I have been contemplating buying a real camera for years, but never managed to figure out which camera and which lense to get.
/p/ always discourages me further, with their very mean comments, gate keeping, recommendations of only cameras that are not in production anymore, etc
He starts his day with his beautiful photographic tool, prepared the night before in hopeful anticipation of a day full of visual wonder. Every lens, camera, and sometimes film, combination explored in his mind for the plethora of scenic possibilities that may confront him during the day at hand. He awakes, proudly slinging his camera du jour, venturing to a local café where he may map out his “photo walk”.
Reality sinks in with each sip of his oat milk latte. For months, even years now, he has attempted to capture beautiful, fleeting and increasingly disappearing moments, of a world growing uglier by the day, for a narcissistic audience growing more jaded, self-absorbed and increasingly negative. His images must compete with a digital bombardment of auditory, textual and video excess: algorithmically perfected to a new golden ratio of 1/3 talking-head to 2/3 rage-inducing stimuli. What right does he have to add another speck of white noise to the swarm?
He sighs and takes out his iPhone 17 Pro, carefully composing a tableaux of his static, unused camera with the Leica-red coffee mug, which is sadly one of the reasons why he frequents this cafe. With a click of the iPhone’s screen, 15 raw images are captured instantaneously, stacking them to maximize dynamic range, remove noise, enhance details, followed by the processor’s detection of the subject, auto-masking and then blur effect to simulate “bokeh” and finally a pleasing film-like color science filter is overlaid.
this was the absolute peak of digital photography and its all been downhill after here. seriously look at the shots on flickr with this tag and how good they look. mirrorless is super sterile and fake looking, and older than the mkii just were shit to use and had too much noise.
seriously dont sleep on these, 5d mkii and some EF L glass has u covered and then u can spend the rest of the money on travel and taking kino shots.
Shot on a Bessa R2M with the 35mm f/2 Ultron and a mix of Fuji 100, Provia 100, and Portra 400. Developed at various labs in Tokyo and Osaka, scanned by myself.
What makes Japan such an desired place for photography? I'm really trying to understand the hype around it. When I visited of course the size of Tokyo itself opens lots of opportunities but I quickly notice that it gets repetitive rather fast. All muh taxis look the same, the buildings have a pattern that repeats a lot. If you've seen a few shrines/temples.. in the end they all look the same. Even if you visit other prefectures you won't see much of a difference. Whenever I see camera vlogs or flickr uploads in Japan I now tend to skip because it's always the same.
My current number one location would probably be Germany. Still safe enough to bring your camera with you, every state has it's own architectural style. Towns are usually a comfy mix between old medieval houses in the center with grim 60s bauhaus constructions that look really odd. Also home of Leica where this sort of everyday compact photography started.
