5N does Kauai

Towards the end of our vacation in Kauai - and thought I'd share my 5N photos.

For some background, my primary interest is shooting landscapes. My main camera is the Pentax 645D on a tripod with filters. It produces great results, but it's big, heavy & a process.

I've been in search for a good quality, small secondary camera, ideally with video. For a while it was the Nikon D7000 - but found it still way to bulky, and found I kept taking the 645D instead of it. Next I went to the Leica M9. I found that I LOVED the lenses (when I could get them), and liked the body - but the rangefinder was taking plenty of practice for me to nail the focus, and the size was still larger than I wanted (and, of course, no video).

I wanted to try the NEX-7, but availability and early reports on wide angle M lens results pushed me to picking up the 5N. I did an initial comparison between it and the M9, and quickly decided that, for me, the 5N was a better option (size, ease of focus, ability for it function in point and shoot mode to hand to my wife, video).

So, I sold the M9 just before vacation, and brought the following lenses:

Voigtlander 12mm
Zeiss 24mm 1.8
Leica 35mm 1.4
Leica 50mm 2.0

I found that my most used lenses on the 5N have been the 12mm & 50mm - worth noting that I have a strong lean towards the wide side of things. I expected to use the Zeiss a lot, but found the manual focusing of the M mount lenses so easy - that I preferred them. I expect to return the Zeiss when I get home (I can keep the kit lens for p&s mode for my better half).

Some of these images are duplicates of what I took with my 645D - so I could compare results. Not surprisingly, I strongly prefer the 645D when the 2 cameras are in direct competition. However, probably half the days on this trip I wanted to travel light, and only took the 5N - and I've been pleased the results.

If there are any questions about which lenses, settings, etc, I'm happy to provide additional context.

2012