A friend mentioned that it is the longest running hot season for Singapore, almost 8 months of dry and hot for this tiny island (perhaps the world), and we are gathered in Little India for a short Diwali Festive Street Photography around Little India, a small area with thousands of Indians going about to prepare for their holiday. I took my Nikon ZF with the 26/f2.8 and 40/f2 lens with the default settings and on the “Vivid” picture control.
Let me talk about the experience shooting with a Nikon ZF with the 26 and 40. It is certainly a throwback to the film days where I started with a Nikon FM2/50 setup, and the nostalgia reminiscent to those days is uncanny. It immediately feels familiar especially when you have the Nikon ZF form factor in hand, and yet, immediately when you turn on the camera, the possibilities have escalated beyond the film days. You get immediate results as the modern camera offers, and yet, as compared to my shooting experience with my Leica M, Nikon D850 and on the medium format Hasselblad X1D Mk2, the colour rendering is amazing. It brings out a warmer (perhaps because i was shooting on the VIVID mode), the focusing were almost 100% spot on where i wanted it to, except for one quirk, which i believe is something i missed out that the auto White balance keeps popping up for me to do custom adjust, which was irritating of course. Other than that, the camera is fast, tactile, responsive, and pairing with the 2 prime lens (26 and 40), this could be the best street photography camera aside from the Leica M, Leica Q or Ricoh GR3.
The above images are all SOOC (with no manipulations) except on resizing to a smaller and more manageable copy for web uses
The lens 26/f2.8 and 40/f2, are pretty decent and I am getting to love the 26mm view due to my shooting with the Leica Q, and it offers a wider view esp on the streets where it captures activities to show the busy and vibrant activities around Little India. It may not be the sharpest lens around but it is good enough for most genre and certainly good enough for street photography.
The battery life is amazing for this camera, shooting for almost 3 hours and over 50 shots (yes i do not do burst and i do take my time to shoot), and i still have plenty of juice left on that camera (about 75% left) and i still have about 5 batteries spare (as it share the same batteries as the Nikon D850).
With me starting from the Nikon FM2 and Nikon DF legacy, I welcome Nikon ZF as my new workhorse. And after reviewing plenty of reviews on youtube before deciding on the Nikon ZF over Fujifilm XT-5, the full frame option over a APS-C, and the capability of using all my older Nikon Lens and the deciding factor is this camera has a much superior built quality. It is as solid as my Leica M, and the Hasselblad X1D Mk2. I will be exploring other lens for this such as Voigtländer z mount lens esp the 50mm f1 and maybe 35mm, and i will be doing some shooting on the TTArtisan and 7Artisan z mount lens for this as well. Cheers.
Streets of Singapore. 