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‹ Photo Notes · 12 listopadu, 2015
Leica has released a new camera and the arrival of the long-awaited Fujifilm model is finally in sight. And in photographic circles everything is boiling…
About half a year ago the new full-frame compact Leica Q (Typ 116) appeared on the market, and just these days another model is being launched, this time with interchangeable lenses, the Leica SL (Typ 601). The first costs over a hundred thousand, the second approaches two hundred, and with the recommended „basic“ zoom lens it’s around three hundred.
Check the price of the Leica Q at FotoŠkoda
The Leica SL brings some revolutionary parameters, but they concern mostly shooting comfort; in photo quality no revolution takes place. That is as usual good, perhaps again a tiny bit better than last time…
Leica fans are going wild and social networks in all languages are full of posts like „dear Jesus“ or „I need this„. That second exclamation can be translated in other words as „until now I have always been limited by something, once I get a new Leica I will finally shoot without limits and my photographs will be better – they deserve it„.
Check the price of the Leica SL at FotoŠkoda
They won’t. There are enough modern cameras on the market that long ago handle everything we can think of; the limit is in us. Moreover, in the era of digital technology, when every three years there is a leap in image quality, users will always feel they can go further, and with every new model they’ll tell themselves that „finally nothing will limit them„. A good photo doesn’t depend on a red logo or on the newest model, it is just a marketing attack on our consumer dependence. Even though all those little machines are beautiful and shoot brilliantly…
And what about Fuji?
In recent years Fujifilm has released several interesting new models. But all of them are characterized by practically the same image quality; the differences are in comfort, speed etc…
A revolution is promised by the new model Fujifilm X-Pro2. Its predecessor, the X-Pro1, saw the light of day in March 2012 and so far has had no direct successor. In the same quality class the Fujifilm models X-E1, X-E2, X-T1 and X-T10 continued.
No other Fujifilm model has been waited for so long; rumours about what the X-Pro2 will be like have been circulating on the internet for two, maybe three years…
Fujifilm has so far issued no official statement, but after many postponements this time the date seems clear: 15 January 2016. Almost four years after the legendary X-Pro1, which started it all.
Nobody doubts that after these four years of strictly secret development there will really be revolutionary changes (within the Fujifilm X line, I don’t think it is a revolution across digital photography); only nobody knows yet what the changes will concern. So far it is all speculation, wishful thinking and rumours about information that „accidentally“ leaked from Fujifilm’s laboratories and meeting rooms.
It is more than likely that, just as in March 2012 the Fujifilm X-Pro1 launched the X line of interchangeable-lens cameras, the X-Pro2 will be followed by new models of the X-E and X-T lines, based on technological novelties from the X-Pro2. So far nobody talks about them… or do they?
As with Leica, Fujifilm fans are properly fired up, saving into the piggy bank for January and ready to pre-order already… But they also already complain („what if it doesn’t have this or that„) about the features of a camera of which nothing official is yet known.
And they go even further. In discussions they are starting to guess whether it will/should be better/worse and more expensive/cheaper in this and that than the non-existent models X-E3 and X-T2. For better understanding once more: they compare a non-existent camera with two other non-existent ones, about which practically nobody even speculates yet…
I don’t know whether I can imagine a peak of photographic madness higher than right here…
Leica doesn’t tempt me; the red logo, with all respect, won’t make better photos for me. I’m looking forward to the Fuji X-Pro2, but I won’t hurry and I don’t yet know whether my next choice will be it, because I have time. Whenever somebody asks me why I have the X-E1 model (from 2012), I answer that it shoots brilliantly and I have no need to upgrade so far. That my next camera will be the X-Pro2 or X-E3 or some entirely new line. For now the X-E1 serves excellently and I’ll buy a new camera when I need it, not out of a feeling that I’ll finally have better photos. Whatever is wrong in my current photos is my fault, not the camera’s…
A slight paraphrase of a saying of K. Rockwell: „If you’re after image quality, buy a Fuji. If speed, go for Canon. And if you want a red logo, buy it, nobody will talk you out of it anyway.„
Completely off the record, a recent question from email: „I’m interested in three lenses (X, Y, Z), which of them is the sharpest?“ What kind of question is that? All three are sharp; what should matter is which is better suited for this or that job…