RX1 in London
After lots of deliberation over which lenses are more suitable for a day trip to London, I decided to ignore my camera bag and just picked up the RX1. Full-frame 35mm is a decent focal length, which I enjoy using immensely. I figured I could probably make it work for most scenes in London—it did well enough in Tokyo.
The sky was a glorious blue all day. I decided not to bother with a polarising filter, as there’s a chance its use will promote uneven colours throughout the sky on 35mm and below. The RX1 has lots of contrast in its sonnar lens, so I wasn’t really worried about losing any throughout the day.
Somehow, completely unintentionally, we ended up in a very Asian area—chinatown to be exact. It was nice to see the Chinese characters written everywhere, the lanterns, and the familiar feeling of the orient. We decided on Peking Duck, and were not disappointed. The service was authentic Chinese (i.e. pretty informal), but there was something calmingly familiar about arguing over seating arrangements, and being asked “you done with that, yeah?”.
It’s been a while since I’ve taken just the RX1 out with me, and I noted two things in my doing so:
- It’s nice to have just one focal length to worry about
- It’s frustrating to only have one focal length
These juxtaposed thoughts struck me at different times and places throughout the day. Often I wished I had a different focal length, purely for framing reasons. Sometimes it is simply not possible to “zoom with your feet” (incidentally, an expression I despise), and moving around changes perspective. I felt as if I wanted something wider, and something longer, more than 35mm. This is quite a new feeling to me—35mm became something of my favourite focal length in Tokyo. And, whilst I still enjoy using it very much, I felt as though a 28mm and 50mm pairing would have provided me with all I needed for the day.
Having said that, I never once felt concerned for the safety of my camera. My RX1 is covered in black masking tape, and looked like some “useless” point and shoot, not something to rival the latest Canon/Nikon DSLR. Using it in full manual mode provided me with the tools I needed to capture some rather pleasing shots from our day out. It would be cool if the RX1 could shift from 28-35-50 mm focal length à la tri-elmar, but that lens costs about as much as RX1 and A7R combined.
So once again, I reach that familiar conclusion: its not what you have, but how you use what you have. I could have had a bag of lenses with me all day, and aside from the risk of theft, constantly changing lenses can often ruin the feeling of a day out.
Oh, and yes, the RX100 would have been enough for the day, but someone else was using that ;-)