I have the first batch of pictures made with the FE 14mm f/1.8 GM (and Biljana has a series with the RF 16mm f/2.8).

14mm G master is wider than the more conventional 16mm, but not so much that the lens would require adaptations to the shooting style; basically, it’s an ultrawide, and you use it as such. Biljana’s 16mm Canon focuses closer, which is very useful for certain kinds of near/far compositions, but the actually important difference is the aperture. f/1.8 really allows you to “see in the dark”, and especially combined with the sensor stabilisation in the A7RV it allows you to get sharp pictures of stars at 1/3s hand-held. Biljana doesn’t have sensor stabilisation in the Canon RP body and the RF 16mm f/2.8 doesn’t have optical stabilisation, which forced her to try insane things like 1s exposures hand-held, which of course can’t be done. However, while there was still a reasonable amount of light available, it all worked fine, and well into the deep blue hour, but not past the point where we could no longer see where we were going without a flashlight. All in all, the 16mm is a very practical lens that allows you to get f/2.8 without paying through the nose for a 16-35mm f/2.8 zoom, or having to carry it uphill for hours. I couldn’t actually evaluate sharpness of either lens because we used them for real life photography as this type of lens is supposed to be used, not taking pictures of a flat surface and then pixel-peeping the edges. The truth is, if you’re using a wide angle properly, you are perceiving flare, sun stars, contrast, colours and sharpness around the point of focus much more than anything else, and when I look at the actual pictures, both lenses did a nice job. The 14mm f/1.8 just has 1.3 stops of light advantage in the dark, which actually matters a lot if you want to hand-hold shots with stars visible in the night sky. Both lenses are very resistant to flare with sun in the frame, the contrast and colours are excellent, and the files would print big. You do, however, get what you pay for with the G master lens, which is optically better than any ultrawide has a right to be, and that’s wide open at f/1.8. Considering how shitty 50mm f/1.8 double Gauss designs are wide open, that’s actually mind-bogglingly insane, considering how hard it is to design a decent ultrawide lens. This one is not decent; it’s basically a perfect lens, to the point where I just use it as I would any other fast prime, without thinking that this shit should be impossible for an ultrawide, and in fact was ten years ago. The Zuiko Digital 7-14mm f/4, for instance, had severe flare with sun in the frame, and the total absence thereof on the G master is the most shocking aspect of its design that I noticed. If I’m trying to look for things that could be improved… there’s basically nothing. It’s reasonably small and light for what it is (the Zuiko 7-14mm f/4 zoom is much bigger and heavier, and that’s for 4/3, not 35mm), it’s reasonably priced for a top-tier lens, it’s built well and it’s optically so good it feels surreal, but in a good way, because it just works and doesn’t let you know there’s anything weird about that.

The 16mm f/2.8 Canon is impressive in its own way. It’s so small it almost falls into the category of pancake lenses; definitely pocketable, and on a general image quality scale (what you see looking at the picture as a whole, rather than magnified details) it’s excellent. The most important aspect of this is resistance to flare with sun in the frame, contrast and colours, which are all excellent. If the G master shocks you with its optical performance, this one shocks you with the fact that something this small, light and inexpensive works this well at all, in lighting conditions that are not completely unreasonable. Basically, while Biljana still had enough light to work with, she was producing pictures that are a very close match to mine, but when she ran out of light and tried to hand-hold 1/3s shots, there was a sudden drop where the shots were no longer usable due to motion blur, while I kept cranking out completely unreasonable stuff.

When I would have to hand out recommendations, I’d say both lenses are excellent for what they are, and in both cases you get good value for the money. The Canon RF is small, light, cheap and capable of cranking out great images. The G master is absolute insanity, a 14mm lens that makes a typical 50mm f/1.8 look like a piece of crap optically, is as sharp as a macro lens, produces no flare or contrast reduction with sun in the frame and lets you take pictures of constellations handheld.

Ursa Maior supra crucem

But I would say that the Canon RF works better in daylight or at least reasonable amounts of light, for anything from interiors, urban photography to landscapes, and the G master is an optically ideal lens without any real limitations, unless you want to use filters, which can’t be done due to a bulbous front element. The actual question is whether you want to take pictures that really take advantage of such a lens, and for most people the answer will probably be “no”, and I would recommend something like a 16-35mm f/4 zoom, which can give you the ultrawide angle but with the flexibility to use something more reasonable for most shots. There’s also a skill issue with the ultrawides; you really need to know how to work such a lens and compose things in ways that will take advantage of it, instead of getting empty compositions that look like shit. So, I would definitely recommend your first ultrawide to be a 16-35mm f/4 zoom, because those are cheap, practical and reasonably light, giving you the option but without forcing it upon you immediately. However, if you find out that such an ultrawide zoom is what you use most of the time, and mostly at the wider end, then an ultrawide prime might be a thing for you. Both Biljana and I actually prefer 35mm fast primes for most things, and we find their perspective more natural, so ultrawides won’t be the first tool we reach for, but they are very nice to have when we need them.

August on Hvar, a notable tourist location. You can imagine. Biljana and I went to the store to get fish for lunch, that ended up with her going to the store and me driving in circles on the parking lot, waiting not for a free spot, because that’s not happening, but for her to come back so we can get the fuck out.

On the good note, the FE 14mm f/1.8 GM arrived:

That’s the first time I have a combination of ultrawide angle and wide aperture. Usually, I’ve been using wide lenses stopped down, so this is a new thing for me. There’s a lot of haze in the air so I’m not sure about photographic opportunity, but haze can create very nice orange and purple hues in the sunset, so let’s see.

Pagrus pagrus; A7RV, 14mm f/1.8

I had a pretty long pause with photography, since I was in a heat wave that doesn’t really encourage going out with a camera unless you really want to have a heat stroke, and it’s also a tourist season where everything’s crowded and I hate that.

Also, spending karma in industrial quantities is about as much fun as it sounds, so I wasn’t in a mood for anything really. I was processing that shit, trying not to go crazy too much, and eating too much food because I was at home and stressed out.

Recently, I figured out that if I climb the local hill, which is basically the top of the island, the temperatures are manageable even during the summer if I start late enough, and return in the deep dark of the night. Of course, once we get high enough to get out of the heat and the crowd, photographic opportunities start making themselves apparent, and then of course I see that I only have my phone with me, because climbing in hot weather is hard enough carrying my own excess weight, let alone camera gear. 🙂 After several frustrating experiences with iPhone raw files taken during the blue hour, I actually took the Sony A7RV and the FE 35mm f/1.4 GM with me yesterday, and we also stayed out longer than usual which means that the sun set while we were on the top, and we were descending through the blue hour and into complete darkness. So, here’s the album and some individual shots. This is Biljana’s album.

I still can’t believe I got completely sharp 61MP hand-held shots in deep blue hour with stars clearly visible in the shot, and the only thing I felt I was missing was the ability to get ultra wide angle of the Zeiss 16-35mm f/4, but of course the Zeiss at f/4 would run out of light far, far before I took some of the best shots, so I would have to carry the tripod with me as well, and even if I could convince myself that it’s a good idea, fiddling with a tripod in those conditions is really impractical and possibly even dangerous, because you can barely see anything in the conditions where that camera manages to get all those colours. So, I’m considering FE 14mm f/1.8 GM, which I didn’t buy because I thought it overlaps with the Zeiss so much that one would never be used, and its strongest point is astrophotography in the mountains. Well, now that looks like more than just a fringe use case.

In photographic theory, we are normally taught to avoid harsh light, that casts hard shadows and creates washed out colours; essentially, avoid the middle of the day, especially if it’s not cloudy. It makes sense, however it is all relative to the purpose. Sure, if you want to shoot portraits outside, either create your own light or avoid such conditions. Also, if you want to shoot landscapes, better stick to early morning or sunset, where light has warm colours and creates all kinds of subtle transitions in the clouds and on the ground.

However, if you want to take pictures in the city, harsh midday light with hard shadows and reflections in the glass might be exactly what you want. I actually prefer the harsh but almost horizontal light before the sunset, almost at the golden hour, because it’s easy to find motives where the light shines through leaves or grass or whatever, and makes everything glow as if the light comes from within.

It doesn’t work that well when the light is vertical, so high noon is to be avoided still, but there’s still that period when the sun is low enough that it passes through flowers and leaves almost horizontally, but strong enough to create light that would conventionally be deemed too harsh for photography. However, if you use sun the way you would normally use a lightbox, to pass light through almost-transparent things in order to make them glow, that would work just fine.

As for the shadows, sometimes I actually want them, and the light that makes them is the actual subject of my photo, and the thing formally chosen as a motive is chosen merely to showcase it, and has no particular meaning as such. The fact that I take pictures of flowers or pine cones or leaves doesn’t mean that I particularly care for them; they are merely elements I use to portray atmosphere and feeling.

Sure, light sometimes casts harsh shadows, and for some types of photography you want to avoid that; portraits, for instance. You don’t want shadows on your model’s face. However, if light and atmosphere are the subject matter, sometimes shadows are what you actually want, and they are what makes the picture.

So, there might be no such thing as bad light; only bad light for certain things. Some photographers consider blue sky and a clear day terrible conditions for landscape photography, because one tends to create boring “postcards” in such conditions, instead of the mood and character you get from the clouds and so on. I kind of agree, but to me it only means you need to get more creative and dismiss the easy shots everyone would get first; take those pictures just to get them out of your system and delete them later, but once you get past the obvious, you might get all kinds of ideas about things to shoot in harsh light and a washed-out hazy blue sky.

Yesterday I finally took that picture of the little St.Luke church and the nice new house nearby that fit very nicely in the landscape, from the road above. I’ve been planning to do something about it for years already but the vantage point is such that you can take the shot only with a telephoto, and since I didn’t have one I planned on sending a drone, but I didn’t want to disturb people with it in season, and out of season it was either cloudy or windy, and so for one reason or another it always got postponed.

The crow on top of the church is a nice accidental detail that made me chuckle due to symbolism. 🙂

It feels nice to check those boxes.

I also went to the nearby abandoned hotel that went to ruin after some succession failure after the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the sight is horrifying, because it didn’t just go to ruin like Pripyat, because it was abandoned. No; the locals systematically broke every piece of glass, every piece of furniture, spray-vandalised the walls, and even brought in old car tyres and who knows what other waste to dispose of here. It looks as if the Orcs came and made a point in destroying everything and making it as ugly as possible in a manifestation of their consciousness and choices.

It doesn’t look post-apocalyptic, in a sense where nature takes over human cities after humans are gone. I’ve seen such places, where the nature reclaims its own and the feeling is always calm, restful and beautiful. No, this is not like that; there’s a Mad Max post-civilisation look to it, the way things must have felt after the fall of Rome, where the barbarians plundered everything that wasn’t bolted to the walls, and then set the rest on fire, or scrawled some illiterate nonsense on the walls, smeared shit on temple altars, and then gradually used stone from old buildings of forgotten meaning to build their unsophisticated primitive stuff.

That’s why I felt the symbolism of that crow on the church so strongly, as if it were a sign.