Rozov’s lessons: life without a mirror in the sensation of the future

It all started last spring when Sony kindly offered some American photographers to test the novelty – the world’s first full-frame mirrorless camera RX1, the smallest and lightest full-frame camera in the world. Except that it had a built-in, fixed lens. The camera was given to me as a present, and all I was asked for in return was that I publish my impressions on the web.

Photo 1. Red-and-black.

A night shot of the window of a store selling wigs, taken with one of Olympus’ best fast lenses. Crisp foreground sharpness meets pedigree bokeh in the middle and right third of the frame. Shooting handheld with vibration correction guaranteed perfect sharpness and the high sensitivity didn’t prevent you from taking the vivid colors out of the RAW-file.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO 12/2.0

Sensitivity: 1600 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/80 sec

Aperture: f/4

Exposure compensation: -1.0 EV

Focal length: 24 mm of film.

This baby was already being called the Leica Killer by the world at that time, but wedding photographers looked at me with arrogant disdain, and no one reacted at all in the subway. I fell in love with it at first sight because of its inconspicuousness.

The Sony RX1 quickly became an indispensable companion. Even on my way to the bakery I used to hang it around my neck. I took a lot of beautiful pictures in a couple of months. Many of them are in the process of taking commercial photos. I confess, I could do without my old set of optics, but “Zeiss” paints so sweetly!

After two weeks of living with the Sony, I was determined to keep it forever. But to promise is not to marry! Sold! Four months later. I bought two mirrorless cameras instead of one. Now I have two “Olympus”: OM-D E-M5 and E-M1.

For forty years I have been a faithful Nikon photographer, always using Nikon’s top-of-the-line cameras. And now I have two Nikons, a D4 and a D800, but I shoot with them less and less.

I see this as a trend that could decisively influence the choice of equipment by so many photographers. That’s why I wanted to share my impressions of life without mirrors. It seems to me that in the near future the world will give up DSLRs. already many amateurs who used to buy compacts are shooting with smartphones, and the pros will very soon get mirrorless reporters with sensors of different sizes from the industry. The SLRs will probably be around for a while for diehard fans, but mass production will be winding down.

What have DSLRs done to professionals??

Once upon a time, my father had a fodis from Fodis, the brand name for a fixed rangefinder manufactured by Leica, Germany, since 1924. – Red. FED-2. For young photographers, let me remind you that the name means simply: Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. The reason was simple: the first FEDs were assembled from German parts by the hands of juvenile delinquents and waifs in the penal colony. Thanks to youngsters: they introduced the Leica camera to Soviet people. FEDs had a rangefinder. In his peephole had to combine the images of the two lenses spaced apart on opposite sides of the lens.

Then the picture was considered in focus and you could release the shutter. The process of focusing was very slow and uncomfortable, but the main problem was that the picture in the viewfinder was dark and blind and gave no idea of the depth of field. In the early days of learning to take photographs, it was perceived as a great inconvenience. And that’s why the viewfinder mirror device was invented. Now while taking pictures the photographer could already see through the master lens what was sharp in the frame and what was not and even to what extent.

But I paid dearly for these delights: in addition to optical vision I got a mechanism with an up-and-down moving mirror. His shots caused the shutter to move. They invented dampeners to solve this problem. The mirror made you increase the working distance of the optics and make the cameras thicker. At that time they were called narrow-film with slight contempt but now they are full-film with a whiff of relief. Having a longer focal length meant I had to increase the size and weight of the lenses.

We put up with it for half a century, but the time came when a full-frame matrix was squeezed into the dimensions of the legendary “Leica”, while retaining the ability to see through the lens. Weight of professional segment cameras reduced almost three times at once. The coveted and prestigious DSLRs have become a thing of the past.

With the introduction of a full-frame camera Sony RX-1 photographic community as if woke up and suddenly realized that the time comes to say goodbye to the mirror, and thus the need to invest in a replacement system.

It’s expensive, but as inevitable as the transition from film to digital.

Before the record-breaking baby, all the mirrorless cameras except the Leica were cropped, which means they had small sensors. For those who don’t know: The main difference between cropped and full format is that bigger sensors let you get shallower depth of field, which means beautiful out-of-focus zone – bokeh.

Yet, you can still create beautiful bokeh with very fast lenses on a cropped camera photo 1 , but so far I haven’t been able to get comparable quality files with small sensors at high sensitivities. Sony’s full-frame cameras allow you to shoot at 12,800 ISO and get great files for print reproduction. And the best professional cropped mirrorless cameras give a comparable file at 1600 ISO photo 1 and 2 .

Photo 2. Night Test.

Night. Taken under a street lamp. That is, the lightness is very low and the contrast is very high. This small full matrix mirrorless camera nevertheless produced a very good quality file. I didn’t have to struggle with noise because there was none, I didn’t have to crush grain and the sharpness and detail were better than on the Nikon D4 under about the same conditions.

Camera: Sony DSR-RX1

Lens: Built-in 35/2.0

Sensitivity: 12,800 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/400 sec

Aperture: f/2.8

Exposure compensation: +0.3 EV

What I like about living without a mirror?

The lightness! The lightness of life is extraordinary! I rarely leave home without my camera now. It was my dream before, but now it’s a reality. And immediately the number of good genre, portrait, architecture photos has gone up dramatically. And I sacrificed almost nothing in my quality requirements. Moreover, I used to shoot some scenes very seldom before, but now I can do it anytime I want to see it.

To give you an example, I’ll show you some photos taken with an Olympus M supertelecopter.ZUIKO 75-300/4.5-6.7. It’s a zoom for mirrorless Olympus with a cropped 2. That is in terms of full frame 150-600 mm. I have to say that shooting with these TVs on my Nikon is not at all trivial. You have to prepare for it on purpose. Heavy tripod required. Release the shutter with a cable or radio trigger, and always with the mirror up first. But even that doesn’t always get you a sharp picture. You can’t stamp your feet near a tripod when you’re shooting, you can’t shoot from bridges and tall buildings they’re walking around. You cannot shoot over the subway, near a streetcar or near cars. You have to be careful of the wind… In other words, it is not easy to get a sharp picture.

Just recently a famous colleague of mine boasted that this wasn’t a problem for him. He shot a hawk while hunting with his hands. With a mirror! As a gallant musketeer I can only sweep the dust from my boots with my hat.

Before I bought the Olympus, and I have two, the OM-D E-M5 and E-M1, I sometimes shot handheld with the Nikon at 400mm with stabilization. In bright sunlight we could get sharp files.

But what I do now with Olympus without thinking, in passing, could not even dream of before. I shoot very moving subjects with this lens, on gray days, evenings and nights. With or without a tripod. For some time the Super TV lens became my favorite lens photos 3-6 .

But I’m quite satisfied with the performance of the wide-angle optics on mirrorless cameras. Here are, for example, two frames taken not with the coolest lenses photo 7 and 8 .

Before anyone else two companies Sony and Olympus made their first mirrorless cameras. They’ve packed their cameras with lots of new features we haven’t yet had a chance to fully appreciate. Olympus, for example, has an option to disable automatic sensor stabilization in all possible directions, choosing vertical or horizontal stabilization only. This feature opens up the possibility of obtaining new descriptive effects in slow shutter speed photography. Like smoothly smearing everything horizontally while keeping the vertical grease sharp. All sorts of experiments with lubricants are now the high time photo 9 .

I couldn’t explain in detail about the Sony RX1 full frame in one magazine article. It beats all the praise that has already been given to it, but judging by the speed with which Sony is acquiring patents for new inventions, we are in for a lot of pleasant surprises in the very near future.

The two full-frame interchangeable optics, which are already scattered around the world – Sony A7 and Sony A7r, despite the streams of yuletide, I have not caused a desire to buy either of them. In some parameters of price and quality comparison they are still inferior to the top “Nikon”. And that’s why quite a strange thing happens.

I shoot weddings with two systems. “Nikon” – all the important wedding chronicles, and portraits, grease, optional genre scenes – “Olympus” with aperture fixes. It’s the same in production. Subject and macro for Olympus. For the Nikon D800 only landscapes, architecture and orders related to the need for super-detail for higher magnifications remained.

Photo 3. aerobatics

from “Birds in the City” .

Sharp birds in flight can only be guaranteed at shutter speeds shorter than 1/2000 s. That’s why even on a sunny day I had to raise the sensitivity, stabilize all 5 axes and get the maximum shutter speed of 10 fps. This one was taken on the first try. But there was no second one: there was no other such cheeky fellow in the flock of sparrows that day.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO 75-300/4.8-6.7

Sensitivity: 640 ISO

Shutter Speed: 1/4000 sec

Aperture: f/5.6

Exposure compensation: -0.3 EV

Focal length 218 mm of film standard.

Photo 4. At sunset

from Kusadasi, Turkey .

I used the well-known shrinking ability of large TVs. The linear perspective in these types of photos is not capable of representing the real size of objects as it used to be. The images become somewhat like icons, without going so far as to show inverted perspective. I wanted to make the foreground and background as close as possible, and so I got a kind of graphic poster. For this I clamped the aperture to the limit, after which the sharpness starts to drop. There was a lot of light, so I was able to shoot handheld with the vibration correction on.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO

75-300/4.8-6.7

Sensitivity: 200 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/500 s

Aperture: f/10

Focal length: 601 mm on film.

Photo 5. Smoke smog. New York.

It’s the imaging properties of the TV set that make it possible to replace the linear perspective with a tonal one. Dark silhouettes of the foreground on an almost white background make it look like a drawing. No tripod was used.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO 75-300/4.8-6.7

Sensitivity: 400 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/1250 sec

Aperture: f/7.1

EV correction: -0.3 EV

Focal length of 417 mm film standard.

Photo 6. Pointing finger.

Reporting on the work of government institutions that serve the public, the shots were taken in rather cramped conditions. It’s dark and there’s nowhere to hide. The hidden camera method helps to shoot so that the people in the photos behave naturally. The Olympus’ silent shutter and phenomenal sensor vibration correction produce sharp images in quite dark conditions. “I would shoot with Nikon here at a sensitivity of at least 6400 IS0.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO

75-300/4.8-6.7

Sensitivity: 1600 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/80 seconds

Aperture: f/5.6

150mm focal length on film.

Foto 7. A warm evening from the “Bedroom District” series .

The cat was basking on the hot hood of the car. I took this picture not with a fast lens but with an inexpensive wide-angle zoom, which didn’t promise any beauty in the bokeh area. But even those Olympus optics are still a joy to the eye with their beautiful backgrounds and eye sharpness. Note: the cat let its claws out just in case, when the camera was in five centimeters from its paw. I shot a series of shots, but it didn’t get off the ground. That’s because Olympus shutters don’t clatter, they rustle. No birds, animals or people react to this sound.

SLR shutters sound like Kalashnikov in continuous shooting.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Olympus M.ZUIKO 9-18/4.0-5.6

Sensitivity: 500 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/500 sec

Aperture: f/5.6

Exposure compensation: -1.0 EV

Focal length: 18mm film standard.

Photo 8. On Begovaya.

“Fisheye and reflections of buildings in the surfaces of parked cars can make you dizzy. Olympus’ flip-down monitor helps you frame accurately and without the photographer showing acrobatic flexibility. Let me also remind you that any lens on Olympus becomes stabilized and takes advantage of TTL exposure metering. Another plus is that the focus confirmation also works with any mechanical lens. Such as this superbly drawn manually-operated fisheye, for example.

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Samyang Fish-Eye MFT 7.5/3.5

Sensitivity: 500 ISO

Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec

Aperture: f/5.6

Exposure compensation: -1.0 EV

18mm focal length of the film standard.

Photo 9. Go.

Camera:

Olympus OM-D E-M5

Lens: Samyang

Fish-Eye MFT 7,5/3,5

Sensitivity: 1600 ISO

Shutter speed: 1/10 sec

Aperture: f/2.8

Focal length: 15 mm film standard.