Fuji X-Pro1

Linz got a brand new opera house called – at last and after several failing attempts due to intervention of a popoulistic party. but now that’s history and the opera looks forward hopefully into a bright future. One part of the opening has been the nightly spectacle named “a parzival” with the catalonian performance group La Fura dels Baus. A party for all senses in front ot the facade of the opera with music from Richard Wagner, giant puppets, flying humans – all voluntary people from the surrounding – and firewoorks. A perfect opportunity to show up the low noise capability of Fuji’s X-Trans-senor.

All picture were shot handheld with ISO6400 and processed with Adobe Lightroom 5 Beta

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Conclusions

While both lenses are quite good, Fujifilm has a major advantage with a more affordable offering while also retaining a better build quality. However, Zeiss has faster focusing and better image quality. This is kind of a tough test to consider but we should all take comfort in knowing that both lenses are excellent. But on a personal scale, I’ve always had a love for Zeiss products the same way that Steve Huff loves his Leicas. And in the end, I’ll have to give the win to the Zeiss despite owning Fujifilm’s lens.

Readers of my facebook page will be well aware that last month, Laura and I were travelling around Vietnam. The purpose of the trip wasn’t travel photography in Vietnam, but to explore and meet people from this fabulous country, eat some nice food, and drink some good cocktails. That is exactly what we did and along the way I tried to capture the spirit and essence of the country as best as I could through the viewfinder. I took along my Fuji XPro 1, and despite meeting the concrete from a decent height on two occasions, it performed admirably, and I thoroughly enjoyed not lugging around a large SLR and a selection of heavy lenses! Laura carried the Fuji x20 and I hope to blog some of her images soon, as I’ve had many requests for further images with this little camera since my review a few weeks ago.

Vietnam is a country featuring a multitude of very different landscapes and ways of living, making it a photographer’s dream in terms of capturing varied images within one trip. However each area had its own set of challenges when it came to shooting. We started our trip in the capital, Hanoi. It is the definition of ‘hustle and bustle’, with street sellers galore, and more scooters than you can imagine. Interesting photo opportunities are in abundance but the difficulty then lies in finding a ‘clean’ shot, some early morning starts were definitely required here! Conversely, the idyllic hill town of Bac Ha, which we reached via an interesting overnight train has a more simple way of life – buffalo’s are used to plough the fields, and double up as commuter vehicles for the kids! Here, we were challenged by the weather as thick mist often covered the beautiful landscape. However the times when it lifted slightly added an extra layer of ‘rustic charm’ to the images captured. From here we hopped on a junk around the karst islands of Halong Bay, seeing some spectacular landscapes, before flying to the more commercialised Hoi An, which still manages to retains its charm and was one of our favourite places. A quick stop over in the westernised and modern Ho Chi Minh (formally Saigon), before a rain filled visit to the waterways and floating markets of the Mekong Delta. Finally we chilled out on the beaches around the stunning island of Phu Quoc – enjoying warm waters, sun and a few beers!

From the bustling cities, to the colourful hill tribes, we enjoyed; green tea with builders, crazy scooter rides, lost wedding rings (mine!), flying fish, pigs on bus roofs, frogs legs, beautiful sunrises and lots more. We visited as much of Vietnam as possible and had an amazing time. We met lots of lovely locals and equally lovely fellow travellers,  I can highly recommend a visit to this happy, colourful, friendly, interesting and lively place!

The common thread throughout the trip was the interaction between the locals, strong family bonds and close knit communities, working and socialising together. As I take a similar approach to my travel photography as that for my wedding photography, focussing on the people and telling a story with my images was my photographic aim. I took a fair few shots during the trip, and have narrowed it down to my favourite 50 that represent the country and its people…

It's been a little over a year since Fuji released the X-Pro 1 - a Leica for the rest of us. It paid homage to the great rangefinder type cameras of yesteryears. Although digital, it was the first camera that handled like it was a film camera with files that were incredibly film-like. The familiar manual, mechanical-like controls were a delight for those who began with pre-autofocus film cameras. The X-Pro 1's output was also unexpected. The colour reproduction is so true to life that it amazes me even today. The camera comes with simulations of Fuji's great films like Velvia, Provia, Astia, colour negative & b/w. With the X-E1 as a second body and just waiting for the 55-300mm zoom to come, my X bag will be all set for more great photography.

I’m a photojournalist by profession, a documentary photographer by choice, and a street photographer in my heart, but before all of that, I just love photography, and l love to take pictures. Enter in the Fuji X-Pro 1. Very recently, less than one month ago, I sold all of my DSLRs, fast glass and long lenses and purchased two Fuji X-Pro 1 bodies, the XF 18mm f/2 (approx. 28mm equivalent), the XF 35mm f/1.4 (approx. 50mm equivalent), and the XF 18-55 zoom and I couldn’t be happier. For nearly two decades I’ve wanted a Leica film body (M6), but in my career as a newspaper photojournalist and with all of the professional sports I had to cover, I just couldn’t justify it. In the late 90s I bought the amazing Contax G2 and loved it dearly. But as film started to fade and digital started to pick up speed, the M6 dream also faded. I finally sold the Contax in 2005 while it was still had value. As Leica released the M8, and I saw that the price was significantly higher than the already pricy M6 (I was never really interested in the M7), and that it was not a full frame sensor (because I really wanted a 35mm Summicron–Leica’s 35mm f/2 lens), I lost interest. Then the Leica M9 was released which caught my attention, but I knew that as a working photographer, I could never afford nor justify the cost of one camera and one lens, let alone a complete system. I love Leica, but it simply cannot be justified in its cost (for me personally), thus out of my reach. Leica used to be the camera of the working photojournalist, and many legends of photography have made iconic photographs with them, but the world has changed, and making a living with photography is harder than ever. With new amazing technology, and steep competition, working photographers are now using new tools that get the job done. There was a time in my career that if a photographer showed up for an assignment with anything but a Nikon or a Canon, they were looked at as an amateur, but not anymore. One of the big attractions of the Leica, to me, is its simplicity; in this it’s unbeaten still today. I applaud Leica for (mostly) remaining true to its heritage with the digital M cameras, and I hope they always will. No other camera system even comes close to the workmanship and quality build and materials of a Leica. If you’ve ever held a Leica lens, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Fuji, analogously, has invented a camera system that gets back to the basics. Things like a real shutter speed dial, check, a real aperture dial, check, a real optical viewfinder, check. But Fuji also added a real exposure compensation dial that’s even better than the ones the old Nikon’s used to have on their film bodies. Also, the wondrous beauty of Fuji’s hybrid viewfinder, where the user can switch, on the fly, from optical (OVF) to electronic (EVF), is the icing on the cake to me. This camera is a breath of fresh air to photograph with. The buttons are perfectly placed and they are few (only what’s needed). Today I chose to slow down and shoot just for the sheer joy of it. While photographing with the X-Pro 1 I was able to switched from optical finder, to rear LCD, to electronic viewfinder, to changing the ISO, the aperture, etc., etc. all effortlessly and without a thought. It was so much fun. In fact, it was pure joy. I really haven’t had this much fun shooting with any camera since my Contax G2. Imagine that, a professional photographer actually enjoying shooting when not getting paid to do so. (By the slightest chance if anyone from Fuji happens to read this article, I ask you to PLEASE not change a single thing on the X-Pro 1 camera body with the future X-Pro camera body, but instead just install dual, quad-core processors (for a little more speed) and we’re good to go. This camera is that good! .....

A little blog about shooting Mixed light set ups with the Fuji X-Pro

It seems to be that most people first looked at the Fuji X -Series cameras as street style cameras or reportage cameras.  At least this might of been how they were first marketed.  It was quickly very evident that the camera system was more than capable for much more. A fashion photographers dream is a quick, simple, stripped down camera that packs a punch. Super sharp and super punchy.  Shooting natural light is a lot of fun with these cameras as it does let you travel with smaller kit bags and encourages freedom and movement. Being able to use the “photographers eye” to work with natural light can be super rewarding.

For my work, I love to create a mix of the two. As much as I love the lighting styles of people like Joey L and Damien Lovegrove. I am trying to work out what my lighting style still is. Maybe one day I might work it out !! The Fuji works great in the studio, on location and a mix of the two. Which is what I like to to..   Using speed lights, mixing them with naturally created light and additive lighting styles is just so much fun. Playing about with light can be very rewarding. When syncing the X-Pro, you have a number of options. It is great having the back up Sync port for a cable, but I use the Pocketwizard triggers. I do find that keeping the shutter around 1/60th of a second works well compared to the 1/125th that most people would be used to with a DSLR. Also.. when in the studio or using strobe lighting, I tend to go for the 18-55 zoom lens for some reason over the faster primes. I think this is the idea that if I don’t need a fast lens  I might as well have the OS lens or the chance to zoom. It would be nice to have the X-Pro shoot using some kind of tethering to Lightroom or Capture one though, maybe some day !! The other thing that would be nice, which I am sure they will change for the next iteration of the X-Pro is to have the screen show the exposure rather than balance the LCD and only leave you to gauge exposure using the +/- meter. Trying to balance out all your tones can be hard, and shooting with colour filter or grad filters is not much fun either. Maybe also a dedicated X- Sync mode would be nice.. Kinda something like Pentax have. I am a big fan of the Pentax shooting modes.....

On Tuesday, May 14, 2013, Zeiss held a press event at the Standard Hotel in New York City to launch it's new line of Touit lenses for compact system cameras (CSC).  The event was well-attended by writers from various media. There was a video presentation on a big screen, followed by a talk by Richard Schleuning, Zeiss's National Sales Manager in Zeiss's Camera Lens Division.  Everyone was then invited to try out the new lenses.  A model was provided for the event, and attendees could walk and photograph along the High Line, an elevated linear park created from a former railroad line which runs along the lower west side of Manhattan.  The High Line runs right under the Standard Hotel. Zeiss Touit lenses are a new line of autofocus lenses for Fuji X and Sony NEX cameras.  Two lenses were available at the launch:  the 12mm f/2.8 and the 32mm f/1.8.  Both lenses should be in stores in early June of this year.  A third lens, a 50mm f/2.8 macro, is expected in the late Fall of this year.  Zeiss expects to add more lenses to the Touit family in the next few years. The Touit name comes from a genus of small neotropical parrots.  The name is intended to evoke compactness and agility.  The lenses also bear the names of classic Zeiss designs:  Distagon for the 12mm wide angle, and Planar for the 32m standard lenses.   

Some key facts about the new lenses: 

- They are compact and lightweight, in keeping with the size and weight of cameras they're made for.

- They have a metal exterior with rubber grips for the focus and aperture rings.  Interior mechanical parts are metal and plastic; Zeiss didn't want the lenses to be too heavy.

- The lenses have the Zeiss T-star anti-reflective coating, along with advanced stray light reduction.

- They have an almost circular 9-bladed aperture for rounded out-of-focus highlights.

- Color characteristics will be similar throughout the Touit lens family.

- The manual focus ring is electronically coupled (there is no hard stop or distance scale).

- The aperture ring has clicks at 1/3 stops. (Touit lenses for the Fuji mount have aperture rings, unlike Touit lenses for the Sony mount.)

- The lenses are sold with a 2-year warranty.  An extra year is added if the buyer registers on the Zeiss web site, thus extending the warranty to a total of 3 years.

- The next version of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw will have profiles for Touit lenses.

- The Touit 12mm is an aspherical design with floating elements.  It is currently the widest lens for the Fuji X mount.

- The optimal aperture on the 32mm lens is f/4.  The optimal aperture on the 12mm lens is f/5.6.  MTF charts are available (or will be soon).

- Zeiss chose the autofocus motor for robustness and reliability, not for ultimate quietness.

- A lens hood is included with each lens.

- Touit lenses are not weather-sealed, and are not planned for Micro Four Thirds cameras. 

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The other day I had to make a call I never wanted to have to make. At 28 I needed to see a chiropractor - some would call it the photographers curse, a curse that unfortunately goes with the territory. Lugging heavy camera gear around, usually with it hanging from the neck, waist or one shoulder eventually takes its toll. This realisation along with some other vague and equally suspicious excuses was one of the reasons I'd been interested getting myself one of Fujifilm's X-Series cameras - the thought of having a camera that was small and light and could maybe even supplement my heavy old SLR was appealing. I knew they would probably never replace my SLR for work but as everyday cameras they seemed to offer a good compromise. In 2011 I bought the Fujifilm x100, a camera I loved to hate, a camera that for me was so nearly there in terms of what I personally was after but somehow not quite. It looked fantastic (for some reason more of an appeal to me than it really should be) and contained pretty much my perfect carry around set-up; packing an equivalent of 35mm f/2 lens. It was almost too silent when it took a photo (to the point where at times I wasn't even sure it had taken) but is small size and discretion were a big plus for me, the whole thing could slip in my pocket and yet it felt good in the hand with a nice weight. The whole manual shutter and aperture operation were a total winner for me. I think Fuji had finally realised that most camera manufacturers seemed to have failed to realise, photographers are creatures of habit, we are by and large dinosaurs, and we like what we know, and what we know works. So many cameras that come on to the market aren't aimed at dinosaurs, they are aimed at the mass consumer. Manual shutter dials and aperture rings disappeared from all but 'pro' cameras because they seemed archaic. This may well be the case but equally they were a tried and tested function that had been the norm for decades, and yet within a matter of years digital cameras had consigned them to the graveyard, much to the annoyance of the dinosaurs. Fuji it seems finally cottoned onto this and their x-series cameras are evidence of that – they’re a nod to a system that is tried and tested. Nevertheless with the x100 they still managed to get a few things wrong. They may have designed the hardware well but the internals, the menu system, was a generally nonsensical and the camera had a habit of not responding particularly fast, it was sluggish, not much but just enough, and it acted at time likes a despondent child. Luckily Fuji were a company that actually listened to its customers and the firmware updates did start to tackle these problems.......

Random Pictures From The Fuji X-Pro1 - Keith Low

Con una cobertura diagonal de 99º  y una focal equivalente al paso universal de tan sólo 18 mm, este nueva óptica Carl Zeiss Touit Distagon T* 12 mm f/2,8 corona por el momento la cumbre angular - rectilinear - del mundo CSC, o lo que es lo mismo, ofrece el ángulo de toma más amplio disponible para cámaras compactas de óptica intercambiable, bajo una perspectiva corregida evitando las fuertes deformaciones típicas de los "ojo de pez". Idóneo obviamente para los amantes de la arquitectura, las perspectivas dinámicas y tomas ultra angulares, la capacidad de "sorprender" que tiene este objetivo con su vasto ángulo de toma es sencillamente, increíble. Ya desde las primeras tomas, una marcada perspectiva se adueña de todas nuestras composiciones, si bien es difícil en un principio amoldarse a este "nuevo punto de vista" la altísima corrección geométrica que implementa - imaginamos una labor en tándem con el firmware de cámara - hacen adictivo su uso en todo tipo de escenas. Remarcable, como ya adelantamos hace unos días en nuestra prueba de laboratorio, la calidad aportada desde sus primeros valores de luminosidad, incluso a f/2,8 obtendremos una máxima definición en el centro de la imagen, con una pérdida muy baja en los bordes y esquinas, algo complicado de conseguir si atendemos a su naturaleza ultra angular.

Visualizando archivos Raw, respecto a la nitidez, aprovechamos para recordar la importancia que tiene en este proceso el revelador usado, en aras de unificar criterio, todas las tomas del presente artículo son conversiones directas - sin edición del original - del Raw propietario de Fujifilm (RAF) a JPG de máxima calidad mediante Lightroom 4.4......

When I told people I was going to Trinidad, a few of them asked me, “what about Tobago?” Of course, my friends and I always planned on visiting both islands during our trip, but “Trinidad & Tobago” is simply too long a name for any country to have, and I’m too lazy to say the whole thing every time I refer to the place. Plus, all I got was one stamp on my passport! I decided to split this series in two mainly because I didn’t want it to be too long, but it’s just as well. Although the two islands  do have some things in common, overall, they are markedly different. Trinidad is much bigger; it’s more like a country, with several grimy urban areas. Tobago is a lot smaller and it caters more to tourists. In fact some of the people we met there, didn’t even bother to visit Trinidad. Their loss. We rented a car at the airport from a local business owner whose picture I sincerely regret not taking. He was a big guy who told us not to worry about big companies run by white people, and we were happy to give him our business. We ended up with an old Nissan, a real hoopty… but a solid one that never broke down on us. I waited at the above location as my friends sorted the hotel room. We all ate lunch at said location – chicken, rice, beans, and a local dish called callaloo. We had left Trinidad at noon, and we finally got settled a little past 3pm. The hotel was right on the beach. The only problem is it was a ridiculously long walk from the lobby/car, and there was a wire right in front of our balcony spoling the view. Things could have been much worse. As soon as we got to the beach we were accosted by a local dred trying to peddle his wares… I’m not sure if he actually made them or if that even matters. If any of us had been alone, we probably would have shooed him away, but we ended up talking to AUF for a while. Sure enough, like some typical tourists, all three of us now have a bamboo incense holder with his name engraved on it. Ha! He was not the only person we met on the beach that afternoon. Roger – the other dred pictured below – seemed more reasonable, and he wasn’t trying to sell anything special. The big kid on the other hand was all about trying to take us on some fishing expedition. Of course, he failed, repeatedly. There were more… some cool, others not.....

I'm starting a collection of "Outtakes." These are images that I like, but don't seem to fit an existing portfolio. I don't want them to go unnoticed, though. Fuji X-pro1.

Todays blogpost is a review of the Helios 44m-4 58mm f/2 lens. The lens was produced in the old Soviet Union by Jupiter among others from 1958 till 1992 and is one of most mass produced lenses in the world! I bought the M42 screwmount version (hence the 44m name), since I have that adapter, but they made it available in many other mounts. The reason for buying this lens was one thing, and one thing only: The swirley bokeh effect! The lens has, what is referred to as optical vignetting, meaning that out of focus “bokeh-balls” becomes more elipsoid as you move away from the center of the image. Also referred to, as “Cat-eye” effect, this phenomenon gives a pronounced feeling that the background “swirls” around the center focus subject. What really surprised me though, was all the other scenarios this lens was good for! The 58mm focuslength on a APS-C sensor turns into a 87mm FOV equivalent which makes it a really nice medium tele lens. For the streets I was VERY surprised at how well it is doing. And it does amazing with black and white photography. The lens is built like a tank! Seriously. METAL and GLASS….the USSR-way!! My copy is very smooth in the focus ring, and the aperture ring has nice clicks. A good condition lens. Because the lens was built in such superfluous numbers they’re CHEAP…. and I mean REALLY cheap! $10 on ebay and you get a good condition lens…. it’s ridiculous, really.....

The firmware update Ver.2.04 from Ver. 2.03 incorporates the following issue

1.AF speed is improved when used with XF55-200mmF3.5-4.8 R LM OIS.