Category: Photography

With the recent released of mirrorless medium format cameras I thought I would give some thought to how they fit in with the use I would put them to, and how they fit in with those tasks.

On one side we have the Hasselblad, fixed rear screen weather sealed and only a leaf shutter.  The Hasselblad was announced and nearly released at the same time as the Fuji, but delay after delay hit them and the firmware was very buggy.

For outdoor use its a good solid camera but it excels when shooting fashion outdoors mixing studio and daylight with great creative options due to the leaf shutters built into each lens.

Fuji are less well thought off when it comes to medium format but they have a long history of producing well designed medium format; not only that, but Fuji built the built the Hasselblad X-Pan panoramic for Hasselblad.

The Fuji with its tilting rear screen, weather sealing and focal plane shutter is not quite as flexible in mixed lighting conditions but is possibly superior for landscape use.  With the focal plane shutter you can also use other lens with the Fuji.  It also has the advantage of the removable EVF which hopefully will get upgrades.

As an alternative there is also the Leica S.  An SLR styled camera with weather sealing and a focal plane shutter, but the lens are available in two versions one without a shutter and one with a leaf shutter, thus if you need a leaf shutter lens its available to you.

What would I choose, well if money was no option the Leica is the most tempting with its flexibility.  The newer Hasselblad and Fuji have the advantages of newer higher resolution sensors and they are also cheaper then the Leica.  So out of these two I would say my heart says Hasselblad but my mind says Fuji.  At the moment the Fuji is the better camera, better hardware and firmware.

Today was the annual Lincoln Photography Show run by London Camera Exchange. The major players were all there, Nikon, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, Fuji, as well as some of the bigger accessory companies.

Fuji had their Medium Format camera which I like, I also played with latest version of the Fuji X100, I camera I really want to like but I don’t know if its my imagination but the current version seems to have a very poor optical viewfinder and I would not pay the kind of money they are asking for it.

Sony keep charging forward, and while they have many good cameras there always seems to be either an issue or a replacement coming along.

Olympus and Panasonic both have strong lineups and Olympus have really rounded out their professional lens now.

A fun event and I enjoyed the seminars.

The most impressive camera was the new Nikon D850. My D800 is a real high end heavy hitter and when the D810 came out I could not see enough of an improvement but the D850 feels like a small Nikon D5, its a real top of the line pro model.

The price of the D850 is an issue for that kind of money its now worth considering a mirrorless system, you could get an Olympus and all the pro lens for the price of a D850 and a few pro Nikon lens.

We have the TL without a viewfinder, and I was disappointed when its replacement the TL2 also lacked a viewfinder.

The Leica Q shows what Leica can do in a small body and a L mount version of that is what people want.

Well from photographs leaked on the web this week it looks like we finally have what we want coming.

The Sony A7R Mark III has finally been released.

I have tried several Sony mirrorless cameras.  Starting with the Sony NEX 7, a very good camera but one that I just could not get along with, then I tried the first A7, now this was a fantastic camera but the shutter was terrible and you could easily suffer with camera shake.  The menus were also terrible.  Sony fixed the shutter in subsequent models and also stole the menu system from the Sony SLR series so correcting that.

From the Mark II onwards the Sony has been a hard act to follow, the downside has always been the shortage of really good lens and the fact that paired with good glass, the mirrorless Sony really did not offer any advantages over other systems.  Good glass at 35mm full frame that can autofocus is never going to be small.  In that regard I feel Leica made the better decision with the mirrorless SL and making it larger.  If your after small I think its hard to fault the Olympus MicroFourThirds cameras.

There are still rumours flying that Leica are to release a new camera with the L mount and a new lens.

The camera is rumoured to be a DX format camera to partner the TL2, hopefully with an EVF this time, the lens a will also be a DX crop format to go with it but no news as to its focal length.

 

I see the special edition Leica 50mm Summicron is now for sale.  I have the Summilux which as you can see above produces a lovely image.  There are two versions of the Summicron, the standard none APO which is very affordable for a Leica lens and the APO version which if you have £6000 will leave you change for a few nice coffees.

This special edition wraps the lens in the old metal classic design with red trim and costs over £8000.  A lot to pay for a 50mm lens no matter how good.

We have had the Summaron and now Leica have released their second classic lens, the Leica Thambar.  Similar to the Nikon 135mm DC this lens has a distinctive softness which useful for portraits.  I am quite tempted by the Summaron a 28mm with a strong vignette, but I would find it hard to justify the cost of the Thumbar.