When I got into the Leica cameras I use, I had built a kit around street photography, urban photography, urbex photography, and travel photography. The next thing I started doing was adapting vintage lenses to them. Then I started using TTArtisan glass on the Leica CL and loved it! My Leica SL2 now carries the 50mm APO Summicron L pretty much all the time as well. I love the SL2, but for a backpacking trip, it is probably not the best choice.
The Leica CL, while perfect in size for travel, is not weather sealed… I came to this realization while hiking the Pilgrims Way in England a while back. (I did a small series of videos on this trip if you are interested) and this is when I came to realize that while the Leica CL is really small and lightweight, it is also not my favorite for hiking trip travel. Rain is a real threat in England and I was fortunate that my camera did not get caught in a cloud burst.
So knowing all of this, I started down the path of finding a new travel camera to shoot with…
I looked at several factors to guide my choice.
The first was it had to be weather sealed or it was a no go for me.
The next is it had to have IBIS as I love shooting with vintage glass and this allows me to shoot at much slower shutter speeds while handheld.
I also wanted a full frame, 24MP sensor if possible as these (in 2024) have much better low light performance due to the larger photo sites on the sensor.
It also needed good battery life as these Leica mirrorless cameras just dont have great battery life for me.
After searching for a year or so with no luck, Nikon drops a bomb on me with the launch of the Nikon Zf retro styled camera. You could have just as easily called it the “Nikon Special Custom Built Camera For Dave” and the name would have been accurate. HaHa!
I immediately fell in love with it…before I even laid eyes on one in person… When I see a new camera that I am interested in, I will search all about it that I can and see if it will fit my needs and do that at a price point that I am comfortable with.
The Nikon Zf mirrorless camera is a camera that checks all those boxes and more… You see I am in love with the retro-style camera design aesthetic like the Fujifilm XT-3 and now the Nikon Zf (as well as to a lesser degree the Nikon Zfc too) I owned the fujifilm XT-3 for several years and it had two main shortcomings that made me want to move away from it over the years.
The crop sensor had pretty bad low light performance (it was 26 mega pixels so it was doing a lot of work to get it all in there) and the lack of IBIS in a mirrorless camera. Cameras at this time were coming standard with IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) and I felt this was a huge misstep for Fujifilm on this camera. I, none the less, used it for several years anyway and to great effect too, but the lack of these two features was a nagging thought at the back of my mind the whole time.
Then Nikon came out with the Zfc and I initially was in love with it, but upon closer inspection, it was simply an XT-3 in a Nikon shell. Yeah, it had a few things that were newer and (debataby) better, but it still lacked certain things I wanted. I had reserved myself at this point to wait for a replacement to the Nikon Df or maybe something by Leica that was closer to what I was wanting. Well as fate would have it, Nikon saw the demand for the retro camera design and came out with the Zf… A full frame, IBIS, 24 megapixel, mirrorless camera loaded with all the magic that they could cram intot the beautiful Nikon retro shell.
So to be honest, I was still skeptical that this would be the next camera for me. I have gotten really comfortable using my Leica cameras and the thought of learning a new camera was really not that appealing to me. But the more reviews I watched on YouTube and the more I just looked at the camera in general, the more I liked it.
So for now, this is my new travel/street machine. It has wonderful rendition and is a joy to shoot with. I look forward to taking it on outings now and I have the 50mm f1.8 S lens if I want auto focus and to be able to access all the special features that have to do with the auto focus system. So going forward, there will be more about this machine as well as the two Leica camras I use as well. You see, those two machines are also wonderful cameras and I still enjoy using them too, I use them for certain things as I have found. But I still love getting them out and using them.
Till next time I hope you have some luck getting your photos the way you want…