After saying in the last post that I was trying to post every week, I've failed yet again :o). With the house renovation taking even more of my time, I have less and less time to get out to take pictures; as can unfortunately be seen by the missing blog entries for the past two weeks. This will also more than likely be the case next week too. I have to set priorities and at the moment these need to be with the renovation.
Nevertheless something has changed as you may have seen from a recent Instagram post.
I decided to finally sell all of my Olympus gear (it is still ongoing at the time of writing this on Ricardo.ch but there is only the 12-40mm lens and the camera left), and put all of the money from that into a GFX-50s.
My field of interest is nature photography, which can in my case be easily be split into two main genres, Wildlife and Landscape. My Sony gear is a more than capable tool for both of these genres, so you may be asking yourself why I decided to buy the GFX-50s.
In short; gut feeling.
When I left the Fujifilm event, I had no intention of buying one. I loved the amount of detail and as I mentioned in a previous post I did consider an A7r mk3. By using the pixel shift function I theorised that I could potentially achieve similar results, it would round off the Sony gear I have already, and I could use the same lenses across all cameras/tools. But as I also wrote, there is something special about the images that come out of the GFX-50s, and this is what has niggled at the back of my mind since leaving the event, and just wouldn't let go.
You could argue that this amount of detail is irrelevant in an age where everything is shared via social media and viewed on a screen. In this situation, you would barely be able to tell the difference between Sony, Fuji, or any other brand for that matter. But it's not just about social media and screens.
There is something else, and it is something that I have gone into before. It's not about the gear, or rather it's not about how good, how much better, or how expensive the gear is. It's about how you interact with the gear, how you feel while you're using it and how it fits your style. I admit that this particular camera is not in an average price bracket, and I am very fortunate to be in a position to have one, but if we take this part out of the equation, there is something about it that speaks to me, fits, and feels very natural to use, and this is the point. This is not a Fujifilm thing, I have tried other Fujifilm cameras and they didn't work for me.
When I moved from the Nikon D5200 to the Sony A7, I wasn't technically ready for a change. I hadn't learnt half of what I could have from the Nikon, and I think that the Sony was a level beyond where I was at the time. But that move triggered a change, I felt that I was more focused on learning, I improved faster, and there was a possible change in style too.
I feel the same way with the GFX-50s. There is something about it that fits to me and something about the images that come out of it that appeals to me. There also appears to be something that is widening my style.
Unfortunately since buying the camera the house renovation has got in the way and I haven't had a chance to get out and take time with it! I've tried to take advantage of the few short opportunities while at the house, and while walking to work. So the images included today are from these times.
The other four images in this post are all from the roof of the renovation project. My lack of time is forcing me to widen my perspectives, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The structure in the wooden beams and the pegs is fascinating as is the door of the smoking cupboard. It's no longer connected to the chimney, but has to stay in the room.