“if you’re not passionate with what you’re shooting, it’ll always show in your work,” says portrait and film photography aficionado Robert Luxun. What’s most interesting about his recent work is his choice of lens for portraits. While most portrait photographers these days would choose an 85mm or 105mm, Luxun prefers to go at least twice as wide and picks a 40mm Rokkor f2 as his primary choice. He’s also a big fan of Sony and the strides they’ve made in the mirrorless community.

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If you look at Luxun’s work, you’ll see that although he’s back to Sony for most of his non-film work, he’s not particularly brand loyal. He’s made his way through multiple brands and models, choosing the ones that worked best for him at various times in his life. And he does indirectly raise a valid point about the pains of loyalty – how long does one wait for your favorite brand to innovate? Buying into a brand’s ecosystem is a long-term investment, and swapping out to another brand can be significantly expensive. Do you wait around for your favorite brand to keep playing catch up? At what point do you choose to switch because you feel that being loyal is hurting your career progress in photography. Two of the three major camera brands were late to the mirrorless game, which in hindsight clearly hurt their market shares. And even when they took their baby steps in it, Sony had already leaped ahead.

Robert didn’t wait to move; he preferred to focus more on what helped him produce better pictures than anything else.

The Essential Photo Gear Used by Robert Luxun

Robert told us:

Sony A7riii

Canon 5D Mark II

Nikon D850

Hasselblad 500cm

Minolta CLE

Voigtlander 40mm 1.2

Rokkor 40mm

It took me a while to find the camera combinations that made my style. Both in digital and film photography has been quite the journey, and I have developed two completely different styles depending on what equipment I’m shooting with

The Phoblographer: Please tell us about yourself and how you got into photography.

Robert Luxun: I’ve always had a passion for something in creative arts, and it was a long road to find myself as a photographer. I originally was a music major but couldn’t even make it through my first year of that. While I love music, I found the technical side I was not well suited for and didn’t have the ear as well as I thought I would. While the passion was there, I realized it was something I could not pursue as a career. After some searching, I switched my focus to earning a Digital Arts degree. While it directly did not focus on photography, I was required to take a few film photography classes as well as drawing to better learn about realistic lighting, shadows, etc. I fell in love with the camera since then. Because of my background with software and editing from schooling, I was able to stand out a little more on the technical side. So I actually was more of an editor than I was a photographer at the time.

I kind of went backward in many ways that most photographers learn today. The creative ventures did not start until years later, after I learned a lot of the technical stuff which I was fascinated with. Because one thing school can’t teach you is style and experience.

The Phoblographer: Without starting a brand war, tell us briefly what led to your Reddit username?

Robert Luxun: I made u/SonyKilledMyNikon account when I switched over to Sony mirrorless cameras. I had at the time a Nikon d850 and had been waiting forever for Nikon to come into the mirrorless game. Of course, when I finally made the switch that same year, both Canon and Nikon decided to introduce their first mirrorless cameras, but by then, I couldn’t have cared less. Sony had already established itself as a leader in mirrorless technology and had quite the options finally for native lenses. Whereas Canon and Nikon were just starting out, mainly due to their own decisions to delay creating their own mirrorless bodies

The Phoblographer...