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Last week we took a ten-hour bus tour through Hokkaido during a crazy blizzard. I guessing it’s always a blizzard in Hokkaido during the winter months, especially Sapporo which is the second most snowiest city on earth. I lived in the Rockies for several years back when I was in high school, but I’ve never seen it snow like it did for the week I was in Hokkaido. The snow was so thick you could sometimes only see twenty to thirty feet ahead of you.
For this bus tour we went to some Zoo in Hokkaido and then later on a short cruise on an ice breaking passenger ship. Kind of cool, but not sure it was worth the ten-hour round trip bus ride.
Busing Through A Blizzard | Sony A7r III | SLR Magic 35mm f1.2
Even though Fujifilm has really dominated the camera industry these last two years, I’m still sticking to using my Sony A7rIII as my full frame camera. It’s just an incredible low light black and white camera. I’m also slowly inching my presets closer towards having something really cool for color street photography. I know a lot of people love Sony, but once you’ve shot with Fujifilm for several years, it’s really hard to picking up any other camera that doesn’t have the Fujifilm film simulators. There is also something very strange about the Sony yellows and oranges that drives me nuts.
One day, I’ll probably switch to a Fujifilm medium format system and taper off my Sony use, but the price and actual performance of the camera itself is just not practical for what I do. So, in a few years I’ll probably try to snag a used GFX and that will be that.
For now, I’m really enjoying the Sony A7rIII for travel and landscape photography. Sony finally got it right this time and I’m having a ton of fun adapting all sorts of different 35mm vintage and Leica lenses to it.
The lens I was using here was the SLR Magic 35mm f1.2. An absolutely terribly built but beautiful lens. It became very difficult to focus in these sub freezing temperatures because the focus ring starts to seize up, but the image quality is so dreamy and the bokeh is buttery smooth. I love it and now I’m on a quest to find a real lens with the same characteristics. My Voigtlander 35mm f1.7 comes close, and while that lens is better from a technical stand point, it’s missing some of the magic these SLR Magic lenses have. Maybe some other Voigtlander or Zeiss lens will do it. Actually, Voitglander just announced a new 35mm f1.4 for Sony that looks very compelling.
