This year has not been a good year for my photography. I have basically left it a bit behind, not really chasing my goals. I feel bad for it and miss taking constant photographs for public and personal view.

This is all due to things that got started last year, and that my Self-Portrait project captured my mood/personal change “coming out of it”. The fact is, nothing is really settled or done, I’m still in a place where some of the lingering effects of the big event that happened last year still affect my mood and desire to do things.

If the situation doesn’t evolve before the end of the year, I don’t know if I will set goals for next year. I don’t want to set myself targets to not meet them.

I will, on the other hand, keep trying to push myself to keep the site up to date. Spring is just around the corner (i.e. Spring Equinox) and with the warming weather and flowers blooming, a great opportunity to take my “warm weather” hero photo for the website. I have already come up with one idea (to be rehearsed before hand to see potential results) but I’m not sold on it yet.

I have other photography related activities that I will start soon-ish. I have come across some old photos, negatives and slides and it would be a great opportunity to try to restore those photos. This will require me to learn to use Photoshop, as I rarely do. Most of my editing is done in Lightroom, some on Nik Collection (currently I have version 4) and just a bit on Topzlabs. Less than 1% of the development work I do involves Photoshop (when I use it, it’s to smoothen the skin a bit).

Last but not least, I want to buy my last DSRL before having to go mirrorless. I have my eyes on the Nikon D850 which has a more dense sensor (better one as well), faster processing power and wider ISO range. I say it’s my last DSLR because Nikon has been pushing for mirrorless quite strongly. I don’t necessarily want a mirrorless, especially if I have to buy a whole new set of lenses for it (which Nikon made sure the fittings between DSLR and mirrorless lenses aren’t the same). As a result, I will most likely move away from Nikon, which has been a family brand since I was 8 years old.

The advantages that the mirrorless cameras in theory provide are counter balanced by some other design un-desirable, at least in the Nikon brand. I probably have said this before in other posts, but will repeat it here. First is lens cost: an equivalent to my 50mm f/1.8, which I paid less than AUD$300, costs approximately AUD$1000. That’s a significant price difference, over 2x more expensive! The second item is the product attributes, while the F-mount 50mm f/1.8 is 68.5 mm in length and weighs 235 g, the equivalent lens in Z-mount (mirrorless) is 86.5mm in length and weighs 415 g. The Z-mount is bigger and heavier. The major “advantage” of the mirrorless is that the camera is smaller and lighter due to the fact that it doesn’t need a reflective mirror that needs to go up and down with every photo. The difference in weight for the camera is easily made up by the difference in the lens weight.

So, looking forward, I don’t know when any of this will happen: new camera, Photoshop skills, warm weather photo and goal setting. My life is once more in a limbo.