The decision to leave my school and take a chance with at a new school teaching a new subject was in some ways difficult and in other ways easy. Seventeen years in a place can do that to you.

Changing camera systems is sort of the same. The first real camera I bought was in Poland: a Zenit I bought at the jarmark. After that, I bought a Nikon. When I returned to the States, I bought my first and last Canon, and a couple of years after that, I bought my first digital camera, a Sony. Finally, when we bought a DSLR, we went back to Nikon. First, a D70s. Then a D300. And seven years ago, almost to the day (6 March 2018), we bought a D500.

It was about time for an upgrade.

But to what? DSLRs are on the way out — it’s all mirrorless these days. And besides, we wanted something small: the D500 with the 2.8 lens weighs over 1600 grams, and it’s huge. Not as big as a D6, but not as professionally expensive, either.

We’d been using our Fuji X100 almost exclusively over the last year or so, and we’d gotten spoiled with its size and simplicity. But it was nearing its end: released in 2011, our lovely little Fuji was 14 years old — ancient by digital camera standards. So, again, it was time for an upgrade.

We wanted something small, but in the end, we wanted a bit more functionality than the X100 series would offer. While we love the camera, it does have its limitations. We thought briefly about the Fuji X-Pro 3, which is similar to the X100 series but with interchangeable lenses. But that price…

In the end, we decided to change camera systems entirely and go with the Sony a6700.

When the battery was charged up, E and I took the dog and the camera for a walk to see its low-light capabilities. The same walk, in fact, that we took with the D500…