For now I just did a first walk with the camera, at night in the city of Cuneo and a little comparison test in studio.

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Here, in the video you can hear what I think about the camera, if you like to see the pictures I took in the studio to have a first comparison of the K3 Monochrome and the K3 MkIII Color and download the raw files, just scroll to the end of the article and you will find the link.

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The results are really impressive. The lack of noise also at higher ISO, the dynamic range and the general quality of the images are absolutely fantastic!

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Here the 100% zoom.

If you want to download the original RAW files and play with them, use the following links. Please consider to use the Donate button so I can cover the increase of expenses for the server space and bandwidth.

K3 Monochrome:
KimonoTestRAW_Part1.zip
KimonoTestRAW_Part2.zip

K3 MkIII Color:
K3MkIIITestRAW_Part1.zip

K3MkIIITestRAW_Part2.zip

Please consider a small donation:

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See you next time with more tests!

This is a great moment to improve ourselves and our skills.

I see around me a lot of posting about cameras and photographic techniques so I decided to do something a little different.

You can see here 10 COVID Compliant Exercises to Become a Better Photographer.

The concept is easy, with what you have available in the tranquillity of your home or inside the border of your COVID jail, you can do this exercises to try new approaches, or relive forgotten ones, to photography.

The results can be shared and discussed on the FaceBook Group I created just for this project.

The class is available for free on YouTube!

Watch the introduction here and follow me on YouTube for the exercises.

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See you in the FaceeBook project page!

Digital or Film? Fuji Acros Digital on a XPro-2 compared to Fuji Acros 100 Film on Hasselblad 6×6… who will be the winner?

Few weeks ago I did a non scientific comparison between black and white digital and film, using my beloved Fuji XPro-2 and a Pentax 67 with Ilford FP4.

The article got a lot of interest and was also published on Fuji X Passion magazine.

I decided to improve the test and use Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 film, instead of Ilford FP4 and Hasselblad instead of Pentax. The use of actual Acros film instead of Ilford is obvious and needed for a less casual comparison. Hasselblad instead of Pentax is because I suspected some lack of sharpness was caused by the lenses, and since I have used Hasselblad all my life and I’m sure were the best analogue medium format camera and optics, I simply wanted to eliminate every variable related to the lens.

As I said before:

• I know that, scanning the negative, part of the process is still digital so is not perfect
• I do not intend to give all the answers
• I did this just for fun and to understand myself a little better

How did it go this time and who won? Not easy questions!

Technical premise, the Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 film was developed in Ilfotec HC 1+47 for 8 minutes at 20C, after a 3 minutes prewash in water, and followed by a stop bath and 4 minutes fixing in Ilford Hypam 1+4.
In the image captions there are the specific data for each image.

I started in a snowy day, with absolute flat light and no real highlights in the scenes. The opposite of what I did in the previous test. It was not really a choice, but it was snowing and I wanted to do it anyway… yes, I would rather be in Florida than in the Italian Alps… and not just for the weather!

Fuji Acros 100 – Hasselblad 500 C/M with 80mm f 2.8 – Exposed at 1/60 f 8

First image, a fountain with the church in the background. When I arrived I looked around and thought “1/60 f8” then I took my Minolta Spotmeter and measured the light, exactly 1/60 f8.
I was with Gian Cerato, a dear friend and colleague and asked him what he imagined was the exposure and he told me “1/125 f5.6” and we laughed about the simplicity of film photography. No matter if the best quality is on digital or film, film have the simplicity on its side, once you set the ISO with the film choice there are just shutter speed and aperture that can be set with the old rule 1/ISO at f16 for a sunny day… the table found on every film box!

Please, note the stupidity of Italian bureaucracy that put a bar code for the water service on the fountain… an old fountain with a stupid and ugly white placard very visible from the best point of view. I avoid further comments to not get in jail…

As soon as I took the picture with film, I got my XPro-2 and kept the same settings. Last time I noticed that I always had very underexposed images, even in RAW, if I used the setting from the meter, so I decided to use the Fuji 200 ISO as if it was a 100 ISO to give that stop of overexposure needed in my previous experiment.
Now the image came out one stop overexposed, so I had to trash the jpg and use the RAW and correct one stop… All started to sound strange…

Fuji XPro2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/60 f8 ISO200 – In camera conversion ACROS simulation

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/60 f8 – RAW transformed in CaptureOne 11

CaptureOne 11 has not the Acros simulation… so no comparison here, but I learned a lesson: something was going on in the camera.  The base ISO did not seem to be constant and I was sure the ISO were set to 200 and not Auto.

So in another location I was more careful on checking the histogram and evaluate the exposure.

Fujifilm Acros 100 with Hasselblad 500C/M and 80mm f2.8 – Exposed at 1/60 f11

As usual the exposure was perfect with film. With digital I corrected a stop for the difference in ISO and came out almost perfectly exposed.

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – Exposed at 1/125 f11 ISO 200 – Acros simulation, in camera jpg

The tonal rendition is really perfect, the differences between the film and digital simulation are very minimum and can depend more on the developer used than on the film and simulation parameters.

I was positively surprised. Fuji really did an awesome job with the ACROS simulation.

We can see very similar results in the other pictures following. And still the XPro-2 set at 200 ISO continued to act properly as 200 ISO!

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 1/60 11.5 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/125 f14 ISO 200 – Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 1/60 8.5 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/125 f9 ISO 200 – Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 1/60 f8 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/125 f8 ISO 200 – Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 1/60 f8.5 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1/125 f9 ISO 200 Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

For now all is good… exposure perfect using the same setting for film and digital just correcting for the ISO difference.

So I decided to take some pictures inside to test the sharpness and some higher contrast subject.

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 20sec. f8 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 22sec. f8 Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

As usual the film excels in the highlights but this time, with the Zeiss 80mm and Acros instead of FP4 the sharpness is the same as you can see in the 100% enlargement.

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 20sec. f8 Fuji Acros 100 – 100% enlargement

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 22sec. f8 Jpg from camera ACROS simulation – 100% enlargement

You can read the book covers in both images, and the 100% scan of the film with the Imacon 848 is actually 7400px wide vs. the 6000px of the Xpro-2

At this point I will be curious to test a medium format digital camera (Fujifilm? Pentax? PhaseOne?) against a 4×5″ film.

In my mind I was sure a medium format film was superior to a 24MP aps-c camera regarding linear resolution. I was wrong.

On the next picture I went very high contrast, and again I noticed underexposure on the Fuji XPro-2. The details in the highlight disappear and the shadow become dark, closed. Using the RAW the highlights can be recovered and the dark tones opened up, but the JPG is kind of dark and high contrast compared to the film.

Hasellblad 500 c/m, 80mm f.28 – 2 sec f8 Fuji Acros 100

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 35mm f1.4 – 1sec f9 Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

I had the confirmation that the sensor sensibility was acting strange.

I reread the manual and found nothing useful but… the Dynamic Range settings. I was on Auto, not on a fixed setting. I will have to do some test with also the highlights compensation turned off. Basically I discovered I did not spend the right time to know the camera and test it. RTFM repeated to myself as a mantra… in this case the XPro-2 F manual not mine “Photography: The f Manual“!!

I turned the Dynamic Range to ISO100 and did some other tests, this time in a sunny day and using the Hasselblad 903 SWC, to have a situation similar to the pictures I took in the previous comparison with the Pentax 67 and the 45mm.

Hasselblad 903 SWC – 1/125 f8.5 – Fujifilm Acros 100

Fuji XPro-2 with 16mm f2.8 – 1/250 f9 – Jpg from camera with ACROS film simulation

Still in the digital version we have problems with the highlights and the shadows are a little dark, basically a lot of contrast, but now the medium grey area are exposed correctly. This happens also with the RAW. So I suppose that the Dynamic Range settings changes the ISO sensibility of the sensor, lowering it when there are high contrasts in the scene to try to preserve the highlights.

But, no matter what is done, the highlights always get burned, it’s a problem of the sensor saturation. Film is much more tolerant, and I have to say I love this tolerance.

Now with less contrast in the scene… all is perfect again.

Fujifilm XPro-2 with 14mm f2.8 – 1/250 f11 Jpg from camera ACROS simulation

Hasselblad 903 SWC – 1/125 f11 – Fujifilm Acros 100

If you want to see more pictures let me know and I will do a second part of this article and show the other pictures.

But this is enough for my non scientific conclusion.

• Medium format Acros film on Hasselblad has basically the same resolution of the XPro-2.
• The Fuji lenses are absolutely superb, at the level of Zeiss/Hasselblad!
• Digital sensors sucks in the highlights, even underexposing and recovering the shadows form the RAW file, still there is a sensor saturation that cuts and blows up the sun and similar highlights.
• The tones can be the same in digital and film, is a matter of settings.
• Fujifilm did an impressive job creating the ACROS film simulation.
• All the settings in the digital cameras are a pain in the neck (I wanted to be polite lol)

As personal consideration, I really love both results.
Film for me is simple and I dream of a digital camera without settings except for the ISO/aperture/shutter speed. Nothing more, no display, menus, dynamic range etc. Just a RAW on a memory card and nothing more. But I dream… I know!

I also noticed that, even doing a comparison, when I take the film camera in my hands I already know what I want to photograph, the almost exact point of view and camera settings, with digital I tend to find the picture in the viewfinder and at the end I take always more than one picture. I do not like the digital attitude and I cannot keep the film attitude with a digital camera in my hands. This is my problem, nobody forces me to not use the digital as a film camera!

As soon as I had the Hasselblad in my hands I felt at home for two reasons.
First of all the cameras were so simple, well designed and all similar so was easy to get used to them. With digital I spent the same years than I spent shooting film, but each brand and model is different, with different controls, different menus and too many things to remember. After the first reading of the Hasselblad manual I never opened it again, with digital I need the manual in the bag because every time there is something I do not remember, and yes, supposedly, I can setup the camera and use it as an analogue camera… but then I do not know why but something changes, can be a button pushed in the bag or while I take the camera out, but I had the image proportion changed, the level disappeared, the usual exposure compensation or the diopters correction. At least the ISO are easy on the XPro-2! I know many people hate that ISO dial, I love it!

The second reason is that I love the square format, I’m ok with a rectangular like the 4×5″ or 6x7cm, it is not too much rectangular, but the square is my preferred format. The 3:2 proportion of the 135 full frame or the Aps-C, it is too rectangular for me. It does not reflect my vision.
So, as soon as I took the Hasselblad, I felt connected again, the camera was just a natural extension of my eyes.

I would love to try some medium format digital, to compare it with a 4×5 film and to see if a less rectangular sensor will make me feel again more connected with the camera.

After this comparisons and using again my old working tools I decided how I want the digital camera of my dreams:

• Square format
• No LCD
• Only RAW files produced
• Nothing more than ISO/Aperture/Shutter settings
• In the viewfinder simply exposure data, a grid, the level and the histogram
• Diopter correction and compensation dials, if present, with a lock on them!
• No other settings, I want a sensor that will always have the ISO I choose and always responds in the same way
• A battery lasting at least 3 years!!!

Again, I know I’m dreaming… but dreams are free so why not?!

After this test I’m sure I will continue to use both digital and film. Film photography gives me the pleasure of the mental process, digital the easy “development”.

My next step, as soon as I will have the time, will be to test deeply the Fuji XPro-2 to understand the sensor limits and the effects of the settings also on the RAW format. I imagined that the RAW was not influenced by the various settings, it was my mistake.

All this said, I still love the XPro-2… just, as I said in a previous article… please let me deactivate all the buttons and the &#@%^#* compensation dial via firmware!!! Please Fuji… listen to me… that compensation dial is a pain!!!

Wausau, it’s a small town in Wisconsin, in the middle of a beautiful country where the hills are spotted with colorful barns immersed in cultivated fields.

Few people in the western world know that in the Wausau area, one of the best species of ginseng is produced. This ginseng is appreciated all over the world and especially in Asia, the largest export market for Wisconsin Ginseng.

In 2010 I had the privilege to photograph the cultivation process of the ginseng and portray most of the farmers associated to the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. For the first International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival I was invited to do an exhibit of the images taken  in 2010, part of the book “Wisconsin Ginseng”, and I had the opportunity to take the pictures of the Festival and the correlated events.

The festival was great and perfectly organized, the people at the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin and Lori McGehee from Millennium Marketing did a perfect job. A lot of people attended to enjoy the ginseng products offered at the booths and the live performers on the stage.

There were meany correlated events, a 5k run, visits to the farms and the possibility to go on the fields and pick your own root.

I really like festivals in small towns because the entire city gets involved and you can see the effort to make it great and the presence of the festival in every store, museum and hotel. I grew up knowing the USA from the movies and my feeling was to be in the classic Hallmark movie where every person in town works together to create a unique experience for the visitors.

A nice place to visit in Wausau is the Center for Visual Arts, they had an exhibit of paintings related to the ginseng and the building is really beautiful and with a perfect view on the 400 Block, the square where the Festival was organized. The building was a bank originally and during the restoration they found the original door of the vault, it gives a nice touch to the ambience. It is really positive to see such a big art community with really high quality of the works.

While I was there during the festival I felt again the reasons why I loved my previous trip: beautiful land and great people. I enjoyed to see again old friends and meet new ones and I appreciated even more the spirit of the people and the beauty of the land.

I arrived in Wausau two days before the Festival, to have the time to organize the exhibit and get over the jet lag, so I had some time to go around with my camera. The weather collaborated with perfect sunsets.

Wausau is divided by the Wisconsin River and south of the city the river widen and forms the Lake Wausau.

What I love more of the USA is the freedom to pursue happiness and you can see that freedom during a sunset on Lake Wausau. People jogging, fishing, boating and simply spending time to look at the sunset, but this time I saw something special that happens to see only in a free country: over the beautiful scene a Stearman biplane flying from the local airport.
I love to fly and I love to see places where the regulations and taxes are not killing the general aviation and the possibility to realize the dream to fly at the sunset with an old biplane. In USA this is taken for granted, but is not something common in Europe.

The Wausau Downtown Airport is really worth a visit, it is full of history and there is a very interesting collection of pictures starting from the beginning of the 1900. A little hidden gem for aviation enthusiasts.

The second day of the Festival my laptop hard disk crashed, it started to emit strange metallic noises and was gone. I never trust hard disks, so I had a copy to boot the system, an external drive with the backup of the pictures and still the original RAW on the memory card… but still was a panic moment and during lunch time I run to Best Buy to get a new SSD. The lesson here is that one of the difference between professional and amateurs is the habit to have always backups!

Another lesson is to always have a Swiss Army Knife, the computer version, in your luggage!!!

But in the panic there was a nice note, while I was on my way back from Best Buy I found the Rookery View Park, I was there around noon, not the perfect time for the light, but still I found it really beautiful.

Few miles out of the city is easy to find great views. The hills were starting to get the autumn colors and the view of the farms surrounded by the fields is always a beautiful sight.

Coming back from a farm I passed by the Wausau cemetery and I just stopped the car and went to take a walk. It was silent with a grey sky and I love the American cemeteries immersed in green grass. All is so quite and different from the Italian cemeteries crowded with stones and mausoleums. I just felt the need to walk and look around.

Part of the cemetery is reserved for the Veterans. It was impressive to look around and read the stones. Most of the people was involved in some war, from the WWII to the Iraq, and I started to think how many people from all the small towns in the USA were sent far away, in places they probably never imagined to see, just to save us Europeans from our own wrong choices.
There I have seen some stones of the Americans that made it back, but I never forget that, only in Italy, 350,000 soldiers mainly from USA and UK, gave their life to give us back the freedom that the Italians had put in the hands of Mussolini.

I have the freedom to travel thanks to the people that sacrificed their life to allow me to be free. I really love to travel and I love the rural USA where I can smell the freedom that some people give for granted and forget was paied with human lives.

In the USA I feel at home and Wasusau and its people are a part of what make me feel at home and make me feel a part of the great philosophy that created the American Spirit.

From the article I took a graphic that was created by the photographer Sven Skafisk (I wanted to go to the source and link him, but I have not found a link in the article or his page on Google) who spent the time to put on a graphic the data of the camera production from 1933 to today, divided by typology and including the smartphone camera market.

The article is very interesting and points the difference in scale between the camera and phone market. It’s worth to read.

But what really impressed me about this graph is the comparison of the camera numbers before and after the digital revolution.

How this can mean good news for professionals photogrpahers?

We can see that after the end of the film era in 2005, anybody wanted to become a photographer and the sales of digital equipment (from compact to serious cameras) really increased exponentially.

In those years we have seen crowds of people getting one good picture with a digital camera that decided to buy a D-SLR and become “photographers”. I lived this transition in Italy where anybody pretend to be an artist and, due to a limited market and crazy taxes, the competition of improvised photographers often made the difference for pros between a survival situation and the bankrupt. So I was in a good point to observe the change, but in all the world there was a similar situation also if it was less excessive.

Now we see in the numbers that the digital camera sales finally came back to the level of the film camera and even less.

This in my opinion, looking what is happening around me, is a very good news because it means that a lot of people stopped to pretend to be a photographer. The clicking moms or the “camera club” crowds, discovered that photography is not just having a nice tool but something more.

In my career I have seen a lot of “photographers” rise and fall in few years and with the advent of digital this process become more wide and quick. In Italy the so called “photo clubs” are the perfect example. A lot of amateurs join the club, get some good review by their fellow members and decide to work in cash avoiding taxes just to “test themselves”, attracted by the good (!) money (easy to be happy to have earned some hundred dollars if you live on a salary from another job) they open a business and then the reality comes down as an ax on their neck.
They realize finally how hard is to manage a business and that they are absolutely not ready to deal with the market because they lack not only the knowledge of photography but also the skills to manage the clients and to price themselves in the right way.

The decline on sales of digital cameras means that finally the weekend photographer get a smartphone and do not pretend anymore to be a professional. All this means less people ruining the market for the professionals and lowering the quality of the work. We finally start again to have the distinction between serious and improvised photographers, also as equipment.

The market for photography is expanding thanks to all the new media, we see thousand of different pictures everyday, so I’m optimist that there will always be a market for serious photography, but the access to the top market passes by the low end and often that sector is invaded by the unprofessional crowd.
If they are stopping to buy cameras it means that they finally realized a good camera is not enough and will leave more room to the people seriously thinking to make a career in photography.

Just to explain what I think is a “serious” photographer, it’s a person that will spend years reading manuals, attending workshops, assisting other photographers, growing and taking pictures before thinking to become a professional.

To be back at the numbers of film cameras means that every person that did not intend to spend on training and learning what we spent, at least, in film, gave up. Cameras will be again for people serious about photography and smartphone will be perfect for the improvised photographers.

The camera industry lived and survived very well with the film era sales numbers, when a camera lasted 40 years, I’m pretty sure they can survive and live well with the same numbers also in the digital era.

I also add a simple fact: I’m a photographer, so I like the idea of less competition and I do not care much if the camera producers will earn more or less money. This is good news for professional photographers even if is not so great for whoever sells the cameras.
I think that this has another positive side: to be finally considered again as partner by the camera manufacturers and not just cows to milk. I remember spending a ton of money in film equipment, from 135mm and medium format to 4″x5″ view cameras and the producers were considered partners, always giving the best assistance, having representatives passing by the studio to let us test new cameras and communicating with us professionals in a constant way. Now I feel like we are only cows to milk and, with the exception of some very high end brands as PhaseOne or Broncolor we are left to ourselves and the only way to test a pro camera costing several thousands of dollars is for 2 minutes during crowded events.

So, at the end, I see this graph demonstrating the decrease in sales of cameras as a very positive indication for the professional photographers.