Dan's Cameras Part Ten - Photographs Again

My professional life took an interesting turn when I decided on a career change into international development.  As you all know, I started out with Iraq and started this blog.  I tried to write stories supplemented with photos, and I got to take pictures at our meetings.  I wouldn’t call them real photographs, and Iraq wasn’t the type of place one could go out photographing (no going to the red zone, and even the green zone didn’t allow photos to be taken . . . so photography was difficult).  Still, I started having a purpose for photographing, which helped motivate me to do something beyond just snapping images.Iraq was no place for the Contax (way too big and heavy), nor even the Panasonic given I really couldn’t get out.  Still, the few times I could take pictures, I wanted better quality images so on my first leave back I got another Panasonic Lumix, this time a point and shoot.

The difference in image quality between the Lumix LX-5 and the Samsung was amazing.  In part it had a newer generation and slightly larger sensor.  In other part, it had Leica optics - the equal (though slightly different) of Schneider or Zeiss.  With the extra quality, I was starting to point the camera at subjects that I’d previously ignored.  Sure, the quality was limited (sensor size does matter), but some of the images were not bad and certainly it helped make better images for the blog post.

Right around the time I got the Lumix, Fujifilm announced that they were coming out with a revolutionary new camera.  Over several months they leaked little details and eventually made a major announcement.  I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.  Folks raved about the “retro” styling; I drooled over the fact that it had the aperture ring on the lens and a shutter speed dial on the top of the camera.  It was designed for folks like me who learned photography in the 35mm glory years of the 70’s and 80’s.  It also had an innovative viewfinder that you could switch from being optical to electronic with the throw of a lever.  It was a mix of old and new that appealed to me in more ways than one.

I waited to read the reviews for the camera and wasn’t disappointed in what mattered most to me.  Folks complained about some of its quirks, but the one thing everyone said was that the image quality was amazing.  Fujifilm has made/modified some of the best photographic sensors in the world and they have incorporated much of what they had learned about film imaging to their sensor division.  What most people don’t know is that Fujifilm has also made camera lenses for decades - I knew them from their large format camera lenses, but also found out that they produce a lot of cinematic lenses for TV and the movie industry.  Like I said, the image is all about the glass and the sensor.  Put it in a body with manual controls, well, what was there not to like?  I got a Fujifilm X-100 the first R&R I was back in the states.

Fujifilm x-100

That trip back, I told Ann I wanted to go on a real photography trip.  Ann, as always, was game.  We decided to go to the painted hills in Central Oregon.  We photographed all day and had scouted out a sunset shot.  As the time approached, I set the Contax up on the tripod, prepared the Panasonic Lumix micro-four-thirds to grab after the Contax shots and set the Fuji to the side.  The sun got to where I wanted it and I shot away.  Having made my shots with the two familiar cameras from the tripod, I grabbed the Fuji to see what it could do.  Given the fixed focal length of the lens (I’ll discuss that in a bit) I had to move a few feet to get the best framing for the image.  I didn’t think much of it - hand held images taken very quickly.  That was until I eventually looked at all of the images together a couple of weeks later.  I was stunned - the quality of the image from the Fuji was as good as anything I’d made with my 4x5.  I realized then that it was a tool I could grow into and that wouldn’t hold me back.  

So the Fuji became my camera of choice for a number of reasons beyond quality.  The camera is not an interchangeable lens camera - it has a fixed lens that is not a zoom, much like that old Argus I took to Germany in 1976.  In 35mm film camera terms it’s a slight wide angle 35mm lens (not to be confused with the film size).  Any image I want to get closer in to make with it, I have to move myself to take.  I can’t treat it like a telephoto, and I can’t make it wider (well, I can if I get an optional lens adapter).  I have to conform my vision and seeing to that of the camera.  It may sound restrictive, but it’s also freeing.  That beautiful bird off in the distance - forget about it.  Just enjoy the bird.  Super wide angle interior . . .  nope.  Because of the fixed lens, the camera is relatively small - not shirt pocketable small, but small enough to tuck away in a bag and take to . . . Iraq.  And eventually Liberia.  Thus it’s portable and fairly inconspicuous.

In short, it’s become the camera that has brought me back to photography.  Fuji keeps improving it with firmware updates (now manual focusing is even useable!).  I’ve passed up the opportunity to upgrade my hardware for now (though I am loving the firmware updates), pushing myself to get better before I move into a system camera.  Probably that will happen sometime in the next year or so.  

Since I started shooting more and more with the Fuji, Ann has become interested in photography.  I first loaned her the micro-four-thirds camera (the red one), but when she quickly demonstrated her images were suffering from its limitations (for the same reasons mine were), so I got her a better camera.  It should come as no surprise that we’re becoming a Fujifilm X-series household.  She, however, has an interchangeable lens X-E1 and a few lenses.  Ann has no complaints about the image quality.  I’ll eventually get a Fuji X -series interchangeable lens camera and we can share lenses . . . if she’ll let me.

Oh, while I was in Liberia, I wound up getting another point and shoot camera.  Again, newer models with an even larger sensor than my Lumix point and shoot, and Zeiss optics.  The Sony RX 100.

Sony rx100

It produces amazing quality images, though they can’t compare to the Fuji’s.  Still, under most conditions, if I need to zoom in, the Sony allows me to get raw images that, with a bit of work, can turn out beautifully.  I have quite a few images from Liberia taken with the Sony that I’d be willing to show to anyone.   

Maybe it’s not just that the Sony and the Fuji are such good cameras.  Maybe I’m even starting to take better pictures and, in the end, that is what makes good photographs.  The cameras are just tools.  They can’t make bad images good, and a good image will survive even a bad camera.  

So what’s next?  Fujifilm for sure.  I thought it would be an X-E2 (Ann has an X-E1), though I’d really like to wait for an upgrade to the X-Pro 1 (X-Pro 1s??? - it only needs a few small improvements).  Then again, Fuji has announced a new camera, the X-T1, that is weather sealed and is supposed to have a great viewfinder.   Regardless of the camera body, it will have interchangeable lenses and I’ll be excited at having options after living within the limits of a single focal length for a couple of years now.  Those limits helped me focus on seeing and not on technology.  That led to making decent images again.  However, being able to put on different lenses means I can explore different ways of seeing.  Again!