According to Instagram, these are my most liked and commented shots from 2015. An interesting year as I became addicted to street shooting (again), as you probably noticed I haven’t had much interest to review gear.
I much preferred taking pictures, NYC is one the most interesting places to get into street photography, or any type of photography for that matter. There really isn’t much to complain about when it comes to the latest cameras, of course there are glitches and gotchas and there is always room for improvement. Sometimes it feels better to sit back, relax, use the gear we have and just enjoy the sunset, but you really can’t talk much about a sunset 
So here is a short list of my favorite, always evolving and changing.
My all out favorite, 3 in one camera, the Sony A7rII. I have two of them.
favorite lenses: Zeiss FE 55mm 1.8, Zeiss FE 24-70mm f4 (Studio and flash mostly)
a few notes on the 24-70: This lens has a bad reputation, I am on my second copy and I can see why, my first copy was so soft at 70mm, I was under the impression that it was either tremendously decentered or a case of af malfuncion. My second copy on the other hand is insanely sharp across the field, only takes a slight hit at 70mm, doesn’t suffer from decentering and performs admirably already wide open. Extreme corners never sharpen up fully but this isn’t an issue for the kind of work I am using it for. I have no doubt the new 2.8 G Master version will outperform it, the current Zeiss FE is a Tessar, which by definition is a simplified lens design to favor compactness, at the expense of image quality. The reason I a mentioning this is Sony’s quality control, I am convinced if every copy was as good as the one I currently own, this lens would have a much better reputation. The quality difference between the first and the second copy I ended up with is drastic. On that note I should also mention I had to exchange the Zeiss 55mm, which I purchased at Adorama, a serious problem with the AF mechanism, noisy, slow and could not lock focus, Adorama exchanged it right away, without a problem.
Sony FE 90mm macro, Sony E-Mount 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 and 10-18mm F4, APS-C lenses for video mostly.
Ricoh GR, still in my bag
Panasonic LX100, a great camera getting so many things right, I hope
there will be a worthy successor soon, LX200?
The Sony A7s and the RX1r (great deals on Ebay) I do love that camera for HSS with any type of flash, the lens and image quality are stunning.
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I’ve never understood the bad reputation of the FE 24-70 f4. I have owned mine for over 1.5 years and used it on an A7, A7ii and A7s, and on those cameras I find the resolution and “sharpness” good, with the exception of 24-28mm where the edges and corners can be rather softer than the excellent centre at full aperture and never fully “come in” when stopped down, though do generally reach acceptable levels. By 28-30mm it seems to sort itself out and from 30-70mm I would say it is excellent both fully open and stopped down. At 24-28mm it can be a little unpredictable – sometimes soft edges or corners, sometimes quite good – and it’s hard to find a reason why. I have often wondered if it’s the OSS at work causing strange issues? Otherwise it’s proven to be an excellent “work horse” that focuses quickly in most circumstances, has excellent centre sharpness, mostly decent corners and edges, and what I would regard as nice punchy colour and contrast. Yes, it’s not the 24-70GM, but it is stabilised, much smaller and lighter, and mostly works very well.