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After digesting my trip to China, I'm now planning the next trip to Japan, where we're mostly in a remote location but we have a few days in Tokyo in the middle so I'll try and spend as much time shooting there as I can (which really means leisurely meandering around shooting and having breaks with delicious food / drinks etc). My equipment lessons from the China trip included: The GH7 is a workhorse and I don't think about using it at all, just on what I'm shooting The 14-140mm is a great all-round day lens for home video stuff The Takumar 50mm F1.4 on speed booster is good, but a little soft on the sides of the frame and the rectangular insert is probably a bit much I also learned a bunch of stuff about how to shoot in crowded situations without drawing too much attention to myself. I suspect that this is an infinitely-deep rabbit-hole that the best shooters probably do unconsciously, but like all things practice makes improvement. One thing I did that I think also worked well was to just shoot as fast and as much as possible. Not only did it lead to more shots and variety for the edit, but I think it also potentially helped me be less in my head and shoot more instinctually, which I suspect will yield more creative and expressive results. I've been thinking a lot (and talking to friends) about what I'm learning and what equipment is appropriate: The 70mm FOV seems potentially universal because in crowded situations you want to focus in on something so the frame isn't just full of chaos (photography is the art of subtraction), but in situations where there are less people you get spotted at a much greater distance and so having the longer lens means you can still get closer shots of people without actually getting close to them If my goal is to make edits that feel more immersive, then it makes sense to shoot with a lens that's roughly "normal" so it has a perspective similar to the human eye, which is about 50mm on FF. Having 70mm is a bit longer and would introduce a slight element of distance between myself and the subject, which is emotionally appropriate as I am an outsider in the places / cultures I visit, so this is coherent and adds to all the other decisions I'll make in what I shoot / how I shoot / how I edit / etc. I mentioned wanting a lens that was a bit sharper on the sides of the frame to someone and they countered by saying that having such a limitation will make my work more consistent (not only from the images themselves but also because it means I tend to compose with the subject nearer the centre of the frame) so this is a reasonable counter-point Despite all this, I suspect that I'll want a wider lens for when I get into the emptier narrow streets where it's more about the location rather than the people in it, and I suspect this is closer to 35mm or so As such, I'm mostly settled on the following lens contingent: 9mm F1.7 - for getting that wide-angle distortion that makes buildings etc really pop 14-140mm F3.5-5.6 - for day-time home video shooting 50mm F1.4 with SB - for that 70mm "night cinema" goodness 12-35mm F2.8 - for the wider "night cinema" duties, and being a zoom it means that I can use whatever focal length works for this task (35mm equivalent is just a guess) but also combined with the AF I can shoot a variety of angles / compositions really quickly I'm also likely taking the following, partly as just-in-case and partly to experiment with: TTartisans 17mm F1.4 - if I find that the 35mm FOV is desirable then this is a fast prime I can swap to TTartisans 50mm F1.2 - obviously I'm a fan of the 70mm FOV and I wonder if this 100mm FOV would be useful / workable, especially as it's super fast with shallow DOF Risespray 35mm F1.6 c-mount - this is about a stop slower than the Takumar+SB combo but seems cleaner wide-open so is a way to challenge my assumption about needing the speed of the Tak I'm also contemplating shooting 24p rather than 23.976p, and also 1080p instead of C4K. Both decisions have pros and cons to them though.

The only setup that's truly "wrong" is one that you don't enjoy using and that doesn't get you the photos that you want. The primary camera of a friend of mine is a pinhole that she made herself from... I think it's a coffee can or a cocoa powder jar. The photos are low-resolution, dreamy, and perfect. My setup would be totally wrong for her, or you, but I quite like it! I was at Photostock a few years ago when David Burnett was the speaker - he is famously still shooting sporting events and major political events using either a speed graphic or converted Graflex SLR with an Aero Ektar. At that event, however, he was carrying the camera he uses most of the time - an A7c with a small Sony lens. Not a setup that I'd choose, but if it's good enough for one of the most famous living photographers, it's probably not "wrong." 😅 A number of the big name classic cinematographers/filmmakers favored lenses between 40-60mm or so FF equivalent. A lot of classic street photographers like 35-50mm because it's seen as immersive. But if you want an outsider perspective, your choice of a 70mm seems appropriate!

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The zebras work in 8bit on the display, any value above a certain brightness i.e. 250-255 get the zebra treatment. When the picture profile is changed to Z-LOG for the wider dynamic range, and the values aren't clipping, the highlights won't get zebras. Without hacking Nikon's firmware, it's not possible to add them for Z-LOG.

These days, my travel setup looks a bit different, but with a similar goal of traveling light. I just bring the GFX 100 II and for lenses, the EF 35/1.4L II and the Fujinon 110/2. I used to bring the Fujinon 32-64/4 instead, but then I needed to bring something for lower light/night shooting. Plus a 2x zoom makes less sense when I can just crop anyway. I was looking at the GFX 100RF, but it's really not all that small and when I realized I was willing to accept a fixed 35 with that, I decided to just do the same thing, but, y'know, fast. For video, the GFX also makes it more like I have 4 lenses instead of 2. I can record in 4K or 5.8K at full sensor width - so effectively a 28mm or 80mm lens in FF terms - but if I switch to 8K, the crop is close to FF so I also have a 35 and 110mm lenses - with plenty of resolution to crop in if I want to. The fact that it's 8K is less interesting than it being a bit cropped. 😅 I don't really need to get all that wide so the 35 is usually enough, even if I crop in a little when IBIS darkens the corners a little. For photos, there's enough room to crop in that I can get reasonable results going anywhere from around 27-28mm on full frame to... something like 200-300mm after cropping. For ND filters, I just bring a set of Kase clip-in filters - ND8, ND64, and ND1000. The entire set fits in a tiny little box and weighs almost nothing. For a tripod, I... don't. The IBIS in the GFX is decent enough that I can get sharp photos handheld as long there's at least some light (if it's too dim for around 1/15second at f/1.4 at ISO 6400, that's rough - but it's just not a scenario I'm optimizing for these days). Limitations? Longer exposures for waterfalls are hit and miss. I usually just turn on the 2s timer at about a 1 second exposure and shoot it like 5 times and if I don't get something that's sharp with smooth water, I decide that wasn't meant to be. I have a lot of pictures of waterfalls already (I really like waterfalls). The camera and lenses are obtrusive - the GFX 100 II is smaller than my GFX 100 was and that's nice, but it's still not small. Rolling shutter in some modes is enough to be noticeable even with relatively small movement. The fact that it's obtrusive can be a really big problem - in a lot of cities, it's not a camera to casually hang around the neck and stroll around. I'm in Sao Paulo right now - there are only a few parts of the city where I'd even bring it out. BUT the good news is that my phone (iPhone 16 Pro) works absolutely fine in all of the places where I wouldn't take out my big obtrusive camera. The iPhone is good enough that I take out the big camera less and less, even when it would be totally safe to take it out.