This is Peter Nixon who has been photographing the people who stand for Ukraine at a vigil week after week more or less since the war began.
Shot with a Canon R6 with 35mm RF lens.
Click the photo and it will bring up a bigger version. Click again and it will bring up a yet bigger version,
In-body image stabilisation (IBIS) has changed photography. Being able to hold a camera steady for half a second or longer changes how a photographer can shoot.
Let me explain. Imagine a static subject – let’s say a building down a side street. It’s lit by neon lights and the light from the interior. Overall it is pretty dark.
Without IBIS I can hold the camera steady with a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. Because the light is low, I have to shoot at 3200 ISO.
With IBIS I could hold the camera steady and shoot at 1/2 second. That’s four stops slower, which means I can pull my ISO down by four stops – from 3200 to 200 ISO. That’s going to give me a better signal to noise ratio and a nicer looking shot.
IBIS is not the only factor. A full frame camera holds the image better at higher ISO than does a smaller sensor camera. I can say this from my own experience with the Canon R6. And the Canon has IBIS and some of the lenses have IBIS, for even more of that steadiness goodness.
Still, sticking with Fuji Cameras with IBIS (and their weights with battery and card) because the Canon is heavier than any of these at 680g for the body alone (with card and battery).
X100 VI – 521g
X-T5 – 557g
X-T4 – 607g
X-S20 – 491g
X-S10 – 465g
X-H1 – 673g
X-H2 – 660g
X-H2s – 660g
If it’s a lightweight camera you are after then the X-S10 looks attractive at only 465g. But like all but one of the cameras listed here, that’s without a lens. The X100 VI also includes a 23mm f2 (35mm-equivalent) fixed lens of course.
The 23mm f2 lens weighs 180g, which bring the X-S10 combo up to 645g. Or if we want to consider the X-s20, it weighs 491g. So with the same lens that combo would weigh 671g. And that’s only a few grams less that the Canon R6, at 680g for the body alone (with card and battery).
So with the downside that it has a fixed single focal length lens, the lightest option is the X100 VI at 521g.
Now as of 10 July 2025 the Fujifilm X-e5 is almost released. It is expected to be released in Early August. It comes with IBIS on a 40.2MP X-Trans CMOS 5 HR sensor, with 20 Film Simulation modes and the ability to import your own film simulations.
In the 23rd October edition of Amateur Photographer, photographer John Bridges ask whether the death of the DSLR was the biggest market misstep of the 21st Century. He gives as his reasons the ergonomics of DSLRs – with a bigger grip and an optical viewfinder.
He notes that with mirrorless cameras you have to think about how long the battery is going to last. And that although they can shoot at astronomically high frames per second, he asks who actually needs that.
Finally, he notes that used DSLRs are cheap as chips now compared to the price of mirrorless cameras.
Bigger grips aren’t really an issue. It depends on the camera. The grip on a Canon R6 is every bit as pleasant to hold as that on a Nikon D750. Batteries are a kind of an issue, mainly because DSLRs just go on and on. But it is not a big deal to carry an extra battery, and keep the one in the camera topped up.
That leaves the optical versus electronic viewfinder question.
In a recent article I wrote about using a DSLR in 2024. I said how I hankered after using one because I missed looking through an OVF (optical viewfinder). An OVF is as near to directly looking at an object as you can get. It means seeing the object you are photographing. That is, light enters the camera through the lens. It is reflected by mirrors and a prism up and into the viewfinder.
The thing is that that when the photographer wants to take a photo, the mirror has to get out of the way. In its rest position the mirror is in the path of the light that needs to reach the sensor. So the mirror housing springs up and then down again. That’s the ‘reflex’ in single lens reflex.
Mirrorless cameras don’t have a prism and mirror arrangement. In the viewfinder the photographer sees a digital representation of the scene,
So now I have scratched the itch to use an OVF, and I am selling on the camera. That leaves a question. How have EVFs improved since they first appeared, and what does the future promise?
The improvements since they first appeared are easy to describe. Lower latency and more dots. Lower latency means that as I move the camera around and look at the scene, the electronic viewfinder keeps up with me smoothly and as though I was looking at the scene with an optical viewfinder. More dots means that scene is clearer, brighter, and more detailed.
I can’t help but think that past a certain point the returns on improvements in ‘more of the same’ will be less easy to get excited about. But how about AI-powered focus and subject tracking?
The Nikon D750 is a full frame dSLR with a. 24MP sensor.
‘SLR’ is an abbreviation for single lens reflex. Light enters the camera through the lens. It is reflected by mirrors and a prism up and into the viewfinder. When the photographer presses the shutter, the mirror has to get out of the way. In its rest position the mirror is in the path of the light that needs to reach the sensor. So the mirror housing springs up and then down again. That’s the ‘reflex’ in single lens reflex.
Mirror-less cameras don’t have a prism and mirror arrangement. In the viewfinder the photographer sees a digital representation of the scene,
But I hankered to use a dSLR because it has an optical viewfinder. And I wanted to compare a full frame sensor to the crop sensor of the D5600.
Why the D750 in particular?
I like highly detailed images. The ‘image quality’ page on DP Review consistently shows the D750 is capable of highly detailed images. And the images don’t fall apart at high ISO.
The same is true of the Canon EOS R6 mirror-less camera that I am very pleased with also.
SLRs are a dying breed. Nikon is not making any of them any more. It’s a pity because now that I have tested the D750 I can say from my own experience that it is a very good camera. The image quality if great.
I shot this from across the street, outside the camera shop when I was trying out the camera. Shot at f/4.5 and 1/320th second and ISO 800.
I put ‘correctly’ in quotes because everyone has their taste. So what does ‘correctly’ mean here?
What it means here is the way to get the maximum information out of the scene. Put simply, if the shot is underexposed then some of the dark areas may not show detail. Or if overexposed then the highlights might be blown and not show detail.
The Zone System is a method of getting an optimal exposure of black and white photographs. It was created by Ansel Adams. a landscape photographer, and Fred Archer, a portrait photographer.
The method divides the tonal range of a scene into eleven zones from pure black to pure white. Notice that the range starts with Zone zero.
Zone 0: Pure black (no detail)
Zone 1: Near black (minimal detail)
Zone 2: Very dark shadow
Zone 3: Dark shadow with visible texture
Zone 4: Slightly darker shadow with good detail
Zone 5: Middle gray (18% gray), average light meter reading
Zone 6: Light gray (skin tone, sunlit grass)
Zone 7: Bright highlights (texture still visible)
Zone 8: Very bright highlights (minimal detail)
Zone 9: Near white (no detail)
Zone 10: Pure white (no detail)
To use it you measure light in your chosen part of the scene with your light meter. That may be a hand-held meter or the meter built into your camera. Whichever it is, all light meters are built to ‘assume’ that all scenes are Zone 5, middle grey. That is of course not true. A black cat in the snow for example.
And before we go any further you should know that while it is true the meters in cameras are based on middle grey, modern cameras are also computers. They look at the scene and measure it against a bank of similar scenes in their built-in database. If a camera stores 90,000 scenes then the chances are it has a black cat in the snow in there. So even assuming the light meter works on 18% grey Zone 5 and is wrong, it will correct itself if it recognises the scene.
And even if a camera does not have a built-in database of scenes, it will have metering that can cover most of the scene and then average out the brightness.
At the other end of evaluative metering, cameras now have AI or machine learning so they learn more scenes the more photographs the photographer takes.
In 2024 with built-in scene recognition and intelligent exposure adjustments we are a long way from Kansas.
So for the rest of this article I am talking about the zone system used with a hand-held light meter,
Put your camera on manual exposure. Point the light meter at the part of the scene you want to measure. The part you want to measure is the part in the scene that is important to you. Everything else in the scene will be measured by reference to that.
The meter will always give you an exposure (shutter speed and aperture) for Zone 5. Decide what Zone your chosen area should actually be in. Yes, that means you have to put your brain’s evaluative input into the calculation. Adjust the exposure. If you think the part of the scene you measured is Zone 3, then reduce exposure by two stops. In other words you are saying the following.
My starting point was to meter the brightness of the part of the scene I think is important. Now I want to expose darker than the meter is telling me because in my opinion the bit of the scene I want to measure is not mid grey, It is two stops darker than mid grey. So I reduce exposure by two stops.
That’s it. That’s the Zone system.
Meanwhile, with digital photography it is just a ‘flick of switch’ as it were to make a black and white version of a full colour image. Click on the image to see a large version.
By the way this is a crop of about one seventh of the full frame of a photo I took of this couple, from across the street with a 50mm lens on a Nikon D750.
