Personal gear review

:rofl: Yes, it is.

However, it is the duty of the old (and buggered!) like me, to pass on what little wisdom we have gained, so that the young can make different mistakes from the ones my generation made ...
I appreciate the efforts. Anyway, not wanting to turn this thread into a "personal life review" one I did prearrive to the conclusion to sort my living situation first before writing my tongue-in-cheek post. I never did let my unproductive hobby entirely dictate where I lived or what I did for my living, but it surely has been a big factor, being the pastime I'm passionate about and all. I would probably summarize my fork in the road situation in a new thread if I thought it would be entertaining, insightful or useful. But I think such a thread would lie outside the comfort zones of this photography/gear community...
 
LOL . . . Mike's right. I hang out on a bicycle forum where a lot of folk are into building custom bikes and restoring vintage frames. Having built a few bikes myself, I learned early on that having a bicycle gear obsession is a rabbit hole all unto itself. And that's on top of my other obsession, building stringed instruments.

Drums fingers impatiently as he waits for several shipments of bicycle parts to arrive.
 
Try running a Jeep off-road on a regular basis.
Ha, I did that for a lot of years...built a Jeep and a website dedicated to fourwheeling and after many years I sold them both. One thing I learned from fourwheeling is to save up and buy the good quality stuff rather than try to save money at the beginning. On the other hand, I also saw that a lot of people spent too much money building up their 4x4s but ended up not needing the resulting abilities and also making them less reliable/useful for how they were actually being used (ie: camping, commuting).
 
It's actually quite relieved to hear that I'm not the only one struggling with motivation for photography or anything else as a matter of fact. I've forced myself to go taking photos, or do gardening or even just a walk around the block. Covid and working from home all the time has been surprisingly challenging.

But coming back to photography, I was able to take long five weeks vacation on Summer and found situations where I was enjoying taking photos. And finally this month I made a batch scan of old photos from my grandparent's albums. And realised what a joy those gave to my mother, uncles, cousins and their children and my children to watch them together, remembering already departed and wondering how different life was.

So I'm motivated again to record just ordinary things around thinking some day my shots can be valuable 'time machine' for someone.
 
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Ha, I did that for a lot of years...built a Jeep and a website dedicated to fourwheeling and after many years I sold them both. One thing I learned from fourwheeling is to save up and buy the good quality stuff rather than try to save money at the beginning. On the other hand, I also saw that a lot of people spent too much money building up their 4x4s but ended up not needing the resulting abilities and also making them less reliable/useful for how they were actually being used (ie: camping, commuting).
I was lucky in having good friends who owned a really good offroad shop. They helped me pick out exactly what I needed for how I was running my Jeep. But you're spot on about people blowing money on stuff they don't need, can't use, or builds with the components which don't work well together.
 
I've reached a nice "spot" with my Nikons.
The Z5 has really been all around great.
I just picked up the 35 F1.8 to add to the 50 and 85. Excellent lenses.
I have a Z50 and 16-50(again).
A great compact and backup.
The 16-50!
The Z50 handles the 35-50-85 very well.
I'm liking a recent Samyang 14 addition.

I haven't had confession lately. Thanks for listening.
 
LOL . . . Mike's right. I hang out on a bicycle forum where a lot of folk are into building custom bikes and restoring vintage frames. Having built a few bikes myself, I learned early on that having a bicycle gear obsession is a rabbit hole all unto itself. And that's on top of my other obsession, building stringed instruments.

Drums fingers impatiently as he waits for several shipments of bicycle parts to arrive.
Stringed bicycle parts with IBIS.
 
I think I'm going to be needing a new camera - or, rather, my wife is, because her GF7 with 12-32mm lens went missing after a short trip. She is 99% sure it was left in the hotel room, however we might be dealing with a dishonest hotel employee (her friend booked the hotel and it was awful), because there is no sign of it. We had hoped that it would turn up in her friend's stuff, but such hasn't been the case.

Of course, losing a camera is always terrible, but it was an aging camera with a cheap lens. The bad part is that she's not the best at backing up her SD card (or I'm not the best at reminding her to, she's not as much of a photographer as I am) and had some shots she will miss. It's frustrating, especially to her.

Browsing cameras that are close to what she has, GF7's are rare now, but GX850/GF10 models are pretty affordable.
 
I think I'm going to be needing a new camera - or, rather, my wife is, because her GF7 with 12-32mm lens went missing after a short trip. She is 99% sure it was left in the hotel room, however we might be dealing with a dishonest hotel employee (her friend booked the hotel and it was awful), because there is no sign of it. We had hoped that it would turn up in her friend's stuff, but such hasn't been the case.

Of course, losing a camera is always terrible, but it was an aging camera with a cheap lens. The bad part is that she's not the best at backing up her SD card (or I'm not the best at reminding her to, she's not as much of a photographer as I am) and had some shots she will miss. It's frustrating, especially to her.

Browsing cameras that are close to what she has, GF7's are rare now, but GX850/GF10 models are pretty affordable.
Maybe the new EP7? I'm sure we all empathize with your wife.
 
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The EP7 is tempting but she has years of muscle memory with the GF7, and the Panasonic-to-Olympus switch might be a bit of a headache. I had thought about some of the latter EPL bodies as well. We could always try one out.
 
Looking through my images from the last two family trips to North Myrtle Beach had me decide to move back to the 16mm 1.4 from the 2.8 Fujicron. Both are excellent lenses. The deciding factor was, while looking at the images from each set side by side, I could see that the stuff from the 16 1.4 was better. That is not saying that the images from the 2.8 were bad. Quite the contrary, they were great in my opinion. But the 1.4 edged them out.

With that said, the same comparison made a good case for acquiring a 35mm 1.4. Actually, it also made a good case for grabbing a X-E3 as well. Back to the 35mm. This is where Fuji gives me a slight frustration. Would it be that hard to add a weather sealing ring to the 35 1.4 and make it a WR lens? No other changes, just WR. Having a 35mm f2, I have a WR 35mm. So adding a 1.4 variant wouldn't be financially terrible on the used market. But it would be nice to have just one 35mm lens.
 
My µ4/3 setup is now manageable and lean.
  • GX85
  • 12-32, slow
  • 35-100, slow
  • 75-300, slow
  • 20, fast
  • 42.5, fast
All told, 927 € in lenses and 256 € in body.

The only bit of fat is the 42.5 that I was planning on selling too, but I think I'll keep it over winter since it garnered no interest when I had it listed for a while this summer.

The slow zooms were all so reasonably priced I really like having them and see no reason to sell them. The 42.5 would be the most expensive piece of gear here but that's okay.

The only M4/3 body that interests me ahead of GX85 would be the G85. If one surfaces for sale at 250 € or less, I'm seriously considering it even though I have very little use for another body.



I would wish Panasonic released an EVF-less version of GX85 or GX9, that is, with IBIS and stuff close to a GX880 form factor.

But frankly even the GX85 fits in a jacket pocket with the P20 or P12-32 so I have a relatively lightweight and compact walkaround camera for those walks when I am not expecting to photograph. My "Ricoh GR" alternative right here.

And if they ever take the 20mm and fit it with a fast focusing motor, well then, I might be interested.

But right now I happily accept that M4/3 will never be my #1 main system and I let my gear reflect that.
 
Looking back over my recent work, I've noticed (well, to be accurate, I noticed it awhile back but have thought about it more recently) how often my compositions have started being portrait orientation rather than landscape, which is still sort of the default framing for most people. Now, I like both orientations, and I often look at photos made in landscape and wonder how they'd look taken in portrait. Compositionally portrait offers a completely different challenge a lot of the time, since vertical elements are usually of a different nature than horizontal ones. Horizontally, you're often looking at more of the same, while vertically you often have very different elements playing against one another (sky vs. ground, foreground vs. background, focal plane which has a bit more separation, especially between close foreground elements - where DoF is shallower - and middle-to-background). I think that's a big part of the reason why portrait orientation can deliver more dynamic photos sometimes. Also, you can find the "end-points" of things more easily, be they trees, people, buildings, etc. The terminal "roots and branches" of things.

Anyway, while I've discovered those features of shooting in portrait, that wasn't necessarily intentional going into things. No, the reason I think I was shooting portrait orientation was different: simply that I've been using the 28mm of the Ricoh GRIII more than other cameras. Because it's wide, shooting portrait is a primary way of "snipping" the subject from too much surrounding context. Another way in which limitations help, as they got me to behave more creatively as I was being forced to deal with more vertical space and find ways to include that stuff.

Now, I could have simply changed the aspect ratio to 1:1, but I have always felt a bit awkward shooting (or even cropping) in square. It's just hard for me to think in those terms, all the great medium format square work notwithstanding.

The underlying accompanying GAS thought to go with this observation (isn't there always something) is... you guessed it, the GR IIIx would make a nice difference by having a tighter, 40mm, lens.
 
Looking back over my recent work, I've noticed (well, to be accurate, I noticed it awhile back but have thought about it more recently) how often my compositions have started being portrait orientation rather than landscape, which is still sort of the default framing for most people. Now, I like both orientations, and I often look at photos made in landscape and wonder how they'd look taken in portrait. Compositionally portrait offers a completely different challenge a lot of the time, since vertical elements are usually of a different nature than horizontal ones. Horizontally, you're often looking at more of the same, while vertically you often have very different elements playing against one another (sky vs. ground, foreground vs. background, focal plane which has a bit more separation, especially between close foreground elements - where DoF is shallower - and middle-to-background). I think that's a big part of the reason why portrait orientation can deliver more dynamic photos sometimes. Also, you can find the "end-points" of things more easily, be they trees, people, buildings, etc. The terminal "roots and branches" of things.

Anyway, while I've discovered those features of shooting in portrait, that wasn't necessarily intentional going into things. No, the reason I think I was shooting portrait orientation was different: simply that I've been using the 28mm of the Ricoh GRIII more than other cameras. Because it's wide, shooting portrait is a primary way of "snipping" the subject from too much surrounding context. Another way in which limitations help, as they got me to behave more creatively as I was being forced to deal with more vertical space and find ways to include that stuff.

Now, I could have simply changed the aspect ratio to 1:1, but I have always felt a bit awkward shooting (or even cropping) in square. It's just hard for me to think in those terms, all the great medium format square work notwithstanding.

The underlying accompanying GAS thought to go with this observation (isn't there always something) is... you guessed it, the GR IIIx would make a nice difference by having a tighter, 40mm, lens.
I found this really interesting. Because I shoot in portrait orientation all the time. It’s a normal part of my shooting. Due to me shooting people shots a lot. Because shooting portrait orientation is so normal for me. It never occurred to me that this isn’t the norm for most.

For shooting squares, I love to set up the camera to shoot 1:1 B&W, in raw+jpg. Usually with a 16mm or 23mm lens. You can only see the B&W square and don’t know what the raw image holds till you see it on the computer.

And high five for slipping gear into the end.
 
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