I’ve been wanting a decent water housing for a while. It’s a symptom of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), once you have everything you want, you find more things to want. In my case, one of the areas I play in is kitesurfing, and whilst to 100-400 is great to take photos from a distance, the option of a waterproof housing gives you a complete different perspective. As opposed to a horizontal view, you get a vertical view looking up or photos from the water looking back at the beach. My housing requirements aren’t the heavy duty scuba diving ones, mine will be mainly surface based.
Unfortunately the wind hasn’t been playing along lately so I haven’t been able to take many action photos to date, but I will update this as I go along.
This is one of the photography youtube highlights of the year: TheCameraStoreTV Best and Worst. You can check it out here on youtube.
It’s as usual a very enterning and informative video, so make sure to watch it all. This year they ask also other popular youtuber, what was their favorite/worst gear of the year, and include them into their video.
For those of you, who are on the run now and have no time to watch the video, here are the winners.
Best camera of 2017:
Nikon D850 – and they also add it’s probably the last time a DSLR will win the best camera award. Seems like mirrorless is the future.
Sony A7RIII – Tony Northrup declared this his Nr.1 camera
Best Trends of 2017 such as quality equipment from China (Laowa lenses, Drones etc), jack of all trades cameras and more. Ted Forbes considers the MF trend set by Fujifilm also a hot trend.
The Worst Camera is the Leica CL, and Jordan says “why not grab a Fujifilm X-E3 for a 1/3 the price?”
And I had a hard time recently to decide between the Fujifilm X100F and the Fujifilm X-E3. I went for the X-E3 and added the 27mm to it, trying to emulate the compactness of the X100F.
But still I miss the leaf shutter, the hybrid viewfinder, the build in ND-filter, the combined ISO/Shutter dial and last but not least, the incredibly sexy look of the X100F. And with WCL-X100 and TCL-X100 the X100F is a flexible mini-system that would cover most of my photographic needs.
The Fujifilm X100F follows the philosophy: limitation is liberation, or less is more.
So let there be another X100F zone today…. while I’m driving home from Prague in the night, on roads white of snow. What a fun drive :)
Fixed Prime Lens: Limitation and Liberation at aths
I’m packing. I’m leaving. A long car ride all to way to Prague is waiting for me.
But before I leave, here is a blog post about why I bought the X-E3, XF27mm and XF10-24, as well as some initial feedback… sadly also something negative amongst it.
UPDATE: Jonas Rask in the comments: “Converted from RAW. No crop, no vignettecorrection. They obviously tested a faulty lens. The lens I tested back in september had close to zero vignette, if any.”
Lenstip just published theri full review of the XF80mm Macro lens.
It is a lens with a long list of Pro’s and only 1 negative point. Usually Lenstip would assign the “Editor’s Choice” badge, but they consider the vignetting issue a “serious flaw”, hence no “editor’s choice”.
Let us know in the comments what your experience with the XF80mm is.
“The Fujinon XF 80 mm f/2.8 LM OIS WR Macro is a very sharp lens with an excellent autofocus unit and very efficient image stabilization. In experienced hands it will perform admirably, never letting its owner down.
With such significant dimensions of the lens, I think its huge vignetting level is a serious flaw. There were also several issues which don’t exactly fit the list of cons but they spoilt the overall image nevertheless. The lens should have had a smaller resolution difference between the centre and the edge of the frame (a typical and desirable effect in the case of a macro device) and performed against bright light a tad better.”
