I had a large, almost A3, print made from the file at the time but only recently got round to framing it and hanging it on a wall. Two years down the line I still like it and think it works. And do you know what? The print looks pretty good. Better than this JPEG here. The camera was left to its own devices to sort out the exposure. Well, pretty much.
Two years and too much money later and I'm starting to rethink things. Do I need the wide aperture lenses to do what I like doing? Given the amazing capabilities of the cameras to perform in low light I'm not so sure. I certainly don't need them to enable me to focus manually now autofocus is so reliable. Do they make nicer looking pictures? Sort of, in a hard to define way. Not that I'm obsessed about shooting wide open to get dreamy, creamy out of focus areas for the hell of it. Are they heavy, cumbersome and attention attracting? Certainly. I could carry two light zooms and maybe two fixed focal length lenses and still be carting less weight than one of the fast zooms!
I'm sure I could live with the older, slower, lenses. The results they give are good enough for me, but I'd find it difficult to forgo a full frame body. Not because the 'crop sensor' cameras don't shove out great quality files, but because it's exactly the same way of seeing as when using 35mm film. Same aspect ratio, same big viewfinder, and the lenses don't need a conversion factor to enable me to visualise what they'll do on the camera.
What I'm getting at is that I feel like I should be using the stuff that will help me make more pictures rather than stuff that will help my pictures be sharper. At normal viewing distances pretty much any half reasonable lens is going produce images that are good enough. Just as the average viewer of photographs doesn't care what camera was used, they don't inspect pictures with a high powered loupe to check for critical sharpness!
Of course, if the X10 was more user friendly in the all important (to me) framing department I could probably get away with using that on its own. I missed a shot today because I wanted a precise frame and to capture a cloud before it blew past. By the time I had got near to the right framing the cloud had gone. I could have framed wider and cropped, but even that might not have worked out. Hard to fault the output though. It handles contrast scenes very well for such a little camera. What I'm really looking for is a set up that suits my way of working a camera. I think I know what that is. Time will tell.
As well as the above, boring, picture which has plenty of indicators of perspective I used the X10 to take the photograph below. I'm not sure if the focus point, which logically should be on the word but isn't, is what makes it difficult to read, or the lighting. To my eyes the perspective is out of whack. This is a result of the lighting, the local colour of the surfaces, and the lack of any of the usual clues to a vanishing point such as those evident in the picture of the steps above. The image is not only flat but flattened (in part by the slightly telephoto lens), yet the colours and shading which are providing the only hints at recession are conflicting with what is expected. I wasn't aware of any of this when I framed the shot, but it is that framing - as much what it excludes as includes - that gives the picture its ambiguity.
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