Jaco van Lith

Read old books on photography. Prize winning photoos were made with "cheap" lenses. See the Sinar leaflets, dated 1965, photoos were made with plain glass optics. No multi coating nor ED, no nothing. Just glass and a Swiss or European craftsman !

I do not understand this. At home or miles away. Are you a photographer or a starting amateur. Tools stay tools, wherever you are. Holiday is no punishment. If you do not like your gear, buy a compact all weather camera. It fits in your pocket.

Do not compare a Petzval with old tires. Can you hear the difference between a Yamaha keyboard an old French organ? What is the taste of a pizza on the Italian isle of Sicily or the one bought at Kmart ? A sunday afternoon driving the river dikes on a fat Harley Davidson or an old pre war two stroke 125 cc DKW 125 ? Make your own Petzval !!! Put some glasses of your grandmother's specs together; up till + 10 dioptrie. Put in a tube. Move in a to and from in a second tube. Fixe it to a T mount. You have got now a 100 mm portrait optic.

Lomo should have made the Petzval lenses with T-mount. To be mounted to any camera system. Keep the customer satisfied. No brass; it looks like a lighthouse. Make it black Would have been cheaper.

Mount a small Arca quick shoe; this will stop the problem.

Sorry, I forgot something. I blacken all white letters of my Fuji bodies, optics and filters. I do not like to walk around with a christmas tree. And Fuji does not pay me to show their products, so I keep low profile

Black is beautiful and professional. A camera is no car nor a dress, it is a tool. If you do not like the colour; airbrushing will do. Silver reflects the light more than black. So I do not want to see my camera in my model's eyes !

Equivalent ... ? Think or start at 35 mm miniature film with the negative/sensor size of 24 x 36 mm = todays Full Frame. Over the decades the 24 x 36 mm photocamera was sold with a 50 mm optic ( it varies from 40 up till 58 mm). The rangefinder camera, with the fixed standard optic, had a 45 mm optic. Like the Minolta, the first American camera in Space; bought a the drugstore at the end of a street in the U.S.A.. Oscar Barnack, the father of the Leica, prefered a 35 mm optic. He was right, 50 mm is too long for every day pictures. For portraits anything between 80 and 105 mm will do. Never make portraits with the much too populair 135 mm. Wide angle 28 mm or 24 mm. So we are finished ? Or do you want more mm ? For birds, sport, nature: 200 mm, 300 mm or 400 mm. If you got no assistent to carry the load, get yourself two zoom optics, Forget Mister big-mouth-wise-guy, who tells Prime Optics are the best and oversized wide apertures are a must,nonsense ! Mr. Richard Avedon, David Bailey, August Sander etc. had no Bokeh photoos nor wide apertures. Stop down to f/11 or f/64. Use a tripod or 6400 ISO. Do you know the analoge Olympus Pen F 18 x 24 mm, made in 1963 ? It had a standard 38 mm optic, terrible thing much too "long". Its little sister the Pen EE with a 28 mm, she was a beauty. For Hasselblad 500 C/M some prefered a set of three optics: 50 mm, 80 mm and the 150 mm plus a small extension tube Some did not like the 80 mm; a 60 mm or 100 mm thought to be nicer. Today there is a crazy competition, who has got the shortest and who has got the longest optic. Do not forget to make photographs. Take my advice. Read the story here below and forget it. Go to a decent photoshop and hold the camera and optics in your hand. http://www.photographybay.com/2016/02/06/understanding-medium-format-crop-factors/

Why waisting money for an adapter. Contax lenses are "too long" for the GFX. So the Zeiss wide angle is a lesser wide angle, and the tele is more-long when it is mounted to the Fujifilm GFX 50S Fuji should never had designed the GFX 50S. The camera is no Medium Size camera; the sensor is too small. It is an oversized ( amateur) Full Frame sensor. Professional photographers need a real medium size sensor (negative); SQUARE 60 x 60 mm like the Hasselblad 550 C/M or the Rolleiflex. The GFX -50S 33 x 44 mm sensor is too small, it looks like a Super Size 4 x 4 ( 38 x 38 mm ) slide. The rotating EVF of the GFX-50S has a limited possebility to rotate! Buy me a beer and I will tell you all the disadvantages of this new Fujifilm GFX 50S. Todays digital cameras look like PINBALL MACHINES. A photographer is a craftsman; no magician. They just press one button with a cable release. Helas there is no common cable release which fits to any Fujifilm digital camera. I doubt whether the new breed of the design department of Fujifilm digital cameras ever met a real photographer. Any way, it is clear they do know too few of the history of Fujifilm cpmpany. Since 1963 I buy Fuji camera's, optics, films, papers and chemicals

Go back in time. Get some low speed films. ORWO NP 10. Expose at 50 % and develop half time. Make a scan. Or put some welding safety glass in front of your Fujinon. Or sandwich two Pola filter together; rotate the filter and block the light

It is said that the Fujinon 18 - 55 mm is made in Japan ( see the Fujifilm leaflets ). My second Fujinon 18 - 55 mm is made in China !!!. Did you make identical photographes? Indoor, with fixed tripod and cable release. Non moving subject. Non changing lightconditions. Even electronic flash makes a lot of problems.With or without filter. Lensshade etc.

Is the Fuji X-E1 slow ? It is not ! My Hasselblad 500 C/M is slow. And my Linhof Master Technika is even slower. Look for the photographes of the Hindenburg zeppelin disaster at Lakehearst N.J. at May 6th 1937. Mr. Becker made 15 exp. in less than 50 seconds. The photographers shot plenty of pictures with 4 x 5 Speed Graphics. They were not whining about the speed of their cameras, They were professional photographers. The limitation of the speed is in the photo amateur's mind.