Landscapes with the Fuji

It's been just over a month since I went and bought the Fuji X100s. So far I love it. There have been a few times where I would like the flexibility of interchangeable lenses, but I guess being stuck on one focal length makes you work a little harder for your shot.

In my free time I like to go out and do some landscape shots. For the last couple of years, its been the Sony nex 5n + 16mm. Its served me well in the past and i'd never played with a 35mm for landscapes.

Overall i've been pretty happy with the X100 for landscapes, unfortunately I haven't been out and about as much as i'd like to, but what I can say is that the lens is pretty damn sharp, that's for sure.

Hope you enjoy.

My first week with the X100s

Like I mentioned in my last post, I bought an X100s. I was meant to get a black one, but they ran out, so they sent me a silver one instead. I'm personally not a fan of the panda look, but it's not too bad the more I look at it. I may consider painting the silver black.. we'll have to wait and see.

There were a few cameras I was considering before I went and bought myself the X100s, honestly, it probably wasn't even that high on my list of "cameras I want." The few cameras I was looking at included the Sony A6000, NEX6, Fuji XE2, Fuji XT1 and even the Nikon Df..

What I liked about those cameras was that they all had interchangeable lenses and were small and light, perfect for travelling, one of the reasons I bought the NEX 5n in the first place. Although I really REALLY liked the Fuji line, it meant I would have to buy more lenses, more gear, more accessories, more money. The thing that i've found about cameras is that, you always want more, even when you think have enough - it never is.

The beauty of the X100s is that you buy a beautiful 35mm f2 lens that comes with a camera body. The way I looked at it was that the X100s would be the perfect travel camera because that's all I would need to take with me, wouldn't have to worry about which lenses to take because there only is one lens.

The X100s isn't very big, certainly smaller and lighter than it looks in photos. It's a little bit bigger than the 5n, but this has the EVF/OVF built in, which adds a little height to the overall size.

I went back to Melbourne last week and I took the Fuji for its first test run. I've never restricted myself to a 35mm lens before, i've always been a 50mm kinda guy, but after using the X100s for just over a week now, I can safely say that i'm leaning towards the 35mm camp. The 35mm lens means I have to get closer to my subject which doesn't bother me really as it means I can be more intimate, more emotion from the shot, but the 35mm also gives you enough width to fit more into the frame than the 50mm, those extra 15mm's let you tell a completely different story.

Anyway, as this isn't really a review of a camera or anything as I don't think i've really had enough time with it yet to give a review or anything. However as an initial look and thoughts on the camera, i'm damn glad I made the jump to the X100s. The idea of camera that just takes pictures without any finicky menu's or buttons is really quite refreshing.

The X100s is what the Nikon Df wants to be.

I mentioned I liked to use flash right? One of the main reasons I went for the Fuji was for the beautiful little leaf shutter. How can you not love overpowering the sun at any shutter speed. damnnnnn

Well that was my first look at the X100s, definitely more to come.

My two weeks with the X100

I'm pretty late to Fuji party, but like most parties, it's cool to be fashionably late, right? The X100 has been out for a few years now and to be honest, when it first came out, I never payed too much attention to it. A fixed lens, crop sensor, retro design - mreh is what I thought. I'm not going to write a review because honestly, i'm pretty bad at writing and there are other notable photographers who can explain everything there is to know about the X100, call this my, first impression.

A colleague of mine was thinking of selling his X100, so I decided to borrow the camera off him for a few days just to see how it was and what the big deal was.

The first thing I noticed is how small the camera actually is. I always thought it was bigger, obviously it's not, perfect for travelling.

Personally, i'm a 50mm kinda guy and 9 times out of 10 it's my go to lens, you could call it my desert island lens - if there was such a thing.. I've never shot exclusively at 35mm, the first thing I noticed was the lack of isolation you can achieve with a 35mm. Yes, you can isolate the subject, but you need to be a LOT closer to your subject, you lose the almost short telephoto effect of a 50mm wide open. 

I'll be honest, I struggled to shoot the X100 for the first few days, i'd shoot and shoot with it but never get any shots I was completely happy with. A lot of the photos I was getting looked almost like snap shots, regular boring photos that anyone could get. It took me a while to get used to the 35mm field of view, it just required me to get a little closer than what i'm used to, not much, about a step closer. 

My first real outing with the X100 was at the Nan Tien temple, it was a chance for me to take just one camera, one lens and see what I could come up with, if anything at all. Naturally for a lot of people, the wide angle lens is the go to lens for landscape and architecture, you can fit everything in without having to move. The X100 does not let you do that - at all. If you want to fit more in, you move back, if you can't move back, you try and make it work.

The idea of a camera that makes things harder for a photographer is quite absurd, however it did force me to work a little harder for my shots. The results.. I was pleased with, but of the few hundred photos I took, there were only 10 or so I actually liked.

After my first outing with the X100, I hated it, absolutely hated it, the shutter speed goes in full stops and you need to turn the wheel to get 1/3rd stops, you can't shoot past 1/1000th at f2 in aperture priority mode, so you need to use the built in ND filter, the AF is slow, if you get too close to your subject you need to change to macro mode, the list goes on. 

After my first, not so pleasant experience with the camera, I put it away and didn't use it for a few days. For days it just sat there while I cursed at it for being such a crap and hard to use camera, however something about it made me want to take more photos with it. 

Wanting to give the camera another chance, I started taking it to work with me, I figured it would be the perfect camera to capture spontaneous, non work related photos when on the go without having to use my large and heavy work kit or my iPhone.

The more I used it, the more I liked it. It's hard to know exactly what it is, I mean, the camera is so quirky and flawed in so many ways, but it's so good and right in so many ways too. It took me about 5 days but I finally started to embrace the camera. I understood the limitations of this little silver box and as long as I stayed within those limitations the camera would perform fantastically. 

There's something truly liberating and enjoyable about not having to worry about gear. I am a Nex shooter and I do love the Nex - now alpha series of cameras, however the lack of firmware updates, horrible out of camera colours and lack of lenses had left me a little despondent with Sony and my future as a Nex shooter. 

I bought the Nex as my portable camera kit, a camera that gave me DSLR quality in a tiny camera. It was an almost perfect system, small and light, interchangeable lenses, what's not to like? The problem with the Nex system is that it made me want to always buy more things for it, more lenses, more add ons for it. One of my lenses wasn't wide enough, so I bought a wide, I wanted a 50mm equivalent so I bought another lens, I wanted a zoom lens, so I bought one of them too. I wanted a camera system that could do what my full frame camera system could do, I wanted lenses equivalent to my full frame kit because I was comfortable with it. 

But when using the X100, it all changed. Like someone had flicked on the lights for the first time, it finally made sense to me. Why do I want a camera system to replicate the camera system I already have? Sure it's smaller and more portable, but when you start buying more lenses, more add ons more accessories for your system, it's not very small anymore when you take it all with you travelling. The X100 is just a camera with a lens. That's all. I looked at the Fuji X series of cameras but honestly, if I bought one of the interchangeable lens systems i'd be spending more money buying more lenses and i'd be back to where I started, that is, spending more time worrying about gear rather than just shooting and making pictures.

By this stage, my mild fondness of the X100 became a a huge crush, it made beautiful images, it made me a better photographer - compositionally as it forced me to move and I stopped worrying about buying more gear because frankly, there's not too much you can add on to the X100, except for grips and buttons etc, but they don't count. 

My huge crush became love when I started using that beautiful leaf shutter for off camera flash. 

I love my flashes. That's all I have to say about that. Off camera flash is one thing that the NEX system could never give me, the X100 does it all - and then some. To be able to overpower the sun and shoot at 1/1000th + at f2, it was true love.

This little silver and black box, the same silver and black box that I cursed at the week before had slowly crawled its way into my heart and found a very special spot in there. This camera I despised, hated, LOATHED had somehow made me love it, despite it's highly irritable quirks and down falls, however, after my 2 weeks with it, I was sold. 

So much in fact I went and bought one. My X100s should be arriving sometime next week....

Lions, bats, hawks and dragons.

Unfortunately I didn't shoot any of those animals, a dragon would be cool, maybe even cooler than a unicorn, but we all know how hard they are to find and shoot.

Chinese new year just passed earlier this month and they sent me down to Crown street mall and the Nan Tien buddhist temple to shoot some lunar new year celebrations. Nan Tien is beautiful, it's the largest buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere I hear, architecturally very beautiful with fantastic gardens as well. Having spent the last couple of Chinese New Year's in Gladstone it was nice to come to a city where they had a lion running and jumping around. Obviously it's not Melbourne, Sydney or Asia but hey, it's better than nothing.

Sometimes in my job I have to go and photograph things that are pretty confronting, things that make me feel uneasy, usually i'm not too bothered by things, i've been to my fair share of fatals, sure they're bad, I don't enjoy seeing people die, but i'm usually pretty distant from it. I'm an observer just documenting what's happening in front of me, however this time it was different. 

I wasn't at a fatal shooting someone who had driven into a truck and killed themselves at 100km/h, or someone who had been murdered by their significant other, it was a bat, a grey fruit bat. We covered a story about people putting nets over their fruit trees because they didn't want birds or bats eating their fruit, sounds fair enough, when I was growing up my uncle would always put nets over his apple tree to deter the birds - and it worked - however I never thought about what would happen if they got trapped or if they ever injured themselves on the nets. 

The job description for this was pretty basic "meet such and such who is a carer of fruit bats." in my head I had the perfect shot, she would be smiling at me and her arm would be out with some bats hanging off her. Brilliant photo, lets go. 

I walked up and introduced myself and prepared for my shoot, I asked to see the bat we'd be shooting. She scurried off to the other room and pulled a bat out of a cage who'd been severely injured when caught in nets. 

It was not what I expected, he was dying, practically dead. She pulled him out slowly and he let out what seemed like his final breath, the smell of rotting fruit is what struck me. Here was this little creature about to die, dying right in front of my lens. 

I'm usually not bothered by these things but anything to do with animals hits me right to the core. We shot him for about 10 minutes and when we put him back, Sandra, the fruit bat volunteer told me. "He's gone." She slowly put him back in the cage and covered him with his blanket. 

Feeling pretty despondent I asked to see if she had any bats which were on the up, not so.. dead, to be blunt, luckily she had some.

Speaking of 'on the up' the Wollongong Hawks won their 4th game in a row last week against the New Zealand breakers. The hawks have been pretty up and down this year, unfortunately NBL is no where near as big here as it is in other countries, there are rumours of clubs shutting down due to lack of funding and low ticket sales, but the Hawks are one of, if not the only original club left since the inception of the NBL in the 70's. They're playing for their 5th win in a row tonight, fingers crossed they get there.

Last week I shot my first NRL game, I don't know anything about league but being in a stadium with thousands of fans cheering really gets the hairs on your neck to stand up. I've shot league before but never at a professional level. I don't know any of the players, hopefully I can learn them within the next few months so shooting them and identifying them will be a LOT easier.