In my last post I wrote about my joy of shooting with my Fujifilm X100T. I have since then been out and about using it a bit more and appreciating this quirky little beast for what it is – a highly capable compact camera.
Earlier this evening I was just checking over some camera settings and noticed that there was a (minor) firmware update from 8 years ago which I hadn’t applied. Whilst noodling around online I thought I’d check out pricing for the current latest iteration of this camera, the X100V. Not that I’m in the market for a replacement, I was just curious.
WEX were showing the X100V at £1,349 which I believe is around the RRP, but out of stock. So I took a look on Amazon and very nearly choked on my tea when I saw it listed at £4,510.
Amazon UK listing for X100V
£4,510 for an X100V?
You could buy the medium format (Fuji are now calling it “large format”) Fuji GFX 100S for £4,799. Ok, you’d need to add a lens to that… but seriously?
Apparently the X100V has been trending on TikTok after somebody raved about it on that platform. Just goes to show what a powerful platform that is, not that I’d want to go near it.
The X100V is a lovely little camera and it has a few features I would appreciate but you would have to have way more money than sense to pay £4,500 for one.
Come to that my X100T (two generations older) is also a lovely little camera and I’ll continue to shoot with it and enjoy it. Hopefully I’ll have more photos taken with it to share here soon.
Clock tower of the Trent Building, University of Nottingham, viewed across Highfields Lake.
With a daughter studying at University of Nottingham I do often find myself visiting that city, often at short notice. Such an occasion occurred last Friday. I had recently had quite an extensive photo walk around this area lugging my full Fuji X kit with me. This time I just tucked my little X100T in my satchel for a less encumbered experience.
One of the two “golden trees” by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva near Lakeside Arts at Highfields Park, Nottingham.
I’ve been a fan of the X100 series of cameras since the original model was released back in 2010. I still have my original X100 but I did “upgrade” to the X100T a few years later and I still use that model.
I love this little camera for several reasons. It has a fixed 35mm equivalent f2 lens. The viewfinder is unique to the X100 and XPro lines, a hybrid optical / electronic viewfinder, flick a lever on the front of the camera to switch between the two. There’s an integrated ND filter (which I didn’t use on this trip) and the fantastically quiet, very nearly silent, leaf shutter. There is also the option to use an electronic shutter which can be handy when shooting at f2 in bright conditions (as can that built in ND filter).
Boats waiting to be taken out on the lake viewed through the railings at f2.8 .
What I love most about it is the fact that it is compact and self contained. I can just sling it in a bag (or a coat pocket) and always have it with me. I have a wrist strap for this camera so when I’m out shooting with it I often have it constantly in my hand with my finger on the shutter release, ready to go.
Using this camera makes me shoot in a different way. I feel liberated. With any interchangeable lens camera there are all the options for lenses to consider. With the X100 series you have what you have and you shoot to try to take best advantage of that. It simplifies the experience which I find refreshing.
I remember back in 2012 I visited Rome with my family and I had the option of taking my Canon EOS kit but I decided to just take my X100 (the original model) and I thoroughly enjoyed my shooting experience. Of course, you can rule out any telephoto shots – no zooming in to statues up high on top of a roof etc. Having said that Fuji do have a couple of add on lenses for the X100, the TCL-X100 resulting in a moderate telephoto angle of view equivalent to 50mm and the WCL-X100 which results in a wider angle, 28mm equivalent. I don’t own either of these conversion lenses, they simply screw into the filter thread of the fixed lens so they’re simple to add but for me it would take me back towards shooting with one of my system cameras – adding more options and more kit to carry about.
I’ve resolved to get out and about more with my X100T. It is ideal for street / city photography and also for taking along on a hike in the countryside. The 35mm angle of view is pretty good for both environments. Hopefully I’ll take it along on a photo walk around Leicester soon.
Boats tied up ready to be taken out on the lake, Highfields Park, Nottingham.Life jackets draped on the railings ready for use on the lake. Highfields Park, Nottingham.
About 18 months ago or so I bought myself a small drone, the DJI Mini 2. I thought it would be cool to get a new perspective on the world and be able to take some rather different photographs.
I’ve not used it much since I bought it so I decided to break it out and try to get more familiar with it this weekend.
I headed out to the Leicestershire village of Hallaton where I know there are the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle.
Hallaton Castle from the air.
I had actually flown the drone here before in the early days of my ownership but I was really focussed on getting to grips with the basics of flying the thing and although I took some photos and video I wasn’t really concentrating on that at the time.
I need to practice way more. I want to learn to fly the thing smoothly so that I can capture better looking video. Taking stills is easy by comparison. Just fly the thing up there, point it towards your chosen subject and pick your moment. Video is a whole different ball game. Flying the drone around your subject without jerky movements whilst keeping your subject nicely framed – yeah, I need a lot more practice at that. DJI do help by adding a few programmed manoeuvres such as circling a subject or spiraling out from it but I want to learn to have that level of control manually.
Hallaton Castle from the air.
The three photos above were taken on Saturday 22nd April 2023 at heights of between around 60 and 100 meters above local ground level. I shoot in both raw and jpg and then process the raw files in Lightroom (and whatever other bits of processing software I might feel like using at the time) as normal.
The video… Yeah, the video… Well, I managed to produce something but I do have a fairly steep learning curve here. Yes, I need to learn to fly the drone with more finesse but I also have never really done much video work of any kind. And it shows. But hey, I’m learning.
Hugh McManners playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
On Friday 24th March 2023 I got back to something I have long enjoyed doing – taking photographs of musicians playing live at small local venues.
This was the first time I’d taken my camera to a gig since pre-covid days and it felt really good to get back to it. I headed down to The Soundhouse in Leicester where a variety of artists were performing that night (auditions for Leicester’s Western Park Festival this summer) .
It was also the first ever time I’d visited The Soundhouse. I’ve been following the Leicester music scene for around 35 years so this seemed something of an omission. I’ve haunted The Musician and The Donkey frequently and go back to the days of The Royal Mail and the folk club upstairs at The Spread Eagle. I really enjoyed my visit to Soundhouse and I’m looking forward to returning.
Ro Jordon playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
I shot using my Fuji X-H1 and a variety of lenses. The 100-400mm to get right in close, the 90mm f2 for slightly wider shots (and I enjoyed using this lens in combination with the IBIS provided by the X-H1) the 35mm f2 for something a bit wider and even the 10-24mm for much wider “whole stage” shots.
I love contrasty lighting so venues which employ spotlights make me smile. And at The Soundhouse they really put on an interesting light show for the size of the venue.
Daz Lynch playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Why do I enjoy this so much? Many reasons. Of course, I love to hear the music and on an evening like this you get to hear a variety of styles. As I said, I like contrasty lighting. Not all venues employ a lighting rig like the one at The Soundhouse of course but when they do I like to take advantage of it. I’m also hopeless at posing people. When a musician gets up on stage they take care of posing themselves and then produce a variety of expressions invoking a range of emotions. Of course we no longer have smoke filled basement jazz clubs, but that’s the kind of venue I love to shoot. We still have the jazz clubs, just not the smoke filled ones since the indoor smoking ban came into effect in the UK in 2007.
I’m hoping I’ll be doing more of this soon. For personal reasons I’ve been absent from many things which I enjoy so much and it feels great to finally be getting back to some of it. I’ve added this post to several blog categories including “projects” as I see shooting live music to be an ongoing, life-long project.
More photos from the evening below. I ended up taking over 700 shots so just a small selection!
Hugh McManners playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Hugh McManners playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Ro Jordon playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Daz Lynch playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Paul, Olive & Sam of Bellatones playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Olive of Bellatones playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Paul of Bellatones playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
Olive & Sam of Bellatones playing at The Soundhouse, Leicester. 24th March 2023.
A couple of weeks ago I visited Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. Despite having lived just 30 miles away all of my life this was my first ever visit. I was inspired to visit by having seen photos taken there by a friend some years ago and the knowledge that the place had been “preserved” in the rather run down and shabby state that it was in rather than being renovated.
I took my entire bag of Fuji lenses and a couple of bodies, my X-H1 and my X-Pro2. As it turned out I used my 90mm f2 on my X-H1 and my 35mm f1.4 on the X-Pro2 for the entire duration. As they don’t like large bags in the place then I’ll know better what kit to take next time and leave the Think Tank Retrospective 20 camera bag at home.
I loved the lighting conditions inside the house and on this visit that’s all I did, explore the house. There are hundreds of acres of grounds and a church and heaven knows what else to explore and I’m sure I’ll be back regularly to seek out new photographic inspiration.
The rocking horse shown above was in a room that was used as a schoolroom. I was loving the way the sunlight was pouring through the window to the right and creating the kind of localised contrasty lighting I enjoy so much. I did a quick B&W conversion using a somewhat modified “Film Noir” filter in Silver Efex. A couple of others shots from the visit are shown below.
Rocking horse at Calke Abbey in black and white.
Lamp and books on a side table, Calke Abbey.I’m always attracted to dilapidation and this old window certainly fitted that bill.
For some years now I’ve been actively trying to encourage more wildlife into my garden. I recently bought a new bird feeder as the old one was rather too narrow for the feed mix I wanted to use. The feed would get stuck in the tube and not fall down to the feeding positions.
Having hung up the new feeder and seen birds start to get used to it being there I thought I’d try to nab some photos.
I set up my EOS 6D with my 70-300mm lens on a tripod in the garden and aimed it at the bird feeder. I’ve had a radio remote shutter release for some years now. It needed a little repair and fresh batteries before I could start using it again. The radio antenna needed a spot of soldering.
With the repaired radio remote shutter release I could have the camera out in the garden and sit myself in the kitchen, watching for feathery action through the window. This gave a double advantage. Firstly I wouldn’t be sat out near the camera scaring the birds away and secondly, I would be sat right by the radiator in the nice warm kitchen with a big mug of tea and a vape. An important consideration during February in the UK.
Robin perched on my bird feeder.
About 10 minutes after I’d been outside to set the camera up, birds started to visit the feeder again. I sat watching and firing the shutter whilst I drank my tea. Once the tea was all gone I went to retrieve the camera to see what I had.
The two shots I’m sharing here were the best from the session. The light wasn’t great so I had to crank the ISO up to 640 to get a reasonable shutter speed, enough to stop most of the blur from a moving small bird (they’re alarmingly fast critters).
I did feel that the sound of the shutter activating in “rapid fire” mode was scaring the birds away. I do have mirrorless cameras which I could set to use an electronic shutter so I’ll give that a go soon. In electronic shutter mode there would be no shutter noise. I did have to buy a wireless remote for my Fuji camera’s as the Fuji remote app for my phone, whilst pretty good, doesn’t support continuous shooting. Single shot only. The new Fuji compatible wireless remote has arrived so hopefully I can give that a try soon.
I’ll see what I can do with my X-Pro2 when I get a chance. It’s good to have a little project like this I can be working on in the back garden. In these days of “Lockdown 3” it’s one place I can go outdoors to as often as I like.
Following on from my previous post about digitising the slide collection of my late aunt, Stella, I have decided to create an Instagram account to help me share the photos.
I do have a couple of other Instagram accounts but I’ve never been a big user of the platform. I guess that is about to change and I’m sure I’ll soon learn my way around it much better than I currently do.
My plan is to post a photo from Stella’s slide collection each day. I’ve already digitised enough to keep me going for about three years. There will be some photos of close family I will likely not share, although I’m perfectly happy to post “embarrassing” photos of myself, as long as there aren’t other family members in frame.
The idea was sort of “stolen” after I posted a link to my original post on a Twitter thread about somebody recovering thousands of slides from a tip in Lerwick, Shetland. I got some nice replies to my post but I spotted somebody suggesting this idea to Chris Cope, the author of the original post.
So a 77-year-old man named Nick turned up at the waste management facility in Lerwick, Shetland (affectionately known as 'the dump') recently with two bags containing around 5,000 old slides of old photos taken on "world travels"… pic.twitter.com/nHi1sBokBd
I’ve only started today so there is a grand total of one image posted so far but the collection will quickly grow. I’ve started out with the photo used at the top of this post of Dorfstrasse the “main street” in Grindelwald, Switzerland from 1958.
I will likely choose photos at random as I go so it’s going to be rather eclectic.
The Photographer – by Stella R. Tweed, Switzerland 1958.
Photography has always been a big part of my life, it’s an interest I inherited from my dad and my aunt, Stella. They had both been very keen photographers throughout their lives. My dad worked in the photographic trade and my aunt was a school teacher. They were both frequently exhibited around Leicester and were members of various Leicester photographic societies. They used to create their own black and white photographic prints in a dark room they created at home in the 1950s and also shot colour slides.
Sadly my aunt passed away in 2020 at the age of 95. Over the years we would frequently discuss photography and show each other our photos. I was aware of my aunt’s collection of 35mm slides but didn’t really get to see many of them beyond an occasional slide show back in the 1970s following her return from a holiday. I also had no idea just how very large the collection was.
When we discussed her slides Stella would typically say, “I should just throw them all out really, nobody is going to be interested in seeing them”. To which I would respond quite firmly that I would love to see them so please don’t throw them away.
The author at the age of 8 (going on 9) snapped in the grounds of Sudbury Hall, summer 1976. By Stella R. Tweed.
I did mention on occasions that I might be able to scan them and pop them onto a DVD for her to look at more easily but it never happened. I should have asked her permission to get started on this project years ago but the conversations never drifted in that direction.
It was only after Stella died that I found myself in possession of thousands of 35mm slides and I knew that I wanted to see them, to digitise them, to make them easier to view. Yes, I do have a slide projector and a screen but it’s quite a bother to set it up and the photographs still remain trapped on the transparency.
With this quantity of slides, I knew it wasn’t going to be realistic to scan them all. I do have an Epson flatbed scanner which I bought because it also had the facility to scan negatives and slides. This is fine for small quantities but it takes quite a long time. Four slides can be mounted for scanning at a time and then it takes ages to actually scan them. To scan a batch of four slides at 9600 dpi takes just over 11 minutes. At 4800 dpi the same scan takes a little over 5 minutes. The quality at 4800 dpi might be acceptable and it would probably be fine if I could stack up a set of maybe 50 to 100 slides and leave it going. But having to return to the scanner to reload and start again every 5 to 10 minutes would be painful for so many slides.
Leicester’s Dairy Princess, by Stella R. Tweed. Lord Mayor’s Show parade, Leicester 1961. Taken at the corner of Granby Street and Belvoir street.
My old friend Phil had spoken to me about his slide digitisation projects before. He had thousands to work on, many of which he saved from being thrown into a skip. Phil had been re-photographing the slides in order to digitise them.
At first, I was sceptical about this method. Surely a scanner would give superior results? However, he showed me some of his results and I was suitably impressed.
The key advantage to this method is speed. It takes a few seconds to give each slide a careful dusting, pop it in front of the lens and photograph it.
I decided that this would be the method I would try. It would at least mean that I could see what was in the collection far more quickly than by scanning. If I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the re-photographing method I could then go back and use the scanner for specific, targeted slides if I wanted to. I had used this method a few years ago on some old 2.25 inch square negatives that my grandfather had taken back in the 1920s and 1930s (yes, photography really did run in my genes). With these I had placed the negatives onto a lightbox and photographed them before returning to key photographs using the scanner when desired.
Kenilworth Drive, Oadby Industrial Estate, 1968. By Stella R. Tweed. The cars look way older somehow. Flyer on postbox reads “Remember to use your postal code”.
After a few conversations with Phil and a little anxiety over getting it all to “fit together”, the following was the kit I ended up producing to perform the task.
EOS 7D set up to photograph the slides using Nikon ES-1 adapter. (Click image to view larger).
Canon EOS 7D : an old APS-C DSLR with which I was happy to clock up a few thousand extra shutter activations.
Nikon ES-1 slide adapter : I ordered this at a very reasonable price (less than £30) from an eBay seller based in Japan. Buying options closer to home were about three times the price or more. It was intended for use with a 60mm Nikon macro lens on a 35mm sensor (“full frame” – although I dislike the term) body. As I don’t have a Nikon DSLR I needed to think about the lens I would use alongside this. It did seem like the best way I could find to hold a slide in position in front of the camera. This device is just a short length of barrel with a slot to feed slides into at the far end. A diffuser screen comes fitted to provide even lighting behind the slide. It contains no optics.
Canon EF-S 35mm macro lens : I bought this second hand from MPB. A 35mm lens on a Canon cropped sensor body has an equivalent focal length of 56mm (35 x 1.6) which is very close to the intended 60mm focal length of the Nikon ES-1 slide adapter. Being slightly “shorter” I could expect a small blank border around each frame I shot – easily cropped out in post. This was the most considerable financial outlay of the project but I convinced myself the lens would be useful for other things. I particularly like the integral LED ring light around the front element of the lens, although this is of no use to me for this project.
Lens hood : this is the lens hood supplied with the EF-S 35mm macro lens. Unusually for a lens hood it has a filter thread. This proves useful below.
49mm to 52mm step up ring : this is used to convert the 49mm thread provided on the lens hood to a 52mm thread as required by the Nikon ES-1.
Aputure AL-M9 LED light : This one was recommended to me by Phil, it’s what he uses. It provides a good, bright and even light to illuminate the slides from behind. It has an integral battery and can be charged via USB.
Macro rail : I started work without this but it was a bit of a pain having to set up the LED light in the optimal position each time. The macro rail is mounted to a tripod and holds the camera at one end and the light source at the other. Everything can be kept on the macro rail and ready to shoot slides, even if I want to use the tripod for something else.
Remote release : not labelled on the photo above but I use a cable release for each shot to avoid vibrations.
With this set-up I can probably shoot at a rate of a slide every minute or faster. I give each slide a quick dusting over with a soft brush before inserting it into the ES-1, check alignment and then shoot. I shoot in aperture priority at f8 (often a sweet spot for lack of distortion) and capture as raw files.
Lewis Carroll memorial, Llandudno, 1970 by Stella R. Tweed.
The post-processing can take rather longer but I would still have to perform this step even if I’d used a scanner to digitise the images. The photos are imported from the memory card to a dedicated Adobe Lightroom catalog to keep them separate from my other photographs. I apply the “camera faithful” colour preset, straighten the image (it’s very easy to have a slight tilt without noticing during shooting) and crop away the aforementioned small blank border. I often do try a quick “auto” processing in Lightroom – sometimes it gets things just how I want them, other times it looks a bit overprocessed and artificial. With or without the use of “auto” I fiddle a little with the basic exposure settings. Finally, I try to remove as many traces of dust and damage as I can and as sympathetically as I can. Even with using a soft brush some stubborn specks of dust remain, as is only to be expected given the age of these slides – more than 60 years old in some cases.
I’m keywording each slide as best I can. Sometimes this is just from a label Stella stuck onto the box containing the slide, other times I can add tags for places and people where known. Each box of slides is added to a Lightroom collection. Approximate dates can sometimes be gleaned from a month and year stamp on the slide mount added by the processing lab.
Each box can vary quite a bit in the number of slides contained. Some of these boxes are the standard issue slide boxes which the processor provided when the slides were returned after processing. Others are slide cassettes, ready to load into a projector and yet others are very large wooden or metal cases containing multiple films. For example, the box of slides from a holiday in Switzerland (1958) contained 150 photos (see photo of photographer with glass plate camera at the head of this post).
King Street, Robin Hood’s Bay, 1973 by Stella R. Tweed.
The quality and colour rendition varies quite a bit depending upon the film stock used. Kodak stock has proved the most impressive so far with little degradation of the emulsion and really great colour rendition. Not quite so good have been Ilford, AGFA and Perutz film stock. Some slides are still in mounts supplied when processed, others have clearly been mounted at home. Often there can be significant dust and damage to be found around the perimeter of the image so sometimes I crop a little more than would be strictly necessary simply to remove the border if I won’t be losing any significant detail.
At the point of writing this post I have photographed and processed around 830 slides over a period of about two months. This is barely scratching the surface of the collection. It will be a long term project and I’m sure I’ll return to write about interesting finds as I work my way through them.
My main regret is that I didn’t start work on this many years earlier. I have been able to give my dad a DVD containing copies of the slides from his holiday to Switzerland with his sister in 1958 and he thoroughly enjoyed seeing the photos. A couple of lengthy and enjoyable conversations were had on the phone after he’d viewed them. It would have been lovely to be able to do the same for Stella and discuss the photos with her.
It has also been interesting to perform a bit of detective work when I’m ploughing my way through the slides. I have used Google Maps and Google Streetview to find the exact locations of some of the photos -even down to a photo of my dad stood by a signpost along a mountain trail in Switzerland. On Streetview I have found the same spot, with a modern replacement of the signpost. I managed to identify the location of some of the photos in a box from North Wales, 1972 as the village of Llangian by looking at the sign on a shop front. Streetview shows the phone box opposite the shop is still there but the sign post for a bus stop clearly shown in the photo from 1972 now seems to be without its sign and in use to hold a laundry line trailing out from the adjacent garden. The post box was set into the wall of the house when Stella took her photo nearly fifty years ago, now it’s mounted on a post.
Scene in the village of Llangian, North Wales 1975, by Stella R. Tweed.
The photo I chose to head this post is significant. Stella had recounted the story of encountering “an old boy” using a glass plate camera atop the mountains during one of her holidays in Switzerland. She was amazed that this elderly man could carry a big camera, all the heavy glass plates, tripod etc up the steep mountain paths. She said it was quite enough to have to carry her own small 35mm camera up there and regarded this feat as quite some mark of dedication to the art. She never mentioned in these conversations that she had taken a photograph of this man and yet, here he was, slide number 145 in that box of 150. From the sequence it seems that Stella and my dad had encountered him on the way back down from a visit to The Jungfrau. I was delighted to find this photo as it confirmed the story Stella had told me so many times over the years. I just wish I could have presented her with a DVD of her photos in the same way I shared them with my dad. We would have had hours of interesting conversation and I would know more details about the photos I’m discovering.
Naturally, I dedicate this post in loving memory of my aunt, Stella. She was the closest thing I had to a mother figure since my mum died when I was six years old. Teacher, historian, artist, photographer, traveller, gardener, wonderful cook, lover of animals and a staunch believer in women’s rights who retained a sharp and curious mind to the very end. Thank you for everything you did for me and for encouraging and nurturing my interests.
A robin taking seed from a feeder at Medbourne, Leicestershire.
It has been nearly three years since my last update. There are lots of reasons for my absence which I won’t go into here. However, I’m back to wanting to be creative again and share my experiences so here I am.
Of course, I’ve still been taking photographs in the time since I last posted, it’s an important part of who I am. The Covid pandemic has certainly reduced my photographic opportunities over the last year but my camera has been with me on the all too rare occasions I’ve been able to get out. I’ve barely been outside of Leicestershire for a year now. There was one day trip to the Peak District in the summer of 2020, a short walk along the path up Kinder Scout next to the Grinds Brook with my daughter. I look forward to when such things are possible once again.
The photo I’ve selected for this post was shot on my last “proper” walkabout before England entered “Lockdown 3” at the start of January 2021. My daughter and I had been taking short trips into the local countryside when Covid restrictions permitted. One of our favourite places to visit is Medbourne in the south-eastern part of the county. It’s a lovely village with a stream running through it, a medieval packhorse bridge and a ford crossing the stream near the church. On this particular day, we spotted a robin hopping from bush to bird feeder and back again in a garden area down near The Nevill Arms pub.
Shot using my Canon 6D and 70-300ml lens.
I’ll be back with another post describing a project I have been able to work on from home, hopefully in the next few days.
Rick and Warren. Fujifilm X-Pro2, 90mm f2. 1/125 at f2, ISO 6400.
I’m very aware that it has been a couple of months since I posted anything here. Yes, it has been a busy couple of months and thankfully some of that has been photography busy.
This photo of Rick and Warren was taken during the interval at a charity gig I recently attended at The Donkey on Welford Road, Leicester. I was there to support the good cause of the night and also to support my friends on stage : Bellatones.
I still have loads of photos to work my way through from that night which was over a week ago now but this one stood out from the pack for me when I was browsing through to see what I had captured that night.
The vast majority of my photos were of the musicians on stage, that was what I had intended to shoot after all. But at the interval I got chatting outside with Warren (the landlord at The Donkey) and Rick and his good lady, Caroline. It was Caroline who told me that it was “Rick with a silent P” so I do hope he doesn’t mind me using that as the title of this post.
We had a bit of friendly banter during which time Rick, Warren and Caroline got talking about my photography and I snapped one of Rick and Warren together at their request.
It can often be tricky to judge the technical qualities of a photo from the tiny screen on the back of a camera but this one looked pretty good and after showing it to the subjects I ended up being persuaded to take quite a few more of Rick, Warren, Caroline and various of their friends.
It was dark out there.
I had been shooting the acts on stage at ISO 3200 but for these shots I was nabbing outside the venue I had to crank it up a notch to ISO 6400. I’ve always been wary of shooting at high ISO with any camera I’ve owned but I tend to think that it’s better to get something that may have some noise but is free of camera shake so these days I tend to just go with the flow and pump up that ISO as necessary.
And I was not disappointed.
Shot at 1/125, f2 on the X-Pro2 with the excellent Fujinon 90mm lens at ISO 6400. I was even able to focus using auto-focus without any trouble. The only lighting was provided by a string of light bulbs set along the top of the wall about 10 to 15 feet to my left as I shot.
Would this photo have been any better if I’d used my so called “full frame” EOS-6D? I doubt it. I don’t like the term “full frame”. If you mean 35mm sensor then say 35mm sensor. “Full frame” is meaningless – what is full? 2.25 inch square is bigger than a 35mm frame size so how can 35mm be “full”? How about 4×5 inch sheet film? How about 8×10 inch? That makes 135 film (35mm) look tiny. Where do you stop? (I tend to agree with Zak Arias’ point of view on this as expressed wonderfully here).
The best camera is the one you have with you – whether it has a 35mm sensor, an APS-C sensor, Micro Four Thirds or a phone’s camera. You just have to get out there and shoot with it.