an abundance in the resolving of details but it never becomes harsh. It is.... gentle. And it is not just portraits, the same applies to landscape or urban photography. Loads of details, but never hard on the eyes. I like it a lot.

All GFX lenses I have shot with have this characteristic. They all deliver amazing clarity. They are also, of course, all rather big. Not that heavy, as I mentioned before, but definitely big. The 45mm F2.8 is still relatively compact but the 110mm F2 is massive. They do make a great combo together which equates to about 36mm & 87mm in full frame terms. Both lenses shine. The 45mm is a great option to capture a lot of context with that gentle clarity as I tried to describe. The 110mm may be the equivalent of an almost 90mm full frame lens, but it is still 110mm. This means you get more compression than a full frame equivalent lens. When I shot Nikon, I loved shooting the 105mm F1.4. It is in my top 5 favorite lenses of all time, maybe even top 3 (great idea for a future blog post). I need much more time with the 110mm to see if it can live up to the great Nikon 105mm F1.4. The early verdict is that the 110mm is a special lens, I can't wait to shoot more with it.

This is perhaps also a good time to stress that comparing lens equivalents for other sensor sizes is useful when getting to know a different sensor system and understand the lens range. But once you established that, it is best to simply look at the focal length and aperture as it relates to the system it is made for. 110mm on Fujifilm medium format is 110mm, period. It doesn't behave as a 90mm equivalent, it behaves as... 110mm. Same with aperture. F2 is F2. Yes, it does have different impact on depth of field. But let's just compare apples to apples and stay within a system vs between. There is no better or worse anyway, there is just what you like to use. Fortunately, we have many options to choose from.

The final lens in my current arsenal is the 30mm F3.5. This is becoming boring, but this is also a stellar lens. It also works very well with the 65:24 aspect ratio. However, this is the one lens I am not sure I will keep. I might switch to the 32-64mm F4 which gives me more options and the aperture difference is negligible. I have used the 30mm mostly while hiking and taking landscape photos. I think the zoom is a better choice as the 30mm is quite wide and I don't want to carry more primes when I want a more standard focal length as well. That is unfortunately the tradeoff that comes with the physics of this GFX system.

It's early days still, and frequent readers of this blog might notice that I am quite fickle when it comes to my camera gear. So far though, I like what I am getting from the GFX system. It also has a bonus feature, you are able to use a lot of the same infrastructure in case you want to use the APSC sensor based X system. Like I said, every system has its pros and cons, and you just pick what works for you. I use an X-T5 with a small prime lens when I want to go very compact, or a zoom when I go out biking. The 50R with the 50mm F3.5 is still too big for some occasions. I love that when I pick up the X-T5, everything is familiar. It's the same(-ish) menu system, the same app on your phone and if you use Capture One Pro, you can use the same embedded Fujifilm film simulations. I use this a lot and it helps me get consistency in my editing, whether I do it in camera JPG or later in RAW in Capture One Pro.

As always, I will leave you with some more photos.

Let me get straight to the point; I have some gear experiences to share. My interest in gear pulled me in two very different directions recently and I learned some valuable lessons along the way that I want to write about here. Let's start with getting reacquainted with Micro Four Thirds (M43). My first interchangeable digital camera was an Olympus E-P3, a 12 megapixel M43 camera from 2009. Digital photography equipment has come a long way since then and so have I. In the fall of 2023 I was reintroduced to Micro Four Thirds through a random meeting with a stranger who was using an OM system OM-1. We got talking about the merits of the M43 system and he made some compelling points.

The size of the lenses is a clear advantage of the the system. If you want to cover the Full Frame equivalent of 20mm or 24mm on the wide end all the way to 400mm at the tele end, you really don't need that big of a bag. And the lenses are light as well. This is especially true for the long end. Below is a comparison of a full frame setup and M43 next to it, covering the FF equivalent of 100-400mm. If you want to have a lightweight setup, M43 makes for a rather interesting proposition.

This allows you to bring a wider range of focal lengths on more occasions. I took the photo below on a random walk around Munich. I was always fascinated by the tile work on top of this church near the university, but now, because of the small M43 lenses, I had the kit with me that had enough reach to see some of the details. I will go into image quality later but I can already provide a spoiler; there are clear limitations to what the M43 sensor can resolve. I don't think anyone is surprised by that. But even if we park the image quality disadvantage for a while, having such a wide focal range available is great, but actually also has downsides, for me.

This next point is clearly a very personal one, and not everyone will agree. I find having so many focal range options restrictive rather than liberating, there are two clear reasons for this. The first is that I prefer to focus on only a few focal lengths because I find that shooting with a limited set allows me to train my eyes to look for scenes that fit those focal lengths. Having a much broader range available reduces my focus. I get lost in being able to shoot a scene in so many different ways. Less is more, for me. And in similar fashion, when it is easy to bring many lenses because they are so small and lightweight, I suffer from lens choice paralysis. I really hate swapping lenses when I am out shooting. But it is so easy to pack a half dozen lenses with M43 and then you end up contemplating whether the other lens in your bag might be a better choice. And so you swap lenses, again, and again. With bigger lenses, I find it rather hard to pick the one(s) I take *before *I go out, but when I am out and about and taking photos I hardly ever think about the lenses I left at home. I simply shoot with what I have. But again, this is likely my peculiar preference.

Let's discuss the evolution of M43 lenses for a moment. A lot has changed since I moved away from M43. Back in those days, the system already had some nice options like the Olympus 75mm F1.8, which I loved. But it also had a lot of slow and medium quality lenses. Right now, in 2024, the lens options are fantastic. Leica/Panasonic and Olympus, now OM System, have brought many high quality lenses to the market in recent years. The Olympus 45mm F1.2 for instance is a real beauty. It is sharp and the falloff is as smooth as can be on a sensor of this size. I also really enjoyed the beforementioned Leica 50-200 F2.8-4. Leica also offers an absolute tiny gem of a lens which is the 15mm F1.7. This FF 30mm equivalent lens is what M43 should be all about. Another lens I liked for what it produced but doesn't really represent what M43 needs to be in my opinion, is the Leica 10-25mm F1.7. It is not very heavy, but it is rather big. This is the result of physics, there is not much that can be done about that, but it does highlight the limitations of M43. Fast and small primes and telephoto zooms are what it does really well. For everything else, there are much better alternatives out there. And that makes for a difficult value proposition for M43, if you want only one system.

But what about low light capability and noise? Have things changed? Sensors have developed a lot since my M43 days but I remember clearly what a difference switching to a full frame setup was when shooting in dim light conditions back when I was shooting M43, about fifteen years ago. Back then, there were much better full frame lens options available with large apertures and you could easily win three to four ISO stops compared to M43 with full frame, based on the sensor alone. I have to say things have changed a lot in favor of M43. The sensor in the OM System OM-1 is excellent, period. There is still a megapixel limit to M43 as there are only so many pixels you can cram onto such a small surface before noise gets the upper hand. Remember this point when I discuss my other gear experience with digital Medium Format, in part two of this post.

The sensor in the OM-1 has 20 megapixels which is perfectly fine for many people. You can easily print in A3 and there is a lot of detail in the files. Panasonic released the G9 mark 2 last year which even has 25 megapixels. But, in the world of smaller sensors like M43, more megapixels isn't always better. Direct comparisons between these two sensors makes the limits of how far you can go with regard to megapixels very clear. Even though the Panasonic sensor is quite a bit newer, it has significantly more noise than the OM-1 at higher ISO. My personal experience with the OM-1 was that is was really good when there was enough light, but I was a bit disappointed when looking at the files at ISO 1600 and above. Digital noise becomes visible and it isn't pretty. In that sense, the Achilles' heel of the system is still a reality, despite all the progress. But then again, life is all about trade-offs. And when you want a light and small system, the downsides of the smaller sensor is a tradeoff that makes sense.

The other thing that has changed since my M43 days a long time ago, is the emergence of AI. Solutions like Topaz DeNoise AI, but also OM System's own software now offer the option to get rid of the digital noise by 'filling up' pixels with the help of AI. The results are astonishing. These AI tools help deal with the physical limitations of the smaller sensor. For me, this isn't an option, though. I want to capture a scene with the light that is there, in the moment. Using AI tools introduces elements in the photo that were not present in the light when I took the photo. This is of course personal preference, and for many people these tools are a great addition to their photography toolkit.

M43 does have a trick up its sleave though to capture light in the moment; its sensor stabilization is phenomenal. This is of course super helpful to keep ISO low. It is impressive just how slow you can set your shutter speed and still get a sharp image. When there is a lot of movement in the scene that you want to 'freeze', this is not really an option but for many situations it is great. You can also get really creative with handheld slow shutter speeds. OM System have taken this even further with a feature that is called 'Live ND'. This means you can get the same outcome like you would with a regular ND filter, but you don't need the physical ND filter. In many situations, you can even leave your tripod at home. I embraced and enjoyed this feature and I realize that my enthusiasm for Live ND in comparison to the AI tools is a bit arbitrary. OM System is focusing a lot on computational features to enhance the other unique characteristics of M43.

M43 has a lot going for it in 2024. The lens selection is great, and of high quality. Furthermore, OM System in particular, is embracing the M43 sensor for what it is and the camera line-up is now finally refreshed. There is one aspect about the cameras that is part of the reason why M43 isn't for me. I think M43 needs to be about small cameras with small(er) lenses. The current pro M43 cameras however are not small at all, nor light. The OM System OM-1 is as big as most Full Frame cameras. The new Panasonic G9 Mark 2 is actually pretty much the same body as the Full Frame S5 Mark 2. At the same time, many Full Frame primes and zooms with equivalent aperture are becoming smaller. This creates a dilemma for M43. The only area where it is without rival is in the telephoto range. For me, this is not enough, and after a fun period of getting to know the system, I decided it is not for me.

This is already becoming a long post and I will divide it up in two parts. I will give you a taste of the system that did win my heart; digital Medium Format with the Fujifilm GFX system. I will go in much more detail in the second part of this post, but I will highlight some of the characteristics that have won me over. I think my experience with film medium format through my Mamiya 6 rangefinder has sparkled my interest in digital medium format. There is something about light being captured on such a large surface. I know this is a somewhat ridiculous argument, because Full Frame, or even APSC is more than enough in 90% of the cases. But the itch to see for myself what digital medium format is all about was clearly there. Especially with the Fujifilm GFX digital medium format being around for quite a while which means that it is starting to become affordable to me.

I was able to acquire a Fujifilm GFX 50s ii for a decent price and this started a journey of discovery. I need to state that I am clearly still in the honeymoon phase which is why I will leave some time before I write part two of this post to allow for a more balanced perspective. At this point in time, I am absolutely smitten with it. I've just come back from a trip to Iceland and while you can point any camera at any random thing in Iceland and it will still look good, the GFX system was amazing. Iceland's ridiculous beauty is not helping my objective assessment of the system, but ..... WOW! There is something about the GFX files. It comes with clear drawbacks as well. The lenses are big, the camera is quite chunky, and the system is quite slow. But at this point, I am willing to accept these tradeoffs. The Fujifilm GFX 50s ii reminds me of my 1st gen Leica SL. I think it is about the same size. And if I compare the L-to-M adapter and the Leica 50mm Noctilux F1 that I used on that camera with the GF 55mm F1.7, the package is quite comparable.

More to come in part 2.....

We start in Scotland where we saw this wonderful lake with some ice on it during on of our drives across the Highlands.

Scotland had a lot to offer at the beginning of the year. We were treated to many rainbows and I like the contrast with the road on the following photo.

The next stop is Bad Homburg, just outside of Frankfurt. It was a winter day and the hard light flooded this little Russian Orthodox church.

We move to Warsaw where I took another photo in harsh winter daylight. I like how this photo captures the dynamic of Warsaw with the old and the new in one frame.

I found some warmth cycling in the Provence where I captured this pretty hill town. It won't be the last cycling trip photo in this list...

The next stop is Ireland where this abandoned car caught my eye. We had to make a U-turn on a very narrow road to drive back but it was all worth it.

Back in Amsterdam, I was going for a walk around my neighborhood and the light was very soft in the later afternoon. I took this photo of the most picturesque building in my area.

We go back to Scotland for what is a very touristy photo but I don't really care. It was fun to take this shot of the train made famous by the Harry Potter movies.

The final photo from our second Scotland trip of 2023 is one of my most favorite places, the Isle of Skye. I had to climb down on a ledge (all perfectly safe) to frame this tree that was growing out of the side of the hill.

Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, I attempted to do some street photography in The Hague. I certainly am no Alan Schaller, or Jonas Rask, but I liked how Lou Reed looks from the album cover towards the couple in the foreground.

We stay close to The Hague with the next shot I took at the sea promenade.

The next photo was taken in Munich as the spring was slowly turning in to summer. I shot this close to a hedge and the green works nicely with the blue sky.

Another cycling adventure took me past this ultra narrow building in downtown Amsterdam.

The famous Sutro Tower in San Francisco was beautifully lit as part of an art project. I could not resist taking a photo.

We will stay in the very photogenic surroundings of San Francisco with the next photo that I took during an unusual cloudless day on the bike.

Next, we have two photos of the Golden Gate bridge. One is a classic angle, the other less so.

A quick stop in Munich led me to one of my favorite photographic spots in that city. Day or night and whatever the weather, you can be sure to find people surfing the Eisbach.

I once again saw a nice hedge and took the following shot in between two people with just enough of the museum to appear over the hedge.

We are now in deep summer and our next stop in the photographic recap of 2023 is the United States. The roadtrip we took through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah is probably the most visually stunning journey I have even been on. The first photo is taken at the Great Sand Dunes national park in Colorado. This photo is probably my favorite of 2023.

The next photo shows the bizarre landscapes you can find in the Petrified Forest national park in New Mexico. Truly otherworldly.

The sunsets in Sedona, Arizona are quite extraordinary.

After all that natural beauty, the city of Salt Lake was maybe not the highlight of the trip but I did like how this building was backlit by the afternoon sun,

Back home in Amsterdam, I took this photo in the lovely Vondelpark.

The next stop was Mallorca where we were treated to some wonderful late fall sunshine.

I really enjoyed playing around with the amazing stabilization of the latest Micro Four Thirds sensors which allow you to take photos like this handheld.

Or this.

The last photo I took in Mallorca was this one. Right before I crashed hard and broke my collarbone. If I had to fall somewhere, I guess picking this road which is arguably one of the most beautiful in the world, was not a bad choice.

I have recovered somewhat by now which means I had one more good photo in me of this Christmas tree. See you next year!

You might be wondering what this Wikipedia description of one of the 206 bones in the human body has to do with photography? Well, I recently broke my clavicle during a cycling accident and this has kept me contained to give the bone a chance to heal. Which means, no active photography for me for a while. This gave me a chance to dive into my archive and look at older photos with new eyes. Wide eyed, you might say in this case. You see, in the early days of my recovery, I couldn't really do anything at all. Not even sit at my desk. So I spent more time on YouTube than might be good for anyone. But I did watch a lot of interesting videos. And as you probably all recognize, I went from one rabbit hole to another. One of these rabbit holes was centered around the famous Hasselblad XPan film camera. It triggered something in me. An echo of a recent experience.

I love going to the movies. One of the movies that really made an impression on me in 2023 was of course Oppenheimer. I felt completely immersed in it and I loved the wide panoramic perspective. The three hours runtime went by incredibly quick. Christopher Nolan and his favorite cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema love letterbox perspectives in their work. The interesting thing about Oppenheimer is that they play with aspect ratios throughout the film. They work with both 2:20:1 and 1:43:1 and use it to support different parts of the story. This made the impact of the widest aspect ratio of Oppenheimer even more apparent. It is somewhat similar to that of an XPan camera which is 2:70:1 or 65:24. With nothing better to do and feeling a jolt of excitement of going through some of my older photos and seeing if the XPan aspect ratio would work, I dug into my photo catalogue. I simply used the XPan aspect ratio crop available in Capture One Pro.

Let's see what I found. I will take an existing photo and show you where in some occasions the XPan ratio really adds value. In other examples, we'll see that it needs careful application for it to work. Let's start with the photo below. I took this in Mallorca with an OM-1 Micro Four Thirds camera which allowed me to handhold this long enough to see the light trails from the merry-go-round. Being MFT, this obviously means a 4:3 aspect ratio. I really like this photo but there is a lot of dark space on the top and left which doesn't really add anything to the photo.

Before we go full XPan, let's take a step in between and look at the same photo in 16:9 aspect ratio. What we see is that pretty much all of the empty dark space is now gone and it still has all the elements in it that make the photo interesting.

Now let's look at the XPan slice of this photo. The first thing you will notice is just how much narrower it is than 16:9. We also see that some elements in this case have to be cut to create balance in the image. I don't think it damages the impact of the scene though. The letterbox perspective definitely brings focus across the width of the frame where there is a lot going on. Since I am doing this after the fact, I have no chance to change my positioning with regard to the scene. I think the Xpan ratio works quite well for this scene but had I had an XPan viewfinder at the time, I would have moved back a bit to create room for the people on the foreground. It would probably have ended up looking more like the 16:9 version but with more space besides the cashier booth on the left and the tree on the right.

The second example comes from a trip to Sardinia and was taken on a Sony A7R2 which means a 3:2 aspect ratio. The scene is quite well captured, there is not too much sky or foreground and I was happy with this photo at the time as I had to compose and shoot very quickly.

When we create an XPan crop of this photo, it really changes the dynamic of the photo in my opinion. It immediately feels more cinematic but that is always the first response to an XPan perspective in an urban setting. Why I think it works in this example is because your eyes are drawn quicker to the two people sitting in the typical mode of transport of the Sardinian countryside. The impact is more immediate.

The next photo is another 3:2 aspect ratio capture. This was taken near Paige in Arizona in the United States. We were about to enter one of the slot canyons and I like how my wife kind of disappears between the orange rock.

The XPan version of the photo brings more emphasis to this contraposition of the tiny figure of my wife and the massive rock without actually showing too much of it. The dynamic is once again horizontal for the eyes to follow which I think is an obvious must for composing with XPan aspect ratio. Again, I believe this has more focus than the 3:2 photo.

I never really meddled too much with aspect ratios before. I simply shot with the aspect ratio of the camera so that meant either 4:3 or 3:2. I might have stitched the occasional panorama but that was about it. It wasn't until I started shooting with the square 1:1 format Mamiya 6 film camera that I thought about aspect rations fitting to different scenes. It's one thing to play with aspect ratios after the fact like I am doing here and another to compose in the moment, like with the new-to-me square format of the Mamiya 6. It certainly is a nice way to see a scene completely different. Every aspect ratio has it's pros and cons and since I showed you the photo above near the Grand Canyon, the next photo is an example where XPan would simply not have worked as I just would not be able to frame it that way. Except if I had a helicopter. And even then, I think the charm of the bend would get lost in the width of the framing.

The next photo is one of the rare panoramic stitches I made which more or less turned out to be exactly in XPan aspect ratio. Taken in the Scottish Highlands in the winter, this works well. There is plenty of visual dynamic between the lakes and the land, and the sky has a lot of variation in it.

Less might not be more in the following example. As we move from 4:3, as this was also taken with an MFT camera, to 16:9, and finally to XPan, we see that the forest on the foreground disappears completely. This was taken with a telephoto lens at about 150mm full frame equivalent.

In this case, I tend to think the scene is better served with a more classic 4:3 aspect ratio. This is one of the downsides if I would actually have an XPan camera. You would seriously limit the kind of scenes that you can capture with this format. Anything in portrait mode is pretty much a no-go, and landscape modes need super careful consideration. But there is also joy in limiting yourself. I see some photographers using digital cameras but 'hacking' them into getting the XPan perspective to limit themselves. I can easily imagine this being a lot if fun to do on a photo walk. Here is a guy who simply put some tape on his Ricoh GR's viewfinder to emulate the XPan perspective. But some digital cameras also have this in-body. Because Fuji developed the XPan II together with Hasselblad and launched it on the Japanese market as the Fuji TX-1, Fujifilm now also offers 65:24 aspect ratio as an option on their GFX medium format digital cameras. With that massive medium format sensor you don't have to worry too much about cropping.

It has been fun to look at my catalogue with this perspective and I will try to compose more for it as I believe it can be quite impactful when used right. I wouldn't buy an XPan camera though. For one because they are crazy expensive, but also because having this aspect ratio as your only option would be too hardcore for me. I like that Fuji offers it digitally and I believe the Panasonic S1 does something similar. My OM-1 only shows 16:9 which as you can see above is still quite far from a true XPan perspective.

Another option to have that super wide perspective is to shoot with anamorphic lenses. Especially those with a squeeze factor of 1.5 or higher. Of course, many Hollywood films are shot on anamorphic for exactly that purpose. And it isn't just about the width but the desqueeze and squeeze dynamic of anamorphic lenses adds compression to the wide aspect ratio which can be really interesting. I would prefer to shoot a camera which had anamorphic correction in camera though so you don't see the distorted perspective in the viewfinder. Another benefit here is that you use the full sensor instead of crop mode. I might play around with that.

Thanks for reading and I will leave you with some more examples of photos that I think work well in the XPan aspect ratio.

As good as the lens is, there were a few things that bothered me. The first is that sometimes there can be a thing as 'too' good. In the case of the Vöigtlander this has everything to do with sharpness. It is so sharp at all apertures which means there is no way to play with the sharpness. It is always there. That sharpness is great for gritty urban scenes or crystal clear landscapes. But sometimes when shooting people, I found it too much. It resolves every single detail and renders very 'digital' at times with extreme clarity.

The second thing that bothered me was the size. Even though it is only a little bit longer than the Leica 50mm Summicron, this difference was enough to annoy me. The balance of a lens on an M camera is a tricky thing. On my M10, the Vöigtlander APO just didn't feel right. I know there are versions of this lens for Sony and Nikon mount and I think that would balance much better. Just as it did with the adapter on my SL. I had nothing to complain about the build quality of the Vöigtlander. It is amazing to see what they can do at this pricepoint compared to Leica.

It really was these two things that led me to look for a nice used 50mm Summicron. I wanted the v5 with the integrated hood, compared to the clumsy hood of earlier versions. Since I now had access to both lenses, I decided to do a little comparison. Nothing scientific, just seeing how they resolve and just how much better the Vöigtlander is. It turns out it is quite a bit better, but the 50mm Summicron is more than good enough and does not need to apologize at all. For my purposes, as a one-lens setup for my M, it is what I want and nothing more.

This first scene is a broad photo of an interesting apartment building in my neighborhood. The weather was a little different on the days I took the photo but I think this is good enough to get an impression. What you see is that the Vöigtlander simply outresolves the Summicron. But the Leica is already doing a magnificent job for sharp and clear reproduction of a scene that is a bit further away.

The second scene is a close up shot of a street sign. Here the differences are bigger compared to the overview photo of the apartment building. The level of detail the Vöigtlander manages to capture is again impressive. The Summicron doesn't stay that far behind though and does more than fine in my opinion. You can also see that shooting people with the level of detail is not always what you want with the Vöigtlander. This makes the Summicron a better allrounder for my purposes.

I adore the 50mm Summicron on my M10. It just feels right. The focus ring has the perfect throw and I don't miss the focus knob at all compared to my 35mm Summilux FLE. I look forward to getting reacquainted with this lens and enjoy the simplicity of this great allrounder.

Those of you that follow this blog know that I have embarked on a journey; shooting film is a novel experience for me. I described it as humbling and taking my Mamiya on a trip this summer across the forementioned states kept me firmly in that state of mind. I thought that the colors of the Southwest would show up beautifully on film with its soft transitions between tones. I managed to find some of that. But there were more lessons for me to learn to really master shooting film, and a bonus lesson on scanning negatives I am still battling with. The first lesson was a true user error. I managed to underexpose pretty much all of the 5 rolls of film I shot on the trip. For some reason I thought I was overexposing the Portra 160 film by setting the ISO on the camera on 100, which of course did exactly the opposite. I still don't know why I made that error in judgment but that is why all photos in this post are as dark as they are. I managed to recover a bit in post but I did not want to change too much. That was of course one of the reasons I wanted to experiment with film, to not meddle too much with the output and accept what I get.

The second lesson is something I still haven't resolved. Even when shooting at f8 or f11, I somehow managed to get smeared corners when shooting wider landscapes. I don't know if this is also user error, I have read some issues with the Mamiya 6 bellows not being extended fully. I need to look into this because it is a shame to see this magnificent landscape looking all smudgy.

Update: I took my camera to the fine people of Amsterdam Camera Repairs and they told me the the lens is indeed very hazy with all elements contaminated. It was in real need of a service which it is getting at the moment.....

The final user error fortunately happened only once. A classic rangefinder mistake; I left the lens cap on 🤦🏻‍♂️.

Back to the colors. The next photo is relatively mundane but captures the colors well, even with my exposure fumbling. The scene is a street corner in the town of Gallup, New Mexico. The light was harsh, being mid-day but somehow managed to look softer than at home. If the colors seem very saturated, it is because they really did pop by themselves. I didn't really do any editing on the photos, besides trying to bump up the exposure a bit. I think this street scene worked well on film.

In that same town, about 50 meters to the left is an old cinema. I noticed a classic pick up truck parked in front of it and decided to bring them together in the frame. The 'El Morro' theatre dates back to 1928 and its pastel colors and mix of old and newer cinema characters in the windows makes for an interesting shot. With the older truck in front, this photo might have been taken in 1985, the year the Goonies was released, instead of 2023.

I am starting to get to grip with composing in the square format but I am not sure I find this the best way to capture a scene. Having the ability to pick landscape or portrait allows you to play with leading lines much more than in a square where there is little viewing *dominance *of one line over another. Below is an example of a shot I would have loved to shoot in landscape. The view from our train cart as the train bends to the right and reveals itself to us would come out stronger, I would have been able to show the line of the tracks that were just off frame in the square format of the Mamiya 6. The photo was taken on a train going through the Verde Canyon. Once used to transport ore from the old Jerome mine, it is now a tourist train and a highly recommended thing to do when in the area.

The next two photos represent different times. The first one is the oldest standing building in Old Colorado City, still standing as a monument to the times of yesteryear. The second picture was taken in Denver, Colorado. Art and graffiti cover the walls of a commercial building that seemed to be out of service for quite some time, but is a modern building nevertheless. Both buildings had great contrast with the deep Colorado blue sky.

On the bottom right of the Pioneer County Office photo, you'll see I missed to remove a string of dust. This brings me to another chapter of lessons learned when shooting film; digitizing negatives. When I started shooting film it was already clear to me that I was not going to develop myself. This part of the process I gladly outsource to a lab who do a fine job. I did want try to keep as much of the workflow in my own hands, so that meant I had a choice to make in terms of how to digitize the negatives. I started with what I thought would be the easier method; DSLR scanning. The long story short of that is I did not like it at all. I bought a copy stand, a light box, and the essential film holder. I found the process of installing my DSLR on the copy stand, setting up the light box and the holder and then going through every frame one by one way too time consuming. I am sure you can do it faster than I did it but I also didn't enjoy the extra steps this method introduces.

You end up with a digital photo of a negative which means you then need to convert it with software. Admittedly, this is much easier with a plug-in in Lightroom, but as I use Capture One Pro, it was not working for me. I ended up going with the second option to self-digitize your negatives into proper digital versions of your photo by buying an Epson scanner. These scanners get a lot of flak online but I found working with a scanner much easier than the DSLR scan method. Sure, the actual scanning of a negative takes a little while. But that minute per negative on a 12-roll film isn't going to kill me. The bonus is that the Silverfast software that comes with the Epson converts the negative as well. It does a good job and even has presets for most film stocks. The program might look as if it was coded in the nineties (it probably was) but it does what it needs to do. The only challenge I sometimes have is that I am stuck with what is known as Newton's rings. There are loads of posts online about people struggling with this but I found that just flipping the negative or just moving it to a different part of the scanner surface solves it most of the time. I also found that placing the negatives directly on the scanner, without any holder, gives me the best results.

Dealing with dust is also not too bad. I use a simple Swiffer to keep the surface of the scanner and the negative itself as dust free as I can. The rest is easy to solve in Capture One Pro (or Lightroom). The scanning software has a mode to take care of dust and particles but I found it very coarse and not very effective.

Even though most of my landscape shots didn't turn out well, I am happy I took the Mamiya with me. I like having to be very deliberate with my shots, like the one I took below of a lady weaving. I could easily shoot maybe ten frames with my digital camera and then pick the one I like the best and discard the rest. On film, I needed to walk around the weaving device and decide my point of view and then take my one photo and hope it turns out well. It's a different process and I enjoy mixing it up with my digital cameras.

It's been quite a journey, both the metaphorical one and the actual one in the American Southwest. It is a place of raw beauty, of deep history, in geological and human sense, and its colors are a feast for the eyes. I look forward to return to it and having mastered my film skills a little better next time.

A plastic beast

The Mamiya 6 feels indestructible. It is made of plastic but somehow feels as if it comes from a different plastic compared to cameras today. It is hefty yet light and although I haven't tried it, I don't think I need to worry too much if I accidentally drop it. You truly are holding a significant chunk of gear in your hands. And yet, it is also small and light in its own way. When you use the collapsible construction to tuck the lens in, the side profile of the camera is quite thin. This makes packing the camera in a bag quite easy. With the standard 75mm lens attached it weighs about 1100 grams. Not light, but also not too heavy.

The camera was released at the end of the 80s. My version is slightly younger and is the MF edition which has other film format overlays in the rangefinder. I have yet to try this but having the option of loading 35mm film in the special holder and taking panoramic shots is something I would be interested to try. The rangefinder is large and bright and I find it very easy to focus, perhaps even easier than on my Leica M10.

Rangefinders in general are such a joy to use. This one has a lot of room around the frame lines which is wonderful for composition and anticipation. Operating the Mamiya is very easy. You lift the shutter speed dial to set the iso (more on that later), put it in aperture priority mode or pick your own shutter speed and off you go. You also have an exposure compensation dial. Aperture is set on the lens and that is pretty much it. The light meter is pretty decent and good enough for me not to carry an external light meter. One of the big differences with shooting digital is of course the shutter speed limitation. The Mamiya 6 only goes to 1/500 of a second which makes the film speed you chose crucial.

The collapsible lens design makes a difference

Loading film is not too difficult once you've done it a few times. Simply tuck in the film to the empty spool and turn the lever until the arrows line up. Close the cover and wind it a few more times and you are good to go. The Mamiya has a screen that you can close so no dust can come into the back of the lens while you load the film. This mechanism also allows you to change lenses mid-roll.

Finding my film preference

This is very much a work in progress. I've shot with some black & white Lomography Potsdam Kino 100 but decided to focus on color first and then learn monochromatic film. So far, I think Kodak Portra 160 seems to best fit my shooting style with the Mamiya. I like scenes with lots of light and I noticed that when shooting Portra 400, I didn't expose the scene well and that gave oversaturated colors. The other problem I had was keeping the shadows in the clean. When you lose the shadows on film, it is hard to bring anything back. I also tried Cinestill 50D and I do like the look of that film but Portra 160 gives me just a little bit more flexibility when the light is starting to fade.

I read about the need to really get to know a film stock and understand how it behaves under different conditions. I can see from my mixed results that this is 100% true. Sometimes the result that came out was kind of close to what I had in mind but often I messed up, mostly in targeting the right spot for the light meter to do it's job. One of the downsides of shooting film is that the camera doesn't record any settings and I am not disciplined enough to make notes while taking photos. I will have to rely on memory to go through the feedback cycle and get better. There are 'newer' cameras that print shooting info on the negatives like the Pentax 645 cameras. I might look into that.

Another reason to think about carrying two film bodies is of course the film speed limitation. This is standard knowledge for those that grew up on film. I did not and am learning this all over again. I can't simply use my Mamiya during the day with Portra 160 or Cinestill 50D and then bring it in the evening and expect to be able to shoot everything like I would on a digital camera with flexible ISO settings. I would need to shoot through my film before it get's dark, and switch to something with higher ISO, or take a second body with higher ISO film for situations with dim lighting.

When I get things right, more or less, I can see the appeal of the outcome of the shooting with film. I described in my previous post about how I enjoy the difference in the *process *of shooting, but none of that matters if the output is mediocre. While I want to stay away from direct comparisons with digital, it is good to acknowledge that what comes out of a film camera is a different image. The difference between cars with an internal combustion engine or electric cars come to mind as an analogy. Both look the same, both serve the same purpose, but the way they do it is very different. Below is a photo that I took with the Mamiya which I really like. I added a second photo that I took with the small Ricoh GR iiix. These cameras are incomparable but it is good to see just how different the same scene is captured via chemicals vs a digital sensor. One is not better than the other, they are just.......different. There is a place for both and people will choose what suits them best. I will use both, depending on mood, occasion, or both.

The colors and the 'soft sharpness' of the film image are immediately visible versus the crisp and detailed rendering of the digital file. The other obvious difference is the framing. I am starting to become familiar with the square format. I do still shift how I hold the camera from landscape to portrait at times which of course makes no sense at all with a square frame, but I guess old habits are very sticky.

Learning curveball

I am enjoying the learning curve. The margins for error are much tighter in film photography than in modern digital cameras and I enjoy this limitation. I think it helps me understand the basics better. The delayed feedback cycle makes it a bit hard but I can already tell over the last few months that I am 'getting it' more and more.

In my next post I will discuss my experience with the post process of film photography. I don't think I will ever develop my own negatives but this is the only part of the workflow I want to outsource. Letting your negatives be scanned by a film lab is perfectly fine, but I enjoy having a bit more control. I tried DSLR scanning with a light-bed and scanning with a scanning. Both were giving me giant headaches though and I will explain why in my next post...... In the meantime, here are a few more shots from the Mamiya.

The other thing is the impact of abundance. This has a funny influence on the creative process. I was never a high volume shooter, but effectively having a never-ending amount of storage these days is something that can trigger a mindset where you shoot everything that moves. And then shoot a few more times again, just to be sure. For professionals, this is great. There is no need to worry about getting that perfect pose and facial expression. Or that unique moment in sports, or in street photography as passersby line up for a great composition. But for an amateur, this can be quite tiring. Having to sort through endless amounts of photos doesn't make anyone happy. Lightroom and CaptureOne Pro are getting better at helping you sort and cull during the import process but still.

Shooting in fixed series because of film capacity is something that I really appreciate. The capacity of the amount of photos from a film role provide a natural break in comparison with digital where you have the possibility of an almost endless series of shots given the large storage options available today. For someone who made the film to digital switch, this might be obvious. But for me, who started to truly get into photography in the digital era, this is a welcome change. I used some film point and shoot cameras in my youth as a tourist but that was it. Then, the limitation of having only so many shots on a roll was annoying. Now, when I am in the mood for it, I quite like it. The ability to pick a digital camera or a film camera, depending on the photographic mood or setting, is a wonderful thing to have.

So far, I've only talked about the issue with abundance from the perspective of the photographer. We all know what is feels like as a spectator, having to sit through endless photos from someone's vacation. Less truly is more, in this case. Now, you don't need to shoot film to bring some much needed restraint to your photography. You can do that when shooting digital as well. It just takes a lot more discipline to do so. So far, I find the influence of shooting film on occasion very helpful in my digital work as well. It helps me assess the photographic potential of a scene with much more urgency. It is teaching me to raise the bar in terms of what I want to capture, digital or not. I enjoy this, but many people might not and think this as an odd limitation that is completely unnecessary. I have decided to shoot medium format, or 120 film, where this limitation is even stronger compared to 35mm film. Every roll in my current film camera (more on that below) holds a whopping amount of 12 photos. Talk about constraint.

The physical aspects of shooting and processing film are quite different compared to digital. There is something about taking a roll of film and getting your film camera ready to shoot. After taking a photo, the feedback from the lever to move the film forward is a very tactile experience, you've just completed the process of capturing light and are ready for the next one. Slow and conscious. Receiving your negatives is another happy moment in the journey of shooting with film. I don't develop film at home but have a lab do it for me. I will start to self-scan, but so far I have let the lab do that for me as well.

And then there is the look of film. It depends on which film stock you use obviously, but the ones that speak to me like Kodak's Portra 400 or 160 have this interesting mix of sharp softness. The lens you use will be of influence here, but the way light is captured chemically versus digitally does make a difference. It's not better, or worse, but simply different. I enjoy it. The colors, with the right film stock, are something else. Especially when shooting 120 film. It's hard to describe but there is a vividness without becoming over-saturated as some digital photos can quickly become. I picked medium format film over 35mm because of that color look. I will shoot black & white as well but the big appeal to me is the color.

The elephant in the room when talking about film photography is of course how expensive it is. Twelve shots per 120 film roll against about 15 euro per roll and 7 euros for the development means it costs 1,80 euro per photo. And then you only have a negative. Printing costs more. Scanning can be done cheaper at home with some initial investment in a lightbox and a film holder. Shooting film is expensive, very expensive. This adds to the state of selected shooting that the lack of frames on a roll already introduces. Because, you could just load another roll, right? Well, yes, but that would add up.....

Finally, you need a camera. This is also not cheap. With many people getting into film, especially medium format, and no (or barely) new medium format film cameras being made anymore, getting your hands on a good camera can be expensive as well. I didn't want to break the bank when trying out film photography so I bought a Japanese Hasselblad 500 inspired 645 camera called the Bronica ETRSi. Long story short; I don't like it. It turns out that waste-level viewfinders are not my thing and the ergonomics of this boxy camera didn't work for me. I did like what came out of the camera, and the standard 75mm lens is great. Even though I didn't like the Bronica, I had seen enough. I wanted to continue with film. Days and nights were spent browsing the internet to learn about this new world of cameras that I was completely oblivious about. In the end, I decided to go for the Mamiya 6. It is a 6x6 square format, absolute beauty of a rangefinder, with a collapsible lens. It also has a 75mm lens, this comes down to an every so slightly wider 35mm equivalent of 41mm vs the 46mm of the Bronica. I love the 40-ish focal length for a single lens camera. I will write a separate post about this wonderful tank camera.

Back to my expectations. What am I looking for by shooting film? For one, I will enjoy the process. It really is different from shooting digital. From the way my Mamiya lightmeter works compared to modern digital cameras, to the fact that composing in a square format will push me through a hard learning curve, I am enjoying the newness of it all. And I think I already know this is not just chasing novelty. I am seriously falling in love with this kind of photography, and the Mamiya 6 is living up to what I was hoping for. To be continued....

Size and weight

The wilderness isn't the most obvious place for a Leica M. It is not the natural habitat of the camera. Urban environments is where the camera feels at home. However, the M has a lot to offer when it comes to looking for the right camera setup to take hiking. The two most obvious ones are size

and weight. Even though the M itself is not a light camera, the lenses are incredibly light compared to other systems out there. Many mirrorless cameras are quite light these days, but t

he weight of many good lenses undo that when looking at it as a combo. When out hiking all day in difficult terrain, every gram counts.

The other element is size. An M body isn't that much smaller than a Sony A7 or Nikon Z7. The M is much smaller compared to traditional DSLR cameras obviously. But it is the lenses that make the difference once again. You can easily fit an M with 3 lenses in a rather small bag. This makes quite a difference compared to larger mirrorless or DSLR options. The small size also echoes through in the choice of a tripod. You can get away with a very light regular tripod, or even work with smaller options like gorillapods.

Focus and framing

So far so good on size and weight, but what about the shooting experience in the wild? This is where things become more challenging for the M. The lack of autofocus is not a problem at all. I am looking at the use of the M in the wilderness from a landscape photography perspective, not shooting fast moving animals. For that you clearly need a different tool. But for landscape it is perfectly fine to shoot with manual focus. One of the bigger drawbacks when shooting landscapes with the M is the lack of a tilting screen. When you shoot handheld at a normal angle, the patch works great as always. But when you want to shoot at other angles, for instance from low down, things are less ideal.

Even on a tripod, not having a tilting screen means you need to maneuver yourself into all kinds of positions to be able to see the focus and your composition. The focus itself isn't even the biggest problem when you shoot with smaller apertures as most M lenses have clear indicators on them. Framing the shot is a different story altogether. This is where the M is not as well-suited compared to other options. I read rumors that the next iteration of the M might have a tilting screen which I would welcome. Already today, you can use a visoflex but that is also not great when shooting from really low.

A limited window

There is no shortage of wonderful glass available for the M-mount to capture the beautiful landscapes on our planet. Whether it is native Leica glass or options from the Zeiss or Voigtlander and others, there is a broad set of very high quality lenses available. These options do all sit in a limited window, connected to the optimal focal spread of the rangefinder. The widest focal length I shoot with on a rangefinder is 21mm which is already pushing it just outside the boundaries of the viewfinder. But it is doable. Anything wider than that and you need an external finder or use the screen which brings us back to the challenges described above. The upper limit is probably 90mm. Leica has options for 135mm but I find 90mm challenging enough. This creates another problem as I love using a telephoto perspective for certain landscapes. To be honest though, the majority of my landscape work sits within the 21mm-90mm range so I don't feel too limited by this restriction.

A downpour

What about the lack of protection from rain and dust? I think this is somewhat of a challenge, especially if you are a hardcore landscape photographer who shoots under all conditions. For me it is something to think about, and I will let the weather influence what gear I bring. With my Pentax kit, I know I can leave it out in a downpour and not have to worry about a thing. This ease of mind is not there when I take the M. My M10 has seen some modest rain but I am hesitant to go any further. That does create limitations and it also determines when I am ok to take the M into the great outdoors.

Deliberation

Whenever I am thinking about what gear to take on a trip, I will reflect on how much hiking and outdoor activities I will do. This will guide me on deciding whether I take my M10 or not. If the main focus of the trip is outdoor, I will probably take my Pentax. But if it is a mixed trip with an occasional hike, the M is a great option for landscape photography, especially since it is easy to take with you.

Intelligence, or not?

The I in AI stands for Intelligence, and I think it is not exactly the right phrase for what *AI *is, but I’ll stick with it in this post. The *Artificial * part is spot on of course. Because that is what it is. These AI systems have no clue about exactly what they are looking at, classifying, or assessing. But AI does more than that. There are several companies that have applied AI technology to image and video creation. One of them is Dall-E, the cousin of the text based ChatGPT technology. Dall-E is a system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. No code needed, just type what you want to see, and Dall-E creates it for you. The emphasis is on creating. This is not a search engine that finds an existing image from the gazillions of images that float around the internet. It creates one for you, from scratch. Type in: ‘a cat playing a guitar, on a beach with cotton candy’, and it will give you exactly that.

You can tell it to create it in the style of Monet, van Gogh, or give it any other instructions to get the image to your liking. No photons have been captured in this experience. The image does not exist, and yet it does.

In a way, we are already very used to this as so much of our entertainment contains artificially created elements. Full blown worlds like those in Avatar have been artificially created and we find them perfectly acceptable. We also don’t blink when we see overlays of data on top of sports fields when we are watching TV and cheering on our favorite team. The truly oblivious one is face-filters in social media apps. In the world of photography, we can replace the sky with a different one with just a mouse click. AI generating content is already everywhere. And yet, the era we are about to step into is fundamentally different. In the examples above, artificial content is added by others, or we select from a series of options. But we mere mortals do not create anything ourselves. This is about to change. The implications from this wave of AI technology can hardly be overstated. I believe we are entering a phase that will redefine what visual creation means. The same applies for text but since the topic of this blog is photography, I will focus on the visual element.

AI inside our cameras

Before I go further into why the world of photography is about to change, we need to talk about the AI inside the cameras we use. The most obvious example is auto-focus. Even basic cameras today have some form of facial recognition software guiding their auto-focus. High-end cameras can be used to detect several different shapes for focus purposes. Not just faces of humans, but those of cats and dogs as well. You can even assign a eye-preference when taking photos of birds. But it doesn’t stop there. Cars can be auto-focus tracked this way, and different sports can be selected for assistance with auto-focus. It feels like magic, which is often the case with new and groundbreaking technology.

And then there is of course the technology that is present in smartphones. I will call out two examples. Photos taken with smartphones, while still taken in the old-fashioned way by pressing a shutter, undergo a large amount of enhancements to get the most out of the tiny lens and sensor that sit in smartphones. Large portions of the code that power the operating systems of our smartphones are dedicated to creating the best possible image. We hardly notice it anymore. Some people purposely shoot RAW photos on a smartphone but 99% of people will stick to the enhancements made by the phone software. The other smartphone example is the same kind of recognition magic that also powers the auto-focus in newer cameras. It also works in searching your collection of photos on your phone or in the cloud. Type ‘cat’, and all photos with a cat in it appear.

Some of this technology has been around for a while, so why do I believe that we are entering a new phase where AI will alter photography as we know it? The AI technology described above falls into two categories; image creation without photons and photo-taking enhancements. Let’s start with the second category as this one is more of an extension of something we are familiar with, before dealing with photon-less photography which is way more disruptive. A great example is just how good Sony's bird auto-focus is for instance. here is a real life example. Or Canon, with their 'eye-control' auto-focus. This works by tracking the eye of the photographer and the camera will focus on anything the photographer is looking at via the viewfinder. In the words of professional sports photographer Lukasz Skwiot: "A typical example is where you have several players in the frame and want to follow one of them," he explains. "All you have to do is look at the one you want, and the camera will focus on that player and track him even if other players appear from the side or come between the player and the camera. Problem solved!"

Let's take this one step further. I want to ask you to think about a Roomba, one of those autonomous robot vacuum cleaners. (Or even better, think about one of those Robot Dogs from Boston Dynamics.) Now imagine some sort of tripod being connected to the back so that it stands upright. On top of the tripod sits one of the next generation of Sony A1 cameras. Or any other top-of-the-line model from any of the major brands. This will be 3-4 years ahead. Not only will this camera have all of the magical auto-focus capabilities I mentioned above, it will now also have AI in it that recognizes memorable human moments. Project the image of the Roomba with a tripod and camera to the scene of a birthday party. The camera will know who’s birthday it is and as it moves around, it will look for angles to capture the event with the person having the birthday in most photos. It moves around the room to set up the angles for composition and depth of field effect that generate the most likes on social media. It doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t need to go to the toilet. It captures the event flawlessly. This sounds far-fetched but it really isn’t. We already have robots delivering things in hotel rooms, or restaurants. And if you think about it, the combination of facial software and photography ‘smarts’ based on AI learned patterns of good photography is not that far away.

The blue pill, or the red?

The way we capture events is about to change. For photographers, the experience of taking the photograph and the photograph as the outcome are about to be split. Just like with so many things that are or will be automated, in most cases, robot cameras with AI will be better at capturing birthdays, weddings, and corporate events. For these events, outside of the photographer, nobody really cares how the photos get taken. People just want to have nice photos. Think about self-driving cars. To get from A to B (the outcome), this is perfectly fine. For people who enjoy the driving experience, not so much. For photographers, this is very similar. We enjoy the experience of taking a photo. We like to think about focal lengths, composition, and light. But in many cases, the people that get photographed don’t care about these things. They just want the outcome.

Even in a slightly less automated scenario than the birthday example I described above, soon we will get to a point where the automation in cameras is so fixed on the outcome, it takes away joy from the experience. The threshold will be different for different people. Myself, I am already quite bored with the help I get from most modern mirrorless systems today. This is because a very large part of what I enjoy about photography is the manual experience, and not just the outcome. I can imagine all this automation is a gift, for example for sports photographers, they have a job to be done and this helps them do it. But also here, I would think twice about career options as I think robotized and AI powered cameras will be able to do this much, much better in the near future.

This will become a very interesting challenge for professional photographers. For intimate settings like weddings, I can imagine people preferring a human being instead of a Roomba on steroids. But we’ll see where this goes. For hobby photographers, the question is different. It will be about how much of the experience they value. Casual photographers that like to take snaps of family on vacations and so on will likely embrace the capabilities. But for some more serious hobbyists, this might alter the way they photograph. Very much like the resurgence of vinyl records, hobby photographers might look to gear that puts the experience more front and central. This can be done by looking at analogue gear, a trend already very much underway and pushing prices of second hand film cameras and new film rolls ever higher. This is also why Leica recently re-issued the classic M6. Pentax announced looking into developing a new film camera. The desire is clearly in the market for photographic tools with very little assistance. It is one of the reasons I enjoy my Leica M so much. It is also behind my recent ‘step-back’ in digital cameras by picking up a Pentax K-1. I might even look at shooting film myself. I think we will see more camera manufacturers develop cameras that are focused on manual operations with little aids, whether they be digital or analogue.

With digital cameras becoming more and more advanced, they become more and more utilitarian. Which is great for the outcome, but not great for the experience. This is the counterintuitive aspect of modern humans. We go searching for experiences that are less utilitarian. Seen through the lens of Homo Economicus, there is no reason whatsoever to bake your own bread since the economic machine provides mass-produced bread at almost every street corner. And yet, millions of people bake their own bread. Because they enjoy the artisanal experience, the hands-on experience of taking simple ingredients and working them into this piece of bread. The recipe, pun intended, for enjoyment has a large chunk of experience in it, not just the outcome of the bread. Photography is no different. I think Leica and Pentax are brands who understand this very well.

Do we need photons?

Let’s return to the first category of photographic change: photon-less photography. This will create an even bigger rift between the experience of taking a photo and the photo itself, the outcome. Here technology will evolve incredibly fast and put tools into the hands of the public with which they can describe any scene they want and they get a perfect photo back. The technology from a photography perspective is still in its infancy, but I can already tell Dall-E to create a ‘mountain landscape with rugged peaks, some bits covered in snow, mirrored in a lake with flowers on the foreground’. You can see the result below. This is hardly something that would find its way on a wall in my house any time soon, but just imagine 3-5 years of the incredibly rapid development in this field. It will become photo-realistic and you will not be able to see if this is AI generated or shot outside.

Let me re-iterate the point about photon-less photography again. These are images created by AI do not exist in terms of light captured. Not a single photon is involved in the creation of this image. The ‘art’ created this way is already more than acceptable. The photo realistic output is still quite coarse as you can see from the example, but landscape photos created by AI will be at the same level as what the best landscape photographers can produce. But without the travel, waiting, and enduring the elements. You just type what you want to see and AI will create it. This brings me back to the point about experience vs outcome. If you are interested in a beautiful rendering of a landscape to hang on your wall, or for a magazine to accompany an article, or as a background for advertising, you might be better off using AI generated images. They will be cheaper, and better tailored to your needs because you can create them completely unrestrained from any limiting factors generated by weather conditions and light. But if you enjoy landscape photography as a experience, you will still want to head out into nature and get that shot that is unique and only you could have made because you were truly there at that time. Landscape photography will be less and less about the actual image, it will be about enjoying the experience of the trek to get to the destination and still capturing the image in front of you, but the actual image can be generated by AI without limitations in a couple of clicks if needed.

The fork ahead

It will be very exciting to see how all this will develop over the next few years. If camera manufacturers are paying attention, and I am sure they are, they will develop a generation of cameras that are developed for the experience first. The base level of photographic capabilities in cameras today is already more than good enough for 95% of purposes. It only makes sense to develop a set of cameras that emphasizes the *experience *side of cameras more than the outcome side. But it will take bravery to step away from the AI-powered ‘arms race’ that is underway. The disruption is already happening, the question is which camera manufacturers will embrace it and differentiate themselves via the experience, and which ones will be swallowed up by AI. The fork in the road will come. Which road will you take?

Scotland has its own color palette

The colors of Scotland speak to me. The muted greens, reddish browns, greys, and blues make a wonderful winter palette that has a calming effect. We've only ever been here in winter, where the white of the occasional snow completes Scotland's base landscape colors. Don't come to Scotland if you are looking for hard contrast between colors, like the deep yellow of tropical beaches against the intense greens of palm trees, overshadowed by strong blues in the sky above. This part of the world is about colors that sit right next to each other, with boundaries between them slowly giving way until one color is no more as it has become another, but it is hard to tell where that transition took place. The way the colors interact with each other always reminds me of the Dutch and Flemish master painters from the 17th century. Do an image search on that and you will see what I mean when you compare the color palette of the paintings to the photos in this post.

Moves at its own pace

Another thing that speaks for Scotland is how it provides perspective. Like Iceland and Norway, and I am sure many other places where I haven't been to yet, where mankind has not completely dominated the landscape, Scotland welcomes you but it is clear it has other things on its mind but humans. This is a place that moves at a different pace. The geological movement of its land mass is more present than the latest thing to pop up on social media. Once you head out into the highlands or islands, life immediately slows down. Or maybe I should say it re-calibrates, to a pace that somehow feels more natural.

No driving on auto-pilot

Take driving for instance. When you have road infrastructure around you every day that is aimed at high efficiency for commuters, you look at the distance in kilometers and you project the time you need to get to your destination with eerie precision, especially in the age of GPS and real-time traffic information. It doesn't work that way in Scotland, or at least outside of the main cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The roads don't allow high speeds at all. Many roads are single-lane, with 'passing places' every few hundred meters. And even if there is more than one lane to drive on, nature lets you know that other users of its land have priority. Sheep and deer have the right of way. This means you must be very alert at all times, which makes for a different driving experience. And I am not even talking about the distractions you face from the stunning landscapes after every corner. Slow is good. Like the Italians with the slow food movement that started in the late 80s as a response to the rise of fast food everywhere, the Scottish have their take on the benefits of a slow life.

I brought a Pentax!?

Let's talk about camera gear. On my first two trips to Scotland, I shot mostly with Leica. I have returned to Leica (you can read more on that here), but I stepped into a new camera ecosystem recently, and I thought it a good idea to bring my new setup to Scotland. Pentax cameras have always intrigued me. They have their philosophy and stick to it, something to be respected. We live in a world of many options, but when you look closer, there seems to be not much choice at all. Most car manufacturers build a slightly different version of the same bloated SUV cross-over in various sizes. But they are all alike. Things are a little better in the world of photography with Fuji taking a different approach compared to Sony for instance, in terms of ergonomics, sensor, and lens choices. But the real oddball remains Pentax. Well, and Leica, but that is not the topic of this post. Not long after Pentax was bought by Ricoh, they released a statement that they will stay true to the DSRL. They recently even announced looking into developing a whole new film camera. I think this can only be applauded. We need more *real *options.

A view through a mirror

The reason I turned to Pentax was that I missed the experience of shooting with a DSLR. After years of shooting with mirrorless cameras, I felt a bit numbed by the 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' perspective of the EVF. It has many benefits but at times, it felt as if created more distance between what I was photographing. I also craved a more rugged camera body and the stories about the ergonomics of Pentax sparked my interest enough to look into it. After holding a K-1 (mk2) for the first time, I was sold. The dials are super efficient en easy enough to operate, even with thick winter gloves. I also like the setup with a top dial on the right that has many different selection options like ISO or exposure compensation, which you can change with another dial. With a dial for aperture and shutter speed, you can control anything you need with your shooting hand.

The shooting experience on mirrorless cameras can be a little muted. Not so with the Pentax K-1. The mirror release gives this nice and clunky mechanical sound. It offers live view but it is mostly useless as the camera is barely able to focus this way. On some occasions, you can use it for manual focus but you are better off sticking to the bright OVF. There is just something about the K-1 body that makes me want to pick it up. It is smaller compared to many full-frame Pro DSLRs from Nikon or Canon but is definitely beefy, especially compared to a mirrorless camera. The 36-megapixel sensor may be a bit older but it delivers wonderful clarity, even for 2023 standards. It even has sensor stabilization. I am used to 24-megapixel sensors, and I am finding the extra pixels quite nice to work with. Given that the K-1 mk2 dates from 2018, you can pick these up for a good price new or used, and I think this camera represents unbelievable value for money.

Limited lenses

The other main reason to step into the Pentax ecosystem was their set of 'limited' lenses. Some of these come from the film era and have been optimized for the digital era, while others have been released more recently (the 21mm for instance). Contrary to the K-1 body which is clunky (in a good way) and relatively heavy at just under a kilo, the limited lenses are incredibly small and light (the 43mm only weighs 155 grams). This makes the combination of the camera body and lenses very competitive, compared to mirrorless options when it comes to weight. The limited lenses are beautifully made. All metal with a distance indicator and most have an aperture ring. They all use the focusing motor of the body instead of having an internal focusing motor. This creates some minor noise but that doesn't bother me too much. They are not a good option if you need to be stealthy. I love these lenses. I own and brought the 21mm F2.4, the 43mm F1.9m, and the 77mm F1.8, with me to Scotland. The 33mm F1.8 is also a great lens but that is too close to my Leica Q. The thing about the limited lenses is that they make me want to pick them up and shoot with them. Not unlike my Leica gear.

43 is the new 35

My favorite lens of the Pentax limited series is probably the 43mm F1.9. It is so incredibly small and fits nicely on the K-1. It creates clear and crisp images and the maximum aperture is bright enough for nice subject isolation when you need it. I am starting to enjoy the 40-ish perspective as a single focal length. Wider than a 50mm, but just a bit more focused compared to a 35mm, this 43mm is a great lens for everyday shooting. On my Leica M10 I mostly shoot with the 35mm Summilux but if the M system had frame lines for 40mm, I might be tempted to shoot that on the M as well. I already mentioned that the 43mm weighs barely anything. It doesn't seem to compromise on image quality, that is for sure. I know F1.9 isn't incredibly fast but for 95% of shots, it is all you need. After years of ultra-fast and heavy lenses in the mirrorless world, it is great to see that more lightweight options are available. The Sony trio of 24, 40, and 50mm is one example, Nikon released a 28mm F2.8, a 40mm F2 I really like, and Sigma makes a few others. None of those feel as well made as the Pentax, though.

The K-1 is indestructible. Well, almost.

The K-1 gets a lot of love in the Pentax community for its ruggedness and weather sealing. I've seen videos of people burying it under a pile of dirt, only to rinse it off under the shower. The K-1 just keeps working. On this trip, I've had my own unwanted test of the K-1's ruggedness. My tripod is at the end of its life, with not everything being as tight as it once was. I was setting up for a long exposure shot of a waterfall and you can guess what happened. From about 1,5 meters up, the K-1 slipped off the tripod and hit the viewing platform we were on. Hard. Fortunately, it landed on the body and not the lens. There were some scratches but everything works fine. Except for the interesting spider legs of the pop-out screen. Two of them popped out of their rails but the internet assured me that I can fix that with a screwdriver and a bit of pressure. I wasn't looking to test the destructibility of the K-1 but it feels good to know the camera can take a beating.

Boggy and soggy

Back to Scotland. What never ceases to amaze me when traveling this country in the wintertime, is the wetness that is everywhere. I am not talking about the rain or snow, but the wetness in the ground. When going out hiking, you need to navigate deeper puddles in the marsh, but with waterproof shoes, this is not a problem. How did they do this hundreds of years ago? People would have had everlasting wet feet, all the time. I can imagine people in Greece or Turkey with the kind of clothing options available around let's say 1000 AD, but to be living in Scotland at that time must have been something else. Locals told us the sogginess is not just a winter phenomenon but that many parts are like this the whole year round.

The Scottish weather is in charge

Related to the soaking top layer of Scottish soil, is of course the weather. Yes, it rains a lot. But in the times that we've been here, the weather also changed a lot. We have not had a lot of all-day rain days, and even if there was a shower, the wind took care of that quickly enough. These fast-changing conditions act as a kind of Director of Photography on a film set. All props and actors are there, but the DoP lights the scene to make it come alive. This is what the weather does to the Scottish landscape. Every change in weather brings out a different atmosphere. Dark and cloudy weather, with a bit of sun, emphasizes the deep browns, whereas the sun against a clear(ish) sky brings out the greens. It never ceases to amaze me how different the Scottish landscape looks under different conditions.

The truth is in the cask

No post about Scotland can be complete without mentioning whisky, the golden sap of the locals. Even though whisky is distilled everywhere in the world with notable whisky production in Ireland, Japan, and the US, the true heart of whisky is in Scotland. Almost every hotel and pub or restaurant carries a large collection of local whisky, as I am sure is the case in many Scottish homes as well.

The whisky-making process needs moisture and there is plenty of that around. The color and taste of whisky also carry a strong connection to the Scottish land. The deep amber of whisky fits well against the muted tones of its birthplace. We were able to visit the Singleton distillery where we learned once again that haste is not a good thing when making whisky. It fits with this slower pace of life that focuses on doing fewer things well and taking the time it needs.

Bucket list material

Scotland definitely qualifies as travel bucket list material as far as I am concerned. If you have the opportunity to visit Scotland, please do so. You won't be disappointed. Next to those waterproof shoes, don't forget to bring a camera, you'll need one!

Shooting light installations from a moving boat isn't always ideal. If you want to get the most out of your photography, take the walking tour and bring a tripod. But then again, if taking photos is a serendipitous activity while enjoying the works of art in good company, you will simply have to make the most out of it. The photo below was taken during this year's edition. The theme of the current edition is 'imagine beyond'. This can be interpreted in many ways, the artist behind the installation below tried to create a contrast between fire and water. The lightness of the Leica Q made it easy for me to hold the camera just above the water surface to get as much of the reflection in the frame.

Many artists over the years played with perspective, as the visitors will always be in motion while watching the installations, whether it be by foot or on the water. One example is captured in the next photo. Multiple lit panels would create a dog's face but only when seen from a specific viewpoint. This time I was on foot and used the opportunity to keep my shutter open a bit longer to capture the movement in front of the panels.

One of the installations that stuck with me was one called 'surface tension'. It was built in one of the canals behind the Zoo, which also has a few houseboats. The installation was a collection of everyday traffic scenes but done in a way as if everything is flooded and only the top is visible above the water. In a city like Amsterdam which itself sits below sea level, this sent a very strong message.

Every artist has a clear story behind the installation they make, but not all come across. One that did was a work that used an old crane, trying to unravel a ball of yarn that represents the origin of time. It worked because the artist used the objects around the canal to connect to the ball of yarn which was placed in the canal itself. The red color worked great in this dimly lit part of Amsterdam's canal network.

I have saved the best for last. This installation was featured twice at the festival. It made a come-back appearance during the 'best-of' edition to celebrate the ten-year mark. It was called 'Whole hole' and the work of the two Dutch artists invoked an eerie experience by lighting up one of the many shallow bridges on the side canals of the main Amstel rivers. You would enter this smaller canal from the wider water of the Amstel and that created the feeling of going through a tunnel or entering a black hole.

The Light Festival has become part of the fabric of the city and every year, Amsterdammers are keen to see what the different artists have come up with.