Pi Bar 27th January 2017

The Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion performing at Pi Bar, Leicester. 27th January 2017 (Fujinon 90mm, 1/250 at f2, ISO 8000).

Friday evening found me heading out through the cold and wet of an English winter evening to the snug comfort of Pi Bar on Leicester’s Narborough Road. It had been a while since I’d last shot a gig and it was time once again to crank up the ISO, select my fastest lenses and see what developed on-stage.

Christopher Moody and the Underground Kings
Christopher Moody and the Underground Kings at Pi Bar, Leicester. 27th January 2017 (Fujinon 55-200mm, 1/60 at f4.8, ISO 6400).

I started shooting with the Fujinon 55-200mm which has the advantage of giving me image stabilisation in addition to a good long reach. However, image stablisation is only half the battle when the light is low, you also have movement of the subject to consider and musicians have a tendency not to have their feet nailed to the floor (excepting Steve Rothery). After a little while I decided it would be better to break out the 90mm f2, trading the OIS and longer reach for some extra stops of light.

Bellatones
Bellatones performing at Pi Bar, Leicester. 27th January 2017 (Fujinon 90mm 1/250 at f2, ISO 8000).

I did mention cranking up the ISO didn’t I? At many venues I’m often shooting around ISO 3200. Here at Pi Bar I started off at 6400 and soon decided that I needed to up it to ISO 8000. Dark? Hell yes, it was dark. So many of these small venues really could do with better lighting but I guess they’re not really too interested in making life easier and more interesting for photographers. A few well used spots make such a difference, giving me the kind of high contrast look I enjoy and making subject isolation easier.

ISO 8000 is maybe a notch higher than I would generally like to go and it does show in the graininess of these pictures. Having said that I do find the grain produced by my X-Pro2 to be more pleasing and reminiscent of film grain than that produced by my EOS  6D (or other previous Canon bodies). Usually I would much rather have a grainy photo than a blurry photo (unless the blur is intentional). Yet again I was very impressed at the low light performance of my X-Pro2’s APS-C sized sensor. If Fuji can make a sensor perform like this at APS-C then what is the new Fujifilm GFX 50S medium format camera going to be capable of? (Sadly I won’t be getting the chance to shoot with one of those unless I win the lottery).

Bellatones
Bellatones performing at Pi Bar, Leicester. 27th January 2017. (Fujinon 90mm, 1/250 at f2, ISO 8000).

I have to say that in these murky conditions the 90mm f2 did seem to provide a superior auto-focus experience than the 55-200. This is probably only to be expected as the 90mm is the more recent lens by a good couple of years and it’s also a prime. What I lost in reach I gained in consistent results.

During the evening I enjoyed music from three different bands : Christopher Moody and the Underground Kings, Bellatones and finally The Whiskey Rebellion – all of them excellent. More photos from the evening can be found in this album on Flickr. I’ll be keeping an eye on future events at Pi Bar as it’s not far from home and I find it a welcoming, relaxing venue – even if the lights could do with turning up a bit on the stage.

A Quick Play With Fuji’s Arcos Film Simulation

acros-example-3
Acros with red filter, no film grain – reduced in size for blog posting. Click to see larger (but not full size)

During my trip to Stamford with my X-Pro2 last weekend I shot in raw and processed everything through Adobe Lightroom, as I normally do. However, one of the strengths of Fuji’s X System cameras is their in camera jpg production. So why don’t I shoot jpg more? I’m sure there are several reasons. One is that I want to make sure that I retain the raw data from the sensor which provides me with everything I need to process the image in whatever way I want. Another is that maybe I’ve got too used to fiddling around with raw files? I now seem to see this as an essential part of the production of “A Photograph”. I have been shooting raw for about 11 years now, maybe I’ve got a bit stuck in a rut?

Every now and again I’ll go through a stage of shooting raw + jpg but I invariably end up messing around with the raw version and not touching the jpg. Maybe it’s time I revisited jpgs straight out of the camera? The X-Pro2 offers dual memory card slots so I can shoot raw to one and jpg to the other.

I’ve also had a long term quest for obtaining really nice contrasty black and white photos straight out of the camera. I’d got to a point where I was happy enough with the black and white settings I was using on my X100T. But now Fuji have also given us the Acros film simulation to enjoy on the X-Pro2.

So yes, maybe now is a good time to start shooting raw + jpg again.

Another very handy feature of the X System cameras is the ability to copy a previously shot raw image file from your computer back to a memory card, pop said memory card into the camera and then use the camera’s built in raw converter to create a jpg. This is what I’ve been playing with a little this evening.

I took some photos of a monument in a church in Stamford which felt might benefit from the Acros film emulation. I copied the file back to the camera and fiddled with the raw conversion settings. I was particularly interested to see how the “film grain” effect looked so I processed the photo twice with the same settings but added some “weak” film grain to the second version.

It’s interesting to see how much of a difference there is in file size when you add film grain. There’s more “detail” in the image so the jpg can’t compress so well. Straight out of the camera the version without grain was 6.36MB, the version with grain was 15.1MB.

A scaled down copy of the version without grain heads up this post. I would have uploaded the full sized versions but WordPress kept reporting an upload error. I suspect the files were larger than some limit set somewhere in the system.

However I’ve also produced a couple of 100% crops from the original jpgs, just to show the film grain effect and these can be seen below. I’m quite impressed with the film like grain structure and I’m looking forward to having more of a play with the Acros simulation. It certainly produces the kind of high contrast black and white that I enjoy so much.

And do you know what else I discovered? I really do actually prefer the jpg straight out of the camera to the one produced by me sat tinkering in Lightroom for… however long it took. I think there might be a lesson in there somewhere.

crop1
100% crop of Fuji’s Acros film simulation – no added grain.
crop2
100% crop of Fuji’s Acros film simulation – added “weak” grain.