Proceeding quickly

At the north horizon you can already make out a patch of light "floating" over the city. The first indication of that the light nights are approaching fast. It then goes so far, that only the brightest stars are visible around 00.50 over Stockholm, when it is the darkest. Even those stars are then barely visible.

So, the dark night time is shrinking... fast. Already now we have no more astronomical nights (with the sun standing 18 degrees below the horizon). I think it is something like 15 degrees or so - but don't know the exact number.

No, wait, i can check that on an interactive sky map... The sun reaches in Stockholm its lowest point at 00.44 with -13.6° below horizon.

When this photo was taken, she was around -12.4° below horizon, close to the border of the nautical twilight (around -12° i believe).Notice however, that a photo tends to make the light look brighter than it actually was to the naked eye.

Astro landscape with Fujifilm GFX

I was a bit surprised how many stars i was able to pull out of the RAW file, especially when using highlight oriented sharpening, which makes star look brighter, and more of the fainter stars emerge. Since the summer triangle is also part of the milky way - i was still surprised that it could be found in the file. Especially given that this is a mediumformat camera. It's sensor is truly malleable.

This strikes me only, because i have not used the Fujifilm GFX since Oct 2025 - so I am a bit rusty. Now i wanted to see how it feels like dealing with the GFX and the night sky. Well finding the stars was awful - because almost everything was just black. I had to go to ISO 5100 in order to see something more clearly on the LCD screen, and in order to set the sharpness on a brighter star.

Not fun at all.

Good sensor performance

But at the same time, i was surprised about the performance coming from the sensor, and the sharpness with the GF 30 mm ƒ 3.5 lens. Very pleasant on the stars even at wide open aperture ƒ3.5 ! Plus that despite being an equivalent 24 mm wideangle lens - it didn't really feel as distorted like a 24mm lens. Overall, the Fujinon GF 30mm ƒ3.5 is perhaps my favorite lens of all - because it renders landscapes so beautiful and with less distortion than i am used from a 24mm lens on a fullframe camera.

Yeah. I say it again. Mediumformat is mainly for slow photography. More clumsy than normal for sure. Like in back in the older days of analog medium format photography... same thing. Albeit today, we can enjoy very sharp images, shallower depth of field when desired - and a higher amount of automation with both AF (autofocus) and IS (image stabilization) when needed.