A coffee at Saint Eustachio’s

Saint Eustachio is not a place for rushed photography. Between the crush of customers, the warm glare off the coffee machines, and the tight spaces, you’ve got to work with precision — and patience. Using the Fuji X-E2 with a Zeiss Planar 50mm f/1.5, I knew this would be a manual focus game. Autofocus would have been hunting in the low light, and besides, the Planar has a way of rewarding the slowness it demands.

I focused carefully on the barista’s eyes, knowing that at f/1.5 depth of field would be razor thin. He was completely absorbed in his work, and I wanted that concentration to be the anchor of the frame. The narrow plane of focus keeps him sharply rendered while letting the busy background dissolve into soft shapes and colours.

The Planar has a very particular signature — micro-contrast that gives texture without being clinical, and a way of separating the subject that feels organic rather than forced. Here, it plays beautifully with the reflections in the polished steel of the coffee machine, adding an extra layer without overpowering the scene.

Exposure was set to preserve the whites of his shirt and the subtle shading in his skin, while keeping the warm interior tones intact. The X-E2’s sensor doesn’t have the endless dynamic range of newer models, but it has a crisp, film-like rendering that suits this kind of candid portrait. I let the highlights breathe and resisted the temptation to lift shadows too much — Saint Eustachio’s atmosphere lives in that interplay of light and dark.

What I like about this image is that it isn’t about coffee so much as about the craft of making it. You can almost hear the hiss of steam, smell the aroma, and feel the hum of the café. The Zeiss didn’t just record what I saw — it recorded the unhurried rhythm of the moment.