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I finally switched to Sony

It was only 2 weeks after Olympus announced that they are going to sell their camera business, I finally had the reason to switch to Sony, an idea I was contemplating about for quite a while. Only some months before this announcement Olympus released the successor of the legendary OM-D E-M1 mk2, which I own and consider as the best mirrorless camera that has been around for some years. The successor had rather disappointing specs, there was hardly and hardware upgrades (e.g. still same sensor sensor) and mostly gimmicky software features and the capability of shooting high-res pictures free-hand. None of which I was interested about. I wanted to benefit from the most recent achievements in image sensor design, lower noise and maybe the capability of writing 14-bit RAW files (VS 12-bit currently).

Now, on top of that, hearing that Olympus’ camera business is going to shift down some gears or maybe even close down depending on the kind of investor they will find I knew that Olympus is going to be a dead-end for me. But to be honest, it’s really sad, because I was always fascinated about the tech only Olympus provided among all the other camera manufacturers, such as ” Live Bulb/ Time”  or “Live Composite” and the ruggedness of their camera bodies, Sony is going to have a long way to catch up with that…

To make the story short: immediately after hearing about the news I looked for used Sony gear and got myself an Sony A7mk3 with the “holy trinity” lens setup (see photo):

  • Sony FE G-master 16-35mm f/2.8
  • Sony FE G-master 24-70mm f/2.8
  • Sony FE 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 G OSS
My new camera system

 

So far I’m still quite happy with the Sony system, although it was inevitable to gain some weight in my camera bag, but at least I finally have a sensor which is 4x the area and I’m going to have less pain in post-processing when I’ve to go down some rabbit holes to make the visible noise less noticeable in available light photos or photos which required stretching the histogram really hard. The configurability of the Sony camera is also quite nice. The only thing which still bothers me a lot is not having the option to see both the spirit level as well as the histogram at the same time in live-view. My girlfriend recently bought a cheap entry-level MFT Panasonic camera and this very setting is the default setting in this camera. Why can’t a professional line FF Sony camera have this?

In the meantime I’m glad that Nikon and Canon caught up with their mirrorless cameras too, which should create more competition and more competition is always worth to drive innovation 😉

Landschaftsfotografie podcast about previous biggest mistakes and lessons learned

50. Landschaftsfotografie Podcast

Some weeks ago Alex (Homepage) featured me and our buddy Jonas Piontek (Instagram / Facebook) in an episode where we would talk about our biggest fails or mistakes in photography and what we learned along the way. Most of the time we screwed up we even have been on a photography trip together which made the retrospective more fun.

It’s a quite spontaneous and less scripted fun episode Alex wanted to have for the 50th anniversary of his “Landschaftsfotografie Podcast”.
There is only one caveat: Unfortunately the episode is in German language.

Enjoy the show 😉

50 Folgen Landschaftsfotografie Podcast – Jubiläum mit Jonas Piontek und Philipp Lutz

 

Sirui tripod repairs – part 3

This is a continuation of my ” Sirui tripod repairs” series:

After being happy with my Sirui  M-3204X tripod for a little bit over a year after the last incident (block sliding of leg sements) I faced another issue which had to do with blocked sliding, this time the culprit was the middle column, which was not sliding smoothly anymore.

In the following pictures you can see how a screw is looking out of its hole and the sliding notch clearly took some damage already.

It took me a couple of weeks until the Sirui Germany support responded to my e-Mail asking for repairs. After I finally got an answer, I got offered a new middle column, because the current one was beyond repair.

Once again I was surprised that the service offered me free repairs for a tripod which is almost 7 years old and discontinued. Sirui tripods might not be the most sturdy (only compared with the very expensive competitors like Gitzo), but at least you’ll always get treated with free repairs. So I’m still happy with my Sirui, as it’s still fine for my usage as a hobby photographer, it might be different for a professional though.

Calendar 2020

Surprise surprise, there will be a calendar for next year again!
If you are interested and have not yet a new wall calendar for next year or you’re already looking for Christmas gifts go ahead and drop me a message below or write me an e-Mail at kontakt@philipp-lutz.net.
 
It’s a matte print on premium paper in A3 format.
 
It will be 20€ for the calendar + 4€ shipping (DE). If you live outside of Germany just ask me for the shipping costs.

 

New gallery “Concrete Jungles of Tokyo” is up

Some time ago I was browsing my images from my last trip to Tokyo during Winter of 2015.
While browsing I discovered many unedited pictures and decided to make a series out of them because they all follow a consistent theme and unlike my previous modern architecture photos they are in colour. Please have a look at the Concrete Jungles of Tokyo – Gallery.

And here I give you a little teaser: