Travelling Light

Complete wedding with the Fuji X Pro 1 - A selection of images from a complete wedding captured with the Fuji X Pro .

Via rwboyer

 

I’ve read a few reviews of the X-Pro1 dismissing its use in the studio, confining it purely to the realm of event and documentary photography. Obviously this a genre at which it excels and the core of the system’s philosophy. But as most of you know these cameras have now become my main system, not merely a fun add-on. Which means they ARE used for studio jobs. All kinds of studio jobs.

I recently did a shoot for Serdy Media, a production company which owns several specialized TV stations in Quebec — namely Zeste and Évasion, the french food and travel channels. This was a studio product shoot for their new online boutiques. After thoroughly testing the setup, I decided to again forego my Nikon kit and do the entire session using only the X-Pro1 and the 35mm Fujinon XF f/1.4 lens. It worked beautifully.

 

The X-Pro1 actually has several things going for it for this type of work:

- The ability to use the rear LCD for live view without changing how you usually work with the camera.

 

- The two zoom levels with built-in sharpening to pinpoint the focus.

 

- Large focus point coverage.

 

- Horizon line and framing guides.

 

- The ability to switch the same lens to macro mode for detail shots.

 

- No mirror to deal with. Combined with the timer function this is as stable as it gets.

 

All of this makes for a very easy going experience and allows for extremely precise work. The two points of contention when it comes to shooting this camera for studio and/or flash photography are 1) sync speed and 2) tethering. The sync speed obviously wasn’t an issue in this case. As for tethering, I’ve discussed my solution in another post already: an Eye-Fi Pro X2 card. To be honest this was definitely the weakest link in the chain, and I was very fortunate to work with a client who didn’t mind the glacial speed at which photos were getting transferred to the computer. But I didn’t like it. I made jokes about it but it bugged the hell out of me the entire time. I’m glad further testing has revealed an ad-hoc network to be exponentially faster. I won’t get caught with this problem again.

Via Thomas Menk, rwboyer

If you love Ming Thein's work (and I do) then this is almost literally a no-brainer. 

 

 

Six months in the making, I’m proud to present Ming Thein’s Photography Compendium: an iPad app like no other. It’s not for taking pictures or processing: it’s for learning and reading on the go, and all content is also retina-display native.

It’s now available for $1.99 on the Apple App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ming-theins-photography-compendium/id573025340?ls=1&mt=8

Via Thomas Menk

Ginger cat napping on a tile roof in Chengyang, Guangxi Province. (Rick Green photo.) Visit Adventurocity for articles about China or join the Adventurocity Forum for travel discussions.

And what a lovely, compact, lightweight interchangeable lens body it is! In photos, the X-E1 doesn't look all that much smaller than an X-Pro1, however in the hand it somehow works to seem a great deal smaller and lighter than the X-Pro1, mostly in a good way too. The X-E1 is everything I had hoped for in an interchangeable lens successor to the X100... well almost. The only thing I miss is the exceptional Hybrid-VF that both the X100 and the X-Pro1 have. In its place though, the X-E1 has an excellent 2.4 million dot OLED electronic viewfinder, and it is substantially improved over the EVF mode in its predecessors, however sadly the X-E1 does not have the optical viewfinder component. One major benefit I've seen from shooting with the X-E1 for the last few weeks, is the accuracy of the exposure preview in the new EVF. You really can judge what the final shot is going to look like from an exposure standpoint with accurate contrast, white-balance and saturation, far better than the rear-LCD, and there doesn't seem to be any additional shadow or highlight clipping due to the EVF itself, unlike my experience with many other cameras. In addition, the new EVF is sharp, has good eye-relief, has a diopter adjustment again (the X-Pro1 needed accessory thread-in diopters) and it gains up well in very low light levels without getting too grainy, allowing for ease of framing your shot even when you can hardly see the scene with your naked eye! The loss of the Hybrid-EVF is unfortunate though, since being able to see slightly outside the camera's captured field-of-view in a "rangerfinder-ish" fashion means you get a fraction of a second more warning when something is about to enter the scene, allowing you to perhaps nail that perfect moment. However, one thing that makes losing the Hybrid-VF more palatable, besides the excellent new EVF, is the $700 price drop from the the X-Pro1! The X-E1 body sells for only $999. Apart from the Hybrid-VF, did anything else important get lost? Amazingly enough no... from a performance and image quality standpoint, the X-E1 seems pretty much identical to the X-Pro1. It has the same 16 megapixel X-Trans sensor, sharp due to it not having an anti-aliasing filter, the same newly swift and accurate autofocus, more or less the same controls and ergonomics but in a smaller and lighter body. Really, the only other thing it doesn't have is the rock-solid all-metal construction of the X-Pro1. It does feel lighter and a little cheaper in the hand since a bit more plastic is used in its construction, but after a few minutes of use, the lightness was no longer a distraction and indeed, the lighter weight is quite welcome actually.....

 

Via Thomas Menk

"This Pictures Collections shows about the Real Toy Story  from Chinese factory workers portraits"

Via Sriram

Stunning doesn't even come close.

 

Though PLEASE check out the photographers listed.  Not sure I like grabbing pics off the internet and building a post like this.

Via Johann Barnard

Fisheye lens for a screw mount leica or other screw mount rangefinder While I realize there are very few people shooting a Leica, particularly a very ...

The Fuji X Pro 1 camera system is VERY WELL suited to this style of photography! I just got back from leading an advanced photo workshop & excursion to the outer banks on Nags Head Island in th...

Via Lynn Lane