Everything is a Tradeoff

Iteration 37 was called The Myth of the Perfect Thing and in it I chronicled part of my years long search for a new camera to replace or at least complement my Fuji X-Pro1, ultimately leading me to the Olympus EM1 Mkii. A few days after I recorded that episode I actually bought an X-T3 and since I started posting images taken with it, I’ve gotten some emails and messages asking what happened and whether or not my feelings had changed about the Olympus. The short answer is no, but I feel like this deserves a little clarification. The main reason I chose the Olympus was how it felt in the hand, but as I mentioned mentioned in 37, it wasn’t JUST the feel — the performance of the camera is outstanding, and not outstanding for a micro 4/3 camera, just outstanding. Full stop. But something in the back of my head kept me wondering about the new Fuji. If you were ever an On Taking Pictures listener, you heard me repeatedly wax poetic about my love and borderline obsession with my X-Pro1. Esquire just released a brutally honest and revealing interview with Bruce Springsteen talking about politics, mental health, and exorcising some of his demons. And if you enjoy the interview and want to learn more about Bruce’s life, I can’t recommend his autobiography Born To Run highly enough, especially the audiobook version. Hearing Bruce tell his own life story — at least for me — was a profoundly moving experience. Also, Russian director Maxim Zhestkov has created a new short film called Layers, which shows a variety of matte black monoliths being bisected by an invisible force revealing multicolored layered interiors. My description isn’t doing the piece justice—it really is hypnotic. And finally, Google has created a new augmented-reality app called Vermeer that pulls together images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art here in DC, the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, the Frick Collection, and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum into a virtual museum of all 36 pieces of Vermeer’s work. Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0