I'm Barwick Green, spelled Barwick but pronounced Barrick

[BarwickGreen]

I first took a photo 50 years ago, with one of the first Pentax Spotmatic cameras in the UK, it belonged to my Father who was a forensic photographer. He taught me a lot about photography, including how to use and develop film from his 20" x 16"  laboratory camera which didn't have a shutter - you just removed the lens cap and counted! I progressed from a Kodak Instamatic 133X to rangefinder cameras and when I got a job in Dixons I bought a Chinon SLR with staff discount. I would have bought a Fuji ST605N but I got more discount on the Chinon! I was then employed by the BBC as a TV cameraman but didn't last long - I was much better at audio and that's where I've made my career, photography is my hobby.

 

I'm a technologist and was an early adopter of digital photography, using a Mavica camera with a sensor 640 x 480 pixels, it took pictures on a floppy disc. After using various Olympus digital cameras including the fabulous 8080WZ I bought a Lumix G1 twin lens kit the first day they were available in the UK and then bought almost every body and lens for Lumix Micro Four Thirds as they were released. I fell out with Lumix because of the GH3 viewfinder, it was small and had blurred corners and the coating came off if it got damp. This happened to quite a few other people too. Interestingly DPReview removed a post I made on their forum about the problem when the coating started to come off the second viewfinder and sent me an email warning me about "trolling"... I know they have to keep on the right side of the manufacturers but I hadn't expected them to go that far.

 

So I sold my Lumix bodies and lenses and bought an X-T1 in December 2014. I love it. The quality is fine as far as I'm concerned with a lot less noise at higher iSO than the old Lumix, though I do struggle a little with sharpening in Lightroom sometimes, the same as many others. Of course the video quality is nothing like as good as I was getting from the GH3 but I shoot video rarely, and usually just to capture the sound of a place. The best thing about the X-T1 is the use of separate engraved dials for each function, the first time I picked one up it felt like coming home. Whatever image quality comparison one might make with other cameras, for me the viewfinder and control layout of the X-T1 have put the joy back into photography.

 

You can see some of my efforts on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rupert_brun/

 

Rupert

p.s. I'm a keen fan of the BBC Radio 4 documentary "The Archers" and Barwick Green is the name of the theme tune. I'm @BarwickGreen on Twitter.