Optically Again
3 August 2015

Some time ago, I wrote a short blog post accompanying my newest gallery about the City-Nord business complex. As noted in that article, I'm no longer using Samsung mirrorless cameras.

I will not go over what's so bad about Samsung that it drove me back to DSLR, because Samsung does a great job in mirrorless and the decision was completely based on gut feeling. The biggest point for me was my desire to go back to a viewfinder and actually none of the electronic viewfinders could convince me in the end.

After trying out many different DSLRs like the Nikon D700, Pentax K-3, Olympus E-3 and Canon EOS 5D, I settled on the old, tried and true EOS 5D Mark 1/Classic/Queen Mum, however you wanna call it. I chose it because it felt right in my hands from the first touch and didn't wear off, like the D700 after some days. The Pentax K-3 didn't convince me with its image quality. It produced just technically very good images but somehow I didn't like them at all (a first for me...). The Olympus has a nice body, is tremendously well built, on a level with the K-3 and a step above Nikon and Canon. Also it handles beautifully. In the end, I decided against the E-3 and its beautiful colors, as I didn't want to spend money on a system that was dead already, no matter how good the lenses are.

I'm shooting with the EOS 5D for about a month now and am really enjoying it. The camera produces nearly perfect skin tones right out of the box and the image quality doesn't need to fear the comparison with modern cameras if shot in RAW.
Together with the camera, I got three Sigma lenses, the 15-30mm Ultrawide, the 50mm f1.4 DG (not the Art) and the 105mm Macro with OS. All three are really satisfying so far. I also got a Canon 580EX Flash and even though I like manual flash very much, it works a treat in E-TTL mode.

I will write more about the lenses and maybe the camera as times goes by but for the moment, let this be a status update on my gear.

As a side note, I don't want anyone to go away from Samsung just because I did, as it was a totally personal decision, that doesn't need to be the right route for anyone else! Samsung makes great cameras and lenses and I still believe in the observations I made on their gear!