Finally making headway again and Vol. 1 is back for another edit, along with my preferred photo for the cover. I still want to call the book “Survivors”, because that’s what I see the aircraft as, but I doubt it will be.
Back on the camera hardware front and despite my ramblings about lens availability and weight etc, booking a holiday led to another purchase, the Nikon Z fc and now I’m utterly torn! I’m still right on two counts, lack of lenses for Nikon’s Z series, especially affordable used models, but principally ones for their cameras with APS-C sized sensors (aka DX in Nikon speak) and on weight; both camera body and lens. Where weight is concerned, having a full frame sensor means lenses to make the most of it, hence the Z5 and it’s better than standard kit zoom lens come in at 1.26Kg, which gets a tad heavy if you’re lugging it around all day, especially in sunny climes. The APS-C body and its kit lens which admittedly isn’t a patch on the Z5’s, weighs in at a rather more svelte 715g and the Lumix and even more pocket friendly 615g.
Where lenses are concerned, there’s maths involved to work out what the “real” size is , as opposed to what it says on the box or the lens barrel for that matter. For the uninitiated, digital camera sensor sizes relate back to the days of analog film. What’s now referred to as “Full-Frame” relates to a single frame of 35mm film, which is 36mm x 24mm in size and this is the same size as the digital sensor. For APS-C sensors this harks back to the final throw of the analog dice, the cartridge based APS format, which allowed you to do panoramic and high definition shots at the touch of a button, but was smaller than 35mm. Trouble is, it gets more complicated than maybe it should and we get into the realms of crop factors.
On a lens for a full frame sensor, what you see is what you get, so a 50mm lens is just that. With APS-C, for Nikon and most other manufacturers, that same 50mm becomes the equivalent of 1.5x what it says, so in terms of field of view, its the equivalent of a 75mm lens on a full frame camera (its 1.6x for Canon). The micro 4/3 sensor in the Lumix and my old Olympus E-M5 use a 2x crop factor, so the 50mm becomes 100mm. Relating everything back to full frame is used to give everything a common reference point, but when you’re looking for a wide angle lens to do landscapes say, the 7-14mm lens for my Lumix actually shoots like a 14-28mm for the Z5 (there’s a 14-30 and it’s £1300 new! It’s also 485g, as opposed to £400 used and 365g, but that’s a lot of glass for m4/3))
Excuse my diagram, but as you can see, if the lens was set to focus on a full frame sensor, the smaller sensors only get part the image, hence the crop factor.
So why am I torn over which camera? Where image sensors are concerned, size really is everything. The larger the sensor, the more photo receptors you can fit and the larger these receptors can be, which increases how much light they can collect, photography is all about collecting light. I know full well that the Z5 will produce fabulous images, but it’s B heavy after a while, it’s also bulky and it goes in hand luggage, not checked baggage, along with all the other “toys” like an iPad and a charger, whatever extra lens I’ve brought, a Kindle, headphones, maybe a magazine from Smiths in the departure lounge, etc, etc. The clever, mainly plastic, collapsing kit lenses on both the Z fc and the Lumix make both much lighter than the one on the Z5. even if I take another lens with either of these, it will still be less weight then the Z5 and a single lens.
The Z fc is also gorgeous, its a retro 35mm style body and to someone who’s used to old school 35mm, its a joy to use, whilst its APS-C sensor should be more capable than the m4/3 of the Lumix. But we’re back to the lens issue, or rather lack of them. Nikon were late to the mirrorless party and they’ve also been increasingly reluctant to allow third party manufacturers to have access to the specs for the Z mount. Consequently, unlike Sony and Fuji, there’s only a few offerings from the likes of Tamron and Sigma started to appear, while the native Nikon lens production has centred on full-frame FX series lenses. Admitted, you can use FX lenses on DX bodies, but then we’re back to cost and weight again!
So I’m now hoping for good, if only dry, weather next week when I’ve a week off and intend to do some shutter therapy to see just what to do with three expensive bits of kit. One will be going and I’m not convinced I know which one yet, even the Z5!
