It's also 28mm; a focal length I've never really used.
I bought it because retail therapy is a real thing that a lot of us exploit. A new toy would be a distraction from the boredom, right?
My first inkling was to look at a Ricoh GR camera. Pocketable. Good sized sensor. High quality images. They make a goofy black and white only version. It was the only one in stock, and I seriously thought about buying it. How fun would that be? Of course, every photograph you take can be black and white, but not every black and white photograph could be colour.
Everything I shoot is in RAW format too. I can add the filters after. I can make the photos look like Kodachrome, or Previa, or Portra, with the push of a button or two in Photoshop. And I can make them black and white.
The Sony, with the pancake lens, could also be set to black and white mode. And I did that. I looked through the viewfinder at a black and white EVF image. The guess work was done. And I took black and white pictures today.
The other thing my camera will do is shoot that black and white photo as a jpeg, and then make a copy in RAW format, RAW being any type of photograph I want it to be. The jpeg was black and white. Exactly like this:
That's what I saw in the viewfinder. The top photo is what was also possible because of the RAW format.
From Ricoh's web page:
We sometimes discuss whether dreams are in color or monochrome. I've heard theories that people who grew up with black-and-white TV tend to dream in monochrome or that dreams and mental imagery are inherently monochrome for everyone, with color being added in retrospect.
I don't know if it's related, but monochrome photographs seem to connect more easily with dreams and memories for me than color photographs do. Even without color, they can be more eloquent than color images because you can see the light within the shadows precisely because they lack color.
My dreams and mental images are always in monochrome. It is difficult to add color afterwards. I aspire to take photographs that capture these fragments as if I were touching my elbow against them.
