Be Excellent To Each Other

Forgive my ignorance Pete - not helped by me not being able to watch that video here - but what is it about that camera that is "better" (for lack of a better word) over your existing dSLR?

No worries Gazchap.

Technically my D90 is actually superior to the X100 in a few catagories. Its focusing is a smidge faster and more accurate. Its menu controls are more flexible and the D90 has the ability to use a wide range of lenses going back to the 1970's. It also has the same number of megapixels and the manual focus is far superior whilst there are generally no quality limitations in whatever speed or aperture mix you care to go for - the D90 has you covered.

So what do I get with the X100? Well firstly it is distinctly smaller, which is key for the candid documentary and street work I want to do. The D90, even though it is smaller than the bigger DSLRs such as the D3 and D700, still alarms people when pointed in their direction. The X100 is half the weight, half the size and with a pancake fixed lens that is almost invisible.

Furthermore the X100 is silent. The leaf shutter cannot be heard which really lowers your profile when out on the streets. The X100 looks pretty gorgeous too - just like an old film camera, and that fools people into thinking your just some art project student with a shiny old thing. It can also sync flash to 1/4000sec, whereas normal DSLRs can only do 1/250. This makes for easier and more dramatic flash lit portraits in full sunny light.

One glorious element to the X100 is its fixed lens. It's a 23mm f/2 Fujinon (translates as 35mm on the crop sensor) and it is rightly raved about in photography circles. Not only is it super sharp at ALL apertures but it gives a lovely creamy bokeh. The lens itself is almost worth the rest of the camera.

Next we have the sensor which is designed to work in perfect harmony with the fixed lens, giving overall a better quality than the D90's interchangables. The sensor has no AA filter either, which boosts sharpness. The ISO is amazing with the camera too, with very little noise up to 1600 ISO, and once you hit 3200 what noise there is looks like fine arty film grain due to the unique design of the sensor. Even 6400 is usable in black and white. That essentially adds two stops to my usual shooting range. Not only that but the dynamic range of the sensor is really well designed which means that skies burn out less easily and when highlights are clipped, they roll off smoothly.

There are also the controls - a numbered old skool shutter speed dial and aperture dial which give a more tactile and faster experience. I've no idea why modern cameras ditched that system. It also has a Hybrid Viewfinder which switches at the flick of a switch from ordinary optical to electronic - so you can see the final result as you take the shot. And since its a rangefinder design (albeit without the decent manual focus, blub) you can see what happens as you take the shot, and what is happening around the frame. No blackout - it's uninterupted.

Finally its small size and lightness means that I can take it anywhere, tucked under my jacket or in a big pocket.

It won't replace my D90 for gig work or US Civil War stuff where I need the range and flexibility, but this will be perfect for everyday shooting and street-street-street! (Landscapes and portraits are pretty neat too!)

*CLICK!*

New blog entry on me new camera at the usual, folks. See siggy...

Man, this camera is kicking my ass!

It's far harder to learn how to use it to its potential than a Nikon. There's a lot of fumbling and somethings the Nikon can do without blinking it just stand-up refuses to unless you do some twiddling. The first day I had it I couldn't make head nor tail of it and everything came out blurry or overexposed or poorly judged, and nothing seemed sharp. Had I bought a lemon, I wondered?

I then took it to a meet-up of Third Floor Gallery veterans at the City Arms. Despite never having handled one before they took to it like a duck to water, explained some things to me and made me feel happy by telling me that David Hurn swore by his. We began snapping, progressively more drunkenly, and friend Joni got a good one of me flexing my guns. (You'll see it later.) They seemed jealous of it, which made me pleased.

So I took it out again later. After a whole load of blah shots I finally shot a Velvia simulated JPEG of the library from outside in the sun at f/8. Man, it was beautiful! The colours and the glow and the sharpness surpass my D90! And I've finally begun figuring out how to use its bizarre menus to effect. Colour me excited.

It eats batteries for breakfast though. And three hours to recharge!

SHOW!

Very well, here's two...





So much to learn though. Still haven't figured out how to coax its optimum sharpness yet!

Oh... these were shot JPEG straight out of camera, btw - with just a bit of contrast curve adjustment for the second one in Lightroom. Second one is ISO 1250!

Oooh, I'm beginning to get used to it now. I took it around Cardiff Market and the bay today, before helping to put up a new exhibition at the gallery. F/8, zone focus and bip the AF/AE button to snap-zoom if needed. That's the ticket. Black and white is lovely with this thing. Still learning, I keep underexposing just a touch, and I keep thinking in 50mm terms and not quite closing distance enough. Getting there, though.

These are shot JPEG with in camera settings.





ISO 3200!

I have proved, once again, to be an upseller's dream. I bought a couple of Canon 430EX II flash guns to start playing around with lighting, then realised that although they are capable of being wirelessly controlled, neither of them can be a wireless master (I was planning to have one on-camera and one off). What I needed was one of the newer 580EX flash guns to use to control the others. But I don't need 3 flash guns, and found out during my investigation that the Canon semi-pro range of cameras can be wireless masters themselves, without needing the external flash gun. So basically I now have a shiny new Canon 60D

430ex price?

Does that mean TFF won't be buying my Nikon now then?

191.

Er. I can't offer a lens with mine, so it's probably not terribly useful. *shrug*

Also, YOU ATE ME.

So I finally did it, I traded in my old Nikon gear (excepting the speedlight, might still come in handy) and went fully Fuji. It was an odd feeling, that D90 and the two lenses have served me well for so long. But I was no longer taking them out anywhere, they were just gathering dust. I hope someone else out there has as much joy with them as I had.

Aye, traded in. And I put the money towards the current best lens in the Fuji line up, the 56mm f/1.2 portrait lens! Man, it's beautiful. This means that I have the full spectrum of lenses I need for my work - the wide, standard and portrait. An 18mm f/2, a 35mm f/1.4 and the 56mm f/1.2. Sweet. This Easter weekend I shot a music festival in Cardiff called Wales Goes Pop. The 56mm, despite the tricky focus due to the depth of field being wafer thin, worked a treat. Only just started on the photos, but here's a sample:



Undoubtably the best lens I've ever owned.

Mimi took some amazing pictures at the weekend. While I feel sure that most of this is due to her artistic eye, I can't help feeling that if I had a decent camera I could take somewhat nicer pictures too (although I could only aspire to some of the quality of what gets posted on here). At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Shocked but I can understand your trade in decision, Pete. Better to put money into the things you know you want/need. That's a fast set of lenses!

My DSLR stuff doesn't get used half as much now I have my iPhone with me all the time. But I've had some good shots of my mates band for use on their posters and had my Tamron 90mm macro out with me today at the butterfly house in Lancaster. I'll post pics soon.

I have just ordered a new Canon SX50 HD, 32 GB Secure Digital (SDHC) Mem. Card, Dig Pro Case SD USB 2.0 Card Reader for £240. I've never shot with anything apart from a phone or compact before, so should be a good starting point.

Oh wow, it's been a while since anyone's posted in this one, eh? So my camera gear hunger continues unabated, and though I feel I'm fully satisfied in the article of lenses I'm always excited when Fujifilm announce a new camera. Well, there's one on the horizon and it's called the X-Pro3. I'd bought both the previous iterations and been happy with both, but there were still lingering issues with the X-Pro2. It was still somewhat slow to autofocus and the OVF/EVF combo was a lot dimmer and smaller than that little X100F I love so much. The new one is quite a departure from the norm, and its design has generated a fair few angry comments on dpreview and other forums. In fact, some seem to view it almost as an insult. You see a lot of bloggers and forum members were going on about how the X-Pro3 would definitely need to have image stabilisation, tons more function buttons and a fully articulating screen and that if it didn't, it would be a crippled camera and no one would buy it. (A lot of them also argued the OVF should be ditched to bring the costs down. In fact combining their suggestions it seems that what they basically wanted was an X-T3 with the viewfinder on the side.)

So Fujifilm said fuck that.

No IBIS.
Fewer function buttons through removing the D-Pad.
And no rear screen.

Well, actually, there is a rear screen. It's a beautiful screen. Only it's hidden. You have to flip it down to see it. Otherwise in its housed position you get a little 126x126 pixel memory-paint LCD screen that shows you what film stock simulation you're shooting. Like in the old film camera days where you'd peel off that bit of the carton and stuff it in a slot. It's a camera that's basically ordering you not to 'chimp' your photos after every shot. And it turns out that according to a lot of angry people on dpreview you cannot possibly seriously take photographs without checking every other shot that you're exposure is right and you've nailed your focus, that wedding shooters for example would be doomed without it.

Despite the fact that chimping a shot on the rear screen is pointless because you'll have already missed the moment and it ain't coming back, that the EVF or the little EVF within the OVF does that for you as you shoot through the viewfinder anyway, and that any wedding photographer that's worth their salt will be nailing the shot anyway, pretty much instinctively.

But anyway, despite my harumphing at the arguments I have to admit I was a little worried. No d-pad? Surely I need that for menus and stuff? No easily accessed LCD screen? But... but... what if I do want to check? As paranoia relentlessly dictates?

Cut to my trip to the Fujifilm-X Wedding Photographers conference in Bath this Wednesday. Cracking conference, some great lectures (one Czech speaker was obscenely good) and plenty of chit-chat and a quality bar. And oh, hello, a Fujifilm stall with X-Pro3's that we can wander the convention hall with. All day.

Oh fuck, they look fucking gorgeous. And oh fuck, the OVF feels huge now. And oh fuck, the hidden screen is actually kind of genius as I feel I can live inside the viewfinder and have that little corner screen pop up every shot and show a crystal-clear full-colour gamut pin-sharp mini-image of what I've just taken every shot I take - or check focus for me zoomed in as I shoot! Even the menu is pretty easy to quickly navigate and utilise with the thumb joystick and front wheel while in the viewfinder. And the focus is blazing fast in low light. And the new colour simulation Classic Neg is just beautiful.

Argh. Long story short, reader, I ordered one - to be delivered in four or five weeks. It'll be making its appearance at a certain wedding. Big preview with pics here: https://jonasraskphotography.com/2019/1 ... e-preview/

I went for the Dura-Black version. It's made from titanium and is scratch proof. (Though it does love fingerprints a bit.)

Oh, by the way, never stay at Bath Central Travel Lodge. Never ever ever. It may be in an outwardly pretty listed building but it is not only next to a nightclub but over a nightclub as well, has thin walls and dirty carpets. I got about three hours sleep. Thank fuck for free convention coffee. I bailed on the second night, just caught the train back to Cardiff. That bad.

P.S: Internet experts say that Fujifilm has doomed its very company with this move. But I don't know, a lot of us were pretty excited about it, though admittedly some X-Pro2 users there weren't fully convinced - it is quite different after all. But I wasn't the only one reaching for my wallet. (Happily a friend will be buying my old X-Pro2, so that's a nice discount right there. These paid gigs are helping too.)

P.P.S: Incredibly, shooting at 11 frames a second at 1/8000th mechanical shutter speed, the buffer never fills. It can go for ever. Why you'd want to I've no idea, but wow.