OK, so after a very long day of walking and shooting in Philly yesterday, this camera won me over. I have the 24 and 35mm lenses. Yesterday, I took both, as well as a GX7 with the 7-14 and the Nikon A and I never took anything out of the bag but the Df with the 24mm firmly attached. So, some additional impressions:
* First, speaking of having the lens firmly attached, the Nikon lenses turn the wrong way! I guess there's no right or wrong, but every Olympus and Panasonic and Fuji and Sony lens I've used over the past few years (and if I've tried any other brands I'm forgetting, those too!) turns clockwise to mount (looking at the front of the camera) and counter clockwise to remove. Nikon does it the other way. I've had a couple of unsuccessful wrestling matches with the lenses to learn this lesson...
* These "D" lenses aren't quite as brilliant as the thoroughly magical Zeiss on the RX1 (which Luke contends is made from magic Unicorn dust), but if they're the weak point, I'm fine with 'em. And they're the right size and price. Jeez, I could but five primes ranging from 20-85mm for under $1500. One of the advantages of a brand with such a deep background of lenses.
* I inadvertently shot a ton of jpegs yesterday - I created a second custom bank of shooting settings for higher minimum shutter speeds and ISO settings, but I forgot to switch the files to raw in that one. So I shot almost the whole day in that bank of settings until I realized I was shooting jpeg. All with whatever the default settings are. And they're absolutely phenomenal. I'll be shooting raw going forward, but it's nice to know the jpegs are this good. Even very very high ISO shots with default NR applied was very workable and only showed minimal artifacts and you had to look CLOSE to see 'em.
* One thing I NEVER EVER EVER imagined myself doing with a DSLR was street photography. Yesterday I did a ton of street photography with the Df. And it was a thoroughly pleasant shooting experience. The controls are perfect for it - switch between manual and auto focus with the flick of a switch down near the lens ring and then turn the ring to the distance scale ON the ring. Roughly as nice as the m43 bodies with the Olympus 12 or 14mm lenses, the only difference being it doesn't remember the last MF distance so you have to set it each time you switch, but that's about a quarter of a second to do. And the camera feels about the same size as the Fuji X-Pro other than the pentaprism hump, and I used to shoot on the street with the X-Pro all the time. All that and Nikon's utterly brilliant auto-ISO setup makes for a great shooting experience. The shutter isn't silent, but it's about as unobtrusive as any shutter I've used other than a leaf shutter. I'll still likely take the Nikon A if I'm just going out for some dedicated street shooting, but I'll never hesitate to use the Df for street work if I've got it and the ultimate in quiet isn't a big deal (which it rarely is on the streets of Philly).
* For the mix of shooting I was doing yesterday, I was even OK with the exposure comp dial where it was. I'm moving the camera between my eye and belly a lot and street shooting is where I use exposure comp the most anyway. And it became something reasonably close to second nature to adjust on the fly. And now that Dan showed me how to get the aperture ring on the lens to work, I don't have to go to the control dials to do much of anything. Which is great.
OK, some photographs (more on Flickr). And yeah they're processed as mine tend to be. But far from that being a waste of such a great sensor, the files from this sensor hold up better under my processing than many many files. So it's an advantage whether you like 'em clean or dirty:
Philly Df-74-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
Philly Df-280-Edit-3 by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
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Philly Df-212-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
Just people walking down the street, but I found their expressions interesting enough to keep:
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Philly Df-139-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
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Philly Df-41-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
One of the rare homeless shots I keep - I find the interaction (and lack thereof) pretty compelling:
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Philly Df-118-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
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Philly Df-205-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
Someone else's art - I just liked it enough to copy it shamelessly:
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Philly Df-271-Edit by
ramboorider1, on Flickr
-Ray