That Certain Something

When it comes to shooting with a Leica, there was always that particular something with the snaps. That almost magical separation of background and foreground was just difficult to describe. People called this bokeh, but with a Leica lens, there is an ethereal quality to that.

Modern cameras and smartphones had algorithms to recreate this, but it almost looked fake. Nothing could replace the real thing. And having an afternoon in town with Leica rangefinder and a summilux lens gives you that great buzz.

Despite been using my medium format in the last few outings, I returned to the rangefinder set up on the previous few outings. I must say that the experience was completely different since I bought an electronic viewfinder - the EVF-2. It gave a different dimension to my snaps, allowing me to not worry about focusing since my eyesight is not perfect.

The electronic viewfinder also allowed me to be in control with the depth of field, the exposure and the white balance. Before this, I tended to bracket my shots at different exposure compensation since the camera tended to underexpose. Not anymore with my new setup. I was able to get better snaps, and the setup time was also sorter and the snaps more controlled.

All in all, I can never go back to the rangefinder without the viewfinder attached. It was not just for the focusing, but to get more control of the snaps. And for those who wanted to invest in one, it was well worth the upgrade ...

The Tenth Note

The new Note 10+ is definitely an upgrade to the Note 9 in terms of functionality and utilisation of the note-keeping which I use every day at work. It forms an integral part of my daily work, and with the new version, there certainly beefed up the note-taking feature. I am pretty happy about that.

It also came in a slicker package, and the battery lasted longer than before. However, unlocking the device was a nightmare. With the old Note 8 and 9, I just disable the fingerprint reader and keep the unit unlocked. For the new version, you still needed to slide the screen up, and I depended on the “smart unlock” feature to enable the unit. Often, I was prompted to use my thumb and using it, the screen was just so slow. Both the Huawei P30 Pro and OnePlus 7 Pro did a much better job with their onscreen thumbprint recognition.

But for the blog, I am more interested in the camera. Note 9 had a decent enough camera for me to use to take photos for my blog. So, I took the new camera for a spin.

The wide-angle camera is a welcomed feature. Video recording was on par with the iPhone. But the computational photography was moving towards what Huawei was doing - too much modification to the snaps, ending up being unnatural. The captures looked pixelated on scrutiny and the HDR photos, especially when captured in broad daylight were hideous! The captures also appear to be more contrasty to Note 9, but unfortunately in a bad way. I prefer the softer colours and resolution of Note 9.

I ended up disabling it, and for indoor photos, I actually used the night mode. Luckily, unlike the OnePlus, night mode allowed the use of the wide-angle lens. And the captures looked more natural, with the artefacts pretty much been eliminated. There was minimal capture lag, and most of the time, I got the shots I wanted. Autofocus was snappy.

For the video, the 4K videos looked decent, although I pretty much used my preferred option - 1080p at 60 fps. Has not had the time to post any videos on YouTube as yet. Maybe I will do that later in the week.

A worthy upgrade from my work point of view, but the camera has its quirk. Maybe over time, I will figure out ways to get consistent photos from it.

The New GR

I have always been a fan of the Ricoh GR series of camera. Unfortunately, they are on the fragile side - or at least when left in my hands. The first GR II suffered a malfunction on the lens mount after 3 years. So I bought a second unit.

Last a couple of Ramadhan back, I accidentally dropped the camera, damaging the kens cover. I was not able to completely close the lens, exposing the lens glasses to the elements. So, I could not take it out much longer. Then came the announcement that Ricoh would be launching a mark III of the Digital GR. 

The new update retained much of the old specs, with sensible improvements. It also shrunk in size, making the already small GR II even smaller, despite retaining the APS-C size sensor. But now, the resolution is bumped up to 24 MP. The lens also had some improvement, reportedly sharper. And now, it has a sensor-based image stabilising system. The lens remains 28mm equivalent with a maximum aperture of f2.8.

That however meant battery life suffered - hence the need for an extra battery pack, which I bought as part of the package. The new iteration also dd away with the built-in flash. This was a shame since I used plenty of them before for fill-ins.

I had only managed to use the camera twice so far, still undecided if processing the RAW file would be worth the hassle. The camera definitely is capable of capturing amazing images despite the tiny package. It needed getting used to as I tended to put it near my face expecting it to have a viewfinder. 

The colours seemed to be muted on the RAW captures, needing plenty of tweaking. Using Lightroom, the jpeg photos really have the richness which the RAW files appear to be missing. 

More experimentation and hopefully some chance to take the camera out in the next few days ...

GFX Blue Hour

Reading the forums, plenty of people were lamenting the fact that medium format photography exaggerates the flaws in your photography technique.  Plenty suggesting that street photography was a no no! But I went the other way. Since acquiring the GFX 50R, 90% of my shooting had been handheld in the streets.

There were a couple of occasions where the tripod was used - the shoot at KLCC and Masjid Jamek to be exact. But the great majority of the time, I treated the beast just like my other setup, just point and click. 

Of course on occasions the snaps may be soft with movement artefacts from unsteady hands. But in the middle of the day, things were pretty straightforward. As long as I can get shutter speeds fast than 1/125 sec, I am pretty happy with what I had most of the time.

So, I took the GFX on a couple of occasions during blue hour and by taking things slowly, I managed to get decent shots. The relatively small size of the camera helped a lot I was sure. So was bumping up the ISO, accepting some degree of graining and noise. 

The main challenge I have at the moment was sorting out my technique when taking photos indoors. I don’t really fancy using a strobe system - never been good at that. Forums pointed out how good the GFX system were at still life and portrait of course, but doing those tend to take a lot of setup and effort. 

I am going to stick to what I normally do, and slowly expand first into low-light tripod-based photography, snapping landmarks around KL. So, plenty of things to explore in the coming months ...

The Dancing Fountain

Last weekend, as I brought Anita out to shop, I decided to take my camera along with a tripod. I just wanted to see how the GFX 50R performed in low lights. Does the sensor measure up?

The results were delightful. I could have scouted a better vantage point but the combination of being ill-prepared as well as time constraint meant that I had to improvise with what I had.

I brought along the GF 32-64 mm zoom and at the widest end, it was equivalent to 25 mm in full frame. That was clearly not wide enough. I had the 23 mm on order and won’t be available for another month. That would have made my life a lot simpler.

But despite that, I was able to capture the rich colours of the fountains and with some change of setting, able to get a clear photos while not losing the colours of the fountain. The camera and the tripod performed remarkably well. Disappointingly, when pointing upwards, I was not able to capture the full majesty of the Petronas Twin Tower as much as I liked!

In rainbow of colours

Just could not resist looking up …

When the wide-angle lens is available next month, I would definitely give the place another visit while taking a slightly different vantage point as well ...

A Wider Medium

After a few weeks of waiting, I finally got hold of the lens which was the reason why I bought the GFX system in the first place. The GF 23 mm f4. And this beauty translate to 18 mm in full frame speak - identical to the angles I got from the old 18mm f2.8 Zeiss Batis on my Alpha 7R. I have always loved wide angle street photography, and this lens just brought everything together.

As with the other lenses on the Fuji GFX line-up, sharpness was never an issue. But I was taken aback by the resolving power of this one. Rarely do I get to enjoy such sharpness on any wide-angle lens. This lens is exceptional in that department.

A lot of reviews were crying out for a faster aperture. But for me, f4 is a reasonable compromise. As it is, it was already hefty. Imagine the engineering needed should this come with a wider aperture? It might be twice its size and twice as heavy.

I only had a single opportunity to take this lens for a spin. Still learning it limitations while understanding which aspect which will make this lens shine. Stop it down to f11, and I was in dreamland - providing there is enough light ...

More photos to come on this lens in the future. The next couple of weeks would be a busy one but I will definitely be bringing it to Penang in a couple of weeks time when I have a short break planned ...

Low Light Class

Yes, I got my delivery early since I registered with the dealer. I got it a good month before it was available in the shops - well, it was still not available at the time I wrote this. It was Sony's new Alpha camera, the Alpha 7R mark II.

In body stabiliser with 42.2 MP full frame sensor. Couple that with a Leica lens, and the results thus far had been amazing.

The learning curve was straight forward as I was used to the system. Focus with the Leica lens was still as fiddly as usual, hence I would still prefer to walk around with my Leica M body. But with Sony's own FE lens, focusing was straight forward although the resolution exposed the weakness of the Sony zoom. So far, the FE 35mm Zeiss Distagon had been great.

I still have not had the time to really use the camera. I was hoping to do it during my recent Port Dickson trip but we ended up in the pool at the room instead.

On the only occasion I managed to take the camera out for a spin - on one of the evening around Suria KLCC - the low light performance had not been short of amazing. But attaching the Distagon made the system front heavy and unwieldy at times. The FE 28mm f2.0 had a better balance, although it struggled to cope with the demand of the 42.2 MP sensor.