I decided to visit Kumamoto in last October and planned to stay there for just 3 days because the weather forecast said the typhoon(Tapah?) would not hit this area directly and it would be safer to stay at a hotel or any really tough building.
Yeah the typhoon did not hit here directly but we had a crazy amount of rain and a series of windy nights in this area too. My FE24mm f1.4GM died here , RX100 MK4 died here, and I had collected 8 broken umbrellas in the end of this trip. I stayed in Aso area of Kumamoto for 9 nights, I thought I would go back to my home after the first typhoon passed my area. But I decided to stay extra 4 days as a couple more typhoons formed near there.
A series of huge typhoons we had in 2019 dramatically changed my view on my choice of camera gear:
When I shot this image I think there was a huge thunder storm coming this area of Fukuoka prefecture, and we were all really scared of it. I think it would kill more than 200 innocent people in this area of North Kyushu.
In 2019 we had 4 typhoons hit this area and even my area got some damage from 2 of these 4 typhoons.
The Typhoon Len Len was a huge typhoon truly devastated the 2/3rd of the Japanese main island called Honshyu and East part of South Korea. I forgot the name of the other 3 typhoons hit Honshu island of Japan, but all the three were extremely powerful super destructive super typhoons roughly equal to Category 4 Hurricanes.
I was really scared of the Typhoon Len Len of 2019 and I flew to Kagoshima. The forecast reported Kagoshima would be safe. I think they said Okinawa was also safe that time but I could not get a decent flight to that region that time.
I think if you know the real destructive power of a strong rain storm,(not has to be a typhoon or a hurricane, either) you should be really scared of rain.....it is really dangerous and can be really devastating. Floods and water are the most underrated natural disasters. I think these are much more dangerous than most earthquakes(unless the quake is a huge one like one occurred in Kobe, I think it was 1995) .
Now it is raining hard here in Kitakyushu due to another huge typhoon heading to the North East Japan , and now it seems like we are having a huge typhoon every few or several weeks here.......September seems to be the most dangerous typhoon season here. Every year many buildings are destroyed and many people are killed in July and September here..
Every night I chat with my Thai friend and Chinese friend online and they tell me it is always raining there too. So many rainy days we have now. I do not think we did have this many rainy days before 2016.
I really hate summer and autumn now. And I think something really wrong ominous is happening , maybe the only way to solve this serious environment change or world wide climate change issue is terraforming Mars as fast as we can? Hope not.
Anyway, the last rainy season Okinawa conference and the subsequent typhoon attacks really forced me to understand practicality, durability and over all usability are far more important than a tiny bit better chart shooting ability when choosing the right lens or lenses for this sort of trip. And only when I have enough time to shoot out these days is when I am on an academic conference trip like this one, or I am working on some sort of weather documentary stuffs here.
These days I have been very busy and having no time for just walking around or planning international vacation trips any more(also the COVID-19 issue is serious). So for me compact(or manageable) size is a very important lens feature or quality , it may even be one of the most important lens qualities (at least in my case now). As I have to fit a few lenses into my relatively small work bag (not a camera bag, I do not use my camera bags any more).
So regardless of resolution, etc,. all amazing optical qualities, the most of Sigma Art 35mm f1.2, Otus 85mm f1.4 APO , FE135mm f1.8GM,etc. are becoming irrelevant lenses to me.
They are simply too huge and obnoxious , scare many people and difficult to pack in a small bag.
And I have been selling these huge lenses at my school or local online sites.
Also, as I shoot in many extremely cold windy places these days, I try hard to avoid buying expensive over 2k US kind of lenses(especially GM zooms) as they are usually very complex designs with very complicated internal electronics inside(and thus easy to break). They get terrible condensations and short-circuit to die.....so easily. In winter 2019, I had a few GM zooms died or dying in this way...so, in the city area of Wakkanai and Asahikawa, Hokkaido I had to shoot everything with my 85mm prime.
That was a huge wake up call for me, I immediately decided to sell most of my expensive and big but fragile lenses.
Even expensive lenses do not last for a decade or long time as the coating quality deteriorates over a few year time period, or the lens electronics die. So in any case unless all your lenses are all manual legacy lenses, they will not last much longer than your typical consumer camera. Say just a several years or a generation.
Many people think lenses are much more important than cameras these days(especially in the gearhead community), but it is no longer the case for me.
We must realize that these modern lenses are almost as complicated as these modern cameras are, and therefore these lenses get outdated as fast as these camera bodies.
There are many people who buy expensive lenses with kind of naive expectation of these expensive lenses hold most of their original value longer than camera bodies....
Well it used to be true , but it is no longer the case. Now even Zeiss , Nikon , Canon L and Sony GM do not retain their respective high original value for a long time.
My Loxia 21mm f2.8 that many of Fred Miranda forum guys still rave about has lost about 65 percent of its original resell value in just a year. And it lost about 30 percent of its original resell value in 2019....and now it is extremely cheap, after the recent launch of the Sony 12-24mm f2.8GM and FE20mm f1.8G , it is even difficult to sell the Loxia 21mm f2.8 for 800 US. Sony FE24-70mm f2.8GM has lost a lot of its original resell value in just a matter of a couple of years too, now it is going for about 1100 USD or a bit more here(used ones).
The Batis 135mm f2.8 APO , which I just sold last week, has lost about 45 percent of its original value now. I could get about 1100 USD for it as the person bought it was an ignorant or naive person, but if I sold it online I wouldn't be able to get even 800 US for it these days.
And sheer resolution wise, these expensive lenses are not much better than cheaper lenses like Sigma Dn , Voigtlander APO, Samyang E and R mount lenses,etc.
Honestly the cheap Sigma 135mm f1.8 Dn beats the Zeiss Batis 135mm f2.8 APO hands down, and the cheap Sigma even rival the Sony 135mm f1.8GM, sure the Sony is a bit sharper at f1.8 , but except at the widest aperture setting these two lenses are pretty identical, they perform identically.
The cheap Sigma 35mm f2 C Dn is actually the sharpest 35mm prime for any E mount body , it is actually sharper than the FE35mm f1.4GM or the Sigma 35mm f1.2 Dn in the most often used aperture range. In other words, if you shoot most of your images in f1.4-f2 range , the GM or the Art is not the best or even sharpest 35mm lens for you. You can buy the cheap disposable Sigma or Voigtlander or Samyang and save a bit of money. Personally, after testing almost all new 35mm prime options(including the GM, the Art, the Samyang, the Voigtlander APO,etc.) I decided to keep my cheap Zeiss Batis 40mm f2CF as I like the 40mm AOV and its amazing close-focus ability.
Now we should replace out lenses very often for our respective type of shooting apps. All new lenses are good or at least acceptable , some cheap and small new lenses are sometimes better than a generation or two older most expensive lenses of its kind.
I think the best example case for this is the FE20mm f1.8G vs the Loxia 21mm f2.8 or the Batis 18mm f2.8ED, or the FE24mm f1.4GM.
The newer FE20mm f1.8G beats all the other 3 more expensive primes from just a several years ago.
So I think these lenses are not much safer than any camera body, the term we always hear at a various camera forums " which system to invest into " is wrong, it is not an " investment", even Leica or Phase cameras will not keep much of their original value these days.
All digital cameras are a racket , just a temporal thing.
I like the term RACKET as I got it from my Canadian Flickr fellow here a several years ago. I think it is the best word to describe the current problem of the ILC system.
