On eyesight

I was up ridiculously early this morning; we are visiting family “down south” and I rarely sleep well on short trips away. Photography isn’t a practical proposition this morning so I’ve settled for the next best option of reading and writing on the subject. Quite naturally I’ve come to ruminating on my foray into the mirrorless world. Although with the Nikon D800E going last week and the Fuji XT-1 arriving around the same time I guess this is more than a foray. It’s started to get very serious.

I still have a full frame DSLR with a small but high quality collection of lenses and speedlights and am well able therefore to cover pretty much any subject that takes my fancy with this kit. So I cannot be said to have made the switch in that regards as I could go back to shooting a full frame DSLR at any time with no immediate cost. For now that suits me and whilst I sense that there will come a day when I do go fully mirrorless that day hasn’t arrived yet and nor is it on the immediate horizon ar as I can predict.

I have large hands and sometimes clumsy fingers which makes the bigger form and buttons of the pro DSLRs easier to handle than the small Fuji but that is something I am getting used to and rarely find it to be a major issue now although I did struggle with it at first. My eyesight is not what it once was (the joys of getting old) and I am finding that muscle memory is becoming more and more important which is why I have been concerned with it in the last few posts.

The main issue for me at present is being able to read settings and make small adjustments. For focusing, live view helps with both sets of gear but for viewing images properly I need to use glasses to inspect the LCD screen. This is another area where the Fuji produced an unexpected surprise as I have found that even without glasses I find it easier to view images using the EVF, something my big Nikon cannot do.

So the mirrorless experiment continues and I am learning something new every day it seems. Sometimes its a new challenge to overcome and sometimes a new revelation but no day is dull that’s for sure.