Funny how often “never” turns into “inevitable” in my little picture-taking world. In this case, it’s both a ditching and a re-acquisition.

After all the charm, mystique and <insert word of your choice> of Leica faded, I opted for Nikon, a Zf for shooting short and a Z50II for shooting long. The Z50II was my first Nikon in a long, long time that could focus accurately.

Until I put the 500mm f/5.6 PF lens on it. The images made by the combo were gorgeous, on the infrequent occasions I managed to get the camera to focus on the right thing. But–and this I should have realized beforehand–it’s really an entry-level body, a handful of frustration for anyone accustomed to a full set of controls in an ergonomic layout.

To fill the void, I grabbed an EOS R7 and an RF 100-400mm, a setup that had served me dependably, making competent if not great images. The lens was to be a placeholder and eventual backup for a weather-resistant lens, a must in these parts. After a bit of testing, I settled on an RF 200-800mm, all the reach I’d ever dreamed of.

It had two niggles. Even though it was easy enough to walk around with and do handheld shooting for a few hours at a time, the long zoom throw caused all sorts of problems. It couldn’t be done with just fingers, like most zooms; it required wrist and shoulder motion as well as repositioning the lens with each focal length change. The other thing: sharp as it was, it lost contrast badly after about 600mm, probably the real reason some reviewers called it “soft” at the long end. It had to go.

But I wasn’t about to ditch my days-old R7. And, good as the RF 100-400 may be considering its market peg, it’s not top-tier. What was left? The RF 100-500mm, a lens I’d tried twice and totally loathed both times. IQ was fine, but it had this habit on both the R5 and R7 of instantly focusing on the farthest thing from the camera, ignoring even medium-sized birds along the way.

Seeing that the R7 had been given a few firmware updates since I last owned one, I decided to risk trying the RF 100-500mm again. And so far it works. Not perfect, mind you; it focuses so quickly that IS sometimes throws the focus point. But on the R7 it has enough reach for about 98% of what I shoot.

And in case you didn’t notice, this time around I didn’t say “never again” about Leica. With seven decades completed on this planet, maybe I’m starting to learn!

R7/RF 100-500mm . . .