** 2025-11-10 03:04:16 +0000 UTC ** about 948 words ** 5 min

Today, my guest is Florian Ziegler.

He’s a web designer, a developer, and a photographer. On Mastodon, you can find him at @florianziegler@mastodon.social where he posts daily photos. You can check all of them on https://florian.photo.

Here are the topics I picked up for him ⤵️

Keychron

Underrated. But to be honest, I don’t have that much experience with (modern) mechanical keyboards. I used them back in the day (e.g., the one that came with the original iMac) and I love looking at peoples’ custom-built keyboards, but that is something I don’t want to get into, because it would consume too much of my time. I use a Keychron K3 and I like it.

WordPress

I use WordPress every day – for our clients and our business. I have many years of experience with it, it is extremely stable, and it is very convenient to develop for. For most of our clients’ needs I still believe it is the best solution. It is the most successful content management system in the world for a reason.

All that being said, working with it for such a long time – plus, adding the drama over the last year – has lost some of its appeal. It doesn’t feel as fun (for lack of a better word) as it once did. (I wanted to get back to that excitement that I had when I started out developing with/for WordPress. That’s why I switched my personal sites over to Kirby a while back. Working with it feels like those early days, when I got into this whole web development thing. It is refreshingly lightweight, and you have to add everything you need yourself.)

So, I think I have to go with overrated, just for the fact that there are other CMSes out there, that do enough or exactly what you need, whereas WordPress will bring everything and the kitchen sink, which might be too much, especially when it comes to personal websites or blogs.

Lightroom

I’ve been using it forever, and I never really tested any alternatives. (Aside from a quick look into some open source alternatives available for Linux, but I found those kinda unintuitive.)

Even though other available options like Capture One sound interesting and might even be better at developing raw images, I just do not have the time (or energy) to look into them. All my images are in Lightroom, I know it like the back of my hand, thus I am really fast at post-processing my images. It just works and has been very stable for me over the last couple of years. The only downside I can think of is that it is made by Adobe.

I think it is rated exactly right.

Leica Q

It is hard to say underrated here, mainly because of the price of Leica cameras in general. I think a Leica camera is something you work yourself up to – through other (much more affordable/sensible) cameras. You either want one, or you don’t. When you buy a Leica, it is definitely not about the specs.

The original Q was my first Leica camera, kind of a gateway into the brand. The image quality, the handling, and the build quality are all amazing, and I still use it all the time.

So the first-gen Leica Q (Typ 116) is underrated and still a great camera in 2025.

Ice cream

That one is simple: highly overrated. I pretty much prefer all other sweets over ice cream.

Books

Since photography is my favorite topic, I’ll suggest two photo books that I love:

• The Book of Everything by Mary Ellen Mark
• The Suffering of Light by Alex Webb

And my replies ⤵️

Keychron

Underrated. I found them to be affordable and well-designed. I have a K2, but I stopped using it since I received a Lily58 as a gift from Monospace.

They’re a great way to get into the world of mechanical keyboards.

Wordpress

I did use it before, the community version, and for many it’s maybe still a good choice.

Today, I prefer to use static site generators like Hugo, the one for this blog, Jekyll, or others.

Less maintenance of plugins, databases, etc.

I would rate it overrated for those reasons.

Lightroom

I had the life licence, paid for … life. But, after a couple of OSX updates, I got a message saying I can’t use it anymore, and that I should go with the monthly subscription. That really made me furious.

I was using only that old iMac 21“ for my photography, and I sold everything.

I was already only a Linux user, except for Lightroom. I made the switch, and use only Darktable on Linux.

One last thing I discovered in episode 151 of Linux Lads is that Adobe makes you pay €20 a month for Photoshop on an annual basis. However, if you cancel before the end of the year, they charge you a €40 cancellation fee.

F*ck that!

Lightroom is a great app, but I can’t stand Adobe, and for this I will score it as overrated.

Leica Q

Handcrafted cameras are expensive.

Hours in the making, it’s understandable that it won’t be cheap. But, I have an issue buying an electronic device that will fail compared to a full mechanical camera. That’s mainly why I opted for the Fuji XPro cameras.

I have never tested the Q, and I can’t score it, but I did enjoy the Leica M though, even with it’s expensive price.

Ice cream

Underrated. I ❤️ ice creams… all of them. Ok, maybe not all of them. But, I discovered some flavours this summer, in Serbia that I didn’t even know that they existed.