Re: Take some amazing photos and post them here
Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:48 pm
Suffocate Peon wrote:Green Gecko wrote:I like compact rangefinder styles because they are simple and good ones you can go full manual. Anything else I just go SLR. I don't care about zoom. I just walk up to gooseberry fool.
My pair is still a LUMIX/Leica LX3 and Nikon D80 with vintage manually focusing Nikkor lenses. And a manfrotto tripod. I don't have a need for anything else. The megapixels are still a total non issue even with high resolution screens. The sensors are fantastic. (The lx3 is still stunning at 200iso and really wide and bright.)
I don't really like bridge cameras, I find them kind of cheesy. The massive zoom just feels like a waste of space, weight and optical sharpness. If I had the money I'd by interested in a micro 4/3rds. Actually I had the opportunity to just literally walk off with a Sony NEX when they were brand new in Kansai international airport (I found it in the toilet), but of course I handed it in.
Depends what you want...I couldn't have got 70% of what I have without a bridge camera because i can't lug around the gear or really afford it, and it wouldn't be fun. I get why they're cheesy. To have the ease to use a zoom is incredible to me. The first time it was such a sensation. Koci Hernandez using his iphone says 'zoom with your feet'. I've got a lot from the hip but zoomed in candid face shots i'm obviously not going to get that way. I was doing focussed photos before 2012, but i mainly see it beginning for me then, and i think doing a lot and being absorbed by it fully is something else. 2012 feels like a lifetime ago. I took it out to the canal and took some shots of swans and couldn't believe the autofocus. A camera is like a superpower. Making pictures from life happening randomly is such a kick.
The LX3 is the predecessor to the LX7? That series? I have the LX7, it's great. It was between that or an Olympus, but chose the LX7 because being Panasonic i knew it. I don't know how many compacts have multiple exposure, but it's buried in the third menu or something on the LX7, used that a lot. Think the Olympus had an articulated screen and i thought, do I really need that. By now i should be able to compose blind by the hip, I don't really want to use my bridge camera and look down. My favourite LX7 moment was a man smoking that I got from straight below. The light was rubbish to do a high contrast but behind him was a glass building. It was just as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth, he's dead central.
I had a NEX5. It looked cool but it had a mechanical shutter. Obviously I didn't search well, or at all. I knew i wanted to be discreet in the street. Sold it on ebay.
Yeah the LX3 I think was the first that really characterised that line of cameras. I've seen the lx4 since then (minor upgrade to 3x zoom and AVHC video and a 1:1 ratio switch, which they added to mine via firmware). The lx7 I think I've seen in an airport but just too expensive for what I already have.
I'll probably wait for the viewfinder and fisheye lenses and filters to become affordable second hand and upgrade the lx3 with new stuff to play with that way. The fact it has an attachment ring is cool for a compact.
I don't really shoot from the hip. I know it's good practice especially for candid shots but I usually shoot wide anyway and I think if we see things with our eyes that is where photos make sense to come from. Obviously I do low angle stuff, the screen is perfectly good to judge and you can trust the autofocus 90% of the time. A good one is the high speed large area mode. It shoots everything really fast. Use a normal aperture and it'll get most things.
I totally get what you mean about zoom. I prefer portrait lenses. But anyway, what I mean more is the aesthetic of the camera and the feel. I just find them weird to use and feel. I like to have freedom of movement, and light weight, diddly but fast controls, or just all the stuff. I don't mean cheesy in the sense it's cheap. A good zoom lens is a marvel to play with (although I prefer the quick action of an SLR much more). You do lose some optical sharpness and I won't touch digital zoom, I just really dislike artifacts. I'll deal with noise as you can style that out but compression, no.
In fairness, I almost never take my SLR out, even indoors. I'll take it to an official shoot or documentation but that's about it. I know the LX3 so well, and along with its creative options like essentially filters, black and white etc, it's a really really useful camera, very filmic, and in the spirit it is designed like a rangefinder, I'm really very pleased with it.
Originally it was between that and a canon s90, I think I wrote about it in this thread in 2010 maybe! I was due to go to Japan but didn't actually go until a year later, so I took a lot of photos in France with my mates that I will treasure, and most of my degree (studio etc).
I picked it up for about 230 quid or something on eBay in a box. The screen was a bit strawberry floated, so I polished the gooseberry fool out of it and stuck some GGS glass on top. I never think about it now. I now use it to document and promote my workshop output every day. It just sits there all the time.
It's really great having a very decent camera that isn't a pain to use. And I still get nice comments on it and people playing with it, thinking it is a film camera lol. I have it in a faux leather case with white stitching that's falling apart. It's a very strange camera that most people don't see so hey it's a talking point.