RB Design

A New Personal Project

2015-08-23T00:00:00Z

Truthfully, I’ve started and gone down the road quite a ways on three new personal projects this summer. All three are progressing at an acceptable rate. As usual I’m in no big hurry to finish any of the new ones. In fact I’m in no big hurry to finish the two long-term projects that started a while ago, years ago.

I did finish exactly one project started last year early summer of 2015. I think that along with my absolute love of summertime is what fueled my unrelenting work on three new projects. The one I finished took a year. As recollection has it I don’t think I published any of the raw material or finished work here. That project is destined to be print only in it’s final form. I have yet to make all of the final prints but have made quite a few. The trend for me over the last few years, definitely since starting this blog is anti-web in terms of personal work unless it illustrates a point that crosses my mind here. Even then most of those are out of context and selections that illustrate a point rather than curated for the project itself.

So what? The project I am referring to in the singular with the tile of this post is different. Different in that I made a decision that from the start (or at least close to the start) I was going to create a space for it on the interwebs. That’s completely new for me. I’ve never done that before with any personal work. Growth? Loss of the fear that some commercial notions will pollute the intent? Maybe both. Every web presence I’ve ever created with the exception of this blog has been a commercial endeavor.

So why this particular project? Is it somehow destined for web only distribution as a final product? No, as usual the output is a series of large prints and a book. I really can’t answer why this project. The only thing about it that’s different from my other two project started at a similar time or any of the personal work done in the last few years is that it’s the only one that has a fixed end state. Not in time frame but a hard constraint that I set arbitrarily. I guess that means the timeframe is somewhat predictable. My guess — early 2016 and done. Does this make it somehow web-okay in my mind? Not really but I’ll not exclude that as somehow a factor.

So…

What is this project?
Why is it not here on the blog?
Where the hell is it?

In uncharacteristically terse terms I’ll answer all of that. It’s called The Marilyn Project. That link is to the ”official” website for the project. It’s a random set of selections published from the raw material I produce as I progress and that’s about it. It’s published on Ghost and has no blah-blah-blah, just a picture, a date, and what lens I used. Oh, it also has tags that allow slicing/dicing a few different ways. It’s mostly a scratch book for me to look back on and group things a few ways. A public visual notebook and that’s it. The images look like hell for some strange web-resize thing going on but look pretty damn good on retina mobile devices. I don’t care, hence Ghost using the default theme. Simple and no work on my part.

Holy crap? RB with a blog that only has pictures and no blah-blah-blah? How can this be? Glad you brought that up. Well if you want a tiny bit of blah-blah you’re in luck. I do post random observations specific to the project over on Medium.com under an account that is project specific. Compared to this blah-blah the average read time for those pieces is only about 3 minutes so pretty focused with not a lot of meandering.

The Marilyn Project

Oh, the project has my very first Facebook page to. Umm, yes I have no Facebook following or experience so it has like 3 likes or something like that — whatever. Last and certainly not least the project has it’s own twitter that I really don’t use at the moment but might.

So that leaves us with one question unanswered. Why not here? Simple, this blog is huge, unfocused, multipurpose, and random enough without my personal projects spilling into it. Also it’s not at all about “me” and my work, it’s philosophical and I want to keep it that way.

Enjoy, or not. As usual I love feedback and discussion so that’s good. If you must discuss here but honestly I rather you discuss over on the project specific stuff.

Ps. Using my XT-1 and all Fuji glass to shoot this thing. I guess 4 months or so in and the 6 month experiment is working. More on that as well as even more 18-55 thoughts shortly. Those will most likely be here though.

Fuji X-Series, Know Your Gear

2015-07-27T00:00:00Z

In the last couple of posts I’ve bashed on the Fuji 18-55 zoom. From my point of view it’s not really bashing it but instead it’s just a touch of objectivity in a sea of gushing praise on the ”Fuji can do no wrong” as well as the ”Half of the 18-55’s are bad copies” nonsense found when looking for information out there. Today’s topic is a sprinkling of stuff about the 18-55 as well as the Fuji XT-1 but as a whole it’s more about really getting to know your gear than anything else.

A few updates ago a reader left a comment or a twitter response or something to the effect:

So you’ve spent like forever with the Nikon Df and a couple of days with the XT-1. Of course it’s going to feel funny.

I absolutely agree holistically but not about the couple of handling specific things I was complaining about in that post. Patrick LaRoque gave me a couple of super helpful setup tips that solved a few of my specific handling issues but on the whole my opinion is about the same. Thank goodness most of them have no effect on things I give a hoot about. I only bring them up for other’s consideration. As for getting to know your gear I typically shoot StupidCrap™ that I don’t care about so I don’t look like an idiot when I’m using cameras with real people. That also gives me some broad idea about what works/what doesn’t, some of the limitations of dynamic range, etc.

Last weekend I shot a little over 1,000 shots and almost every one of them was not only to make photographs but also testing to one degree or another. Testing in the sense of specifically trying variations and experiments that would give me experience and results to become intimate with the XT-1, X-TRANS RAW files, and two of the lenses that I’ve not used extensively. There were four things I wanted to be far more comfortable with.

The XT-1 4.00 firmware features.
The 18-55 XR in real use.
The 14mm 2.8.
X-TRANS RAW files in real world light.

The Fuji 18-55 XR

In my last post I summarized general findings but I didn’t go into any specifics or what I looked at, or how I tested, or even my own bottom line on if I like the lens or not. At the top is a BTS shot of one of my lens testing setups. My version of extreme corner testing.

I shoot using large-ish apertures, slow-ish shutter speeds, with subjects in motion to some degree. I did mention that all of those things will trump lens resolution in most cases if we’re measuring in some scientific way. My own measurements are more along the lines of; but how does it look? In semi-psudo-technical-qualitative terms here’s what I found.

First up I’m not completely impressed by the 18-55’s performance at the long end. Especially used really close up.
In terms of overall look I’m on the positive side of the 18-55 looks good. In-focus to OOF transitions look good. Slightly OOF backgrounds look good. Contrast is okay. Slightly OOF hair looks pretty decent (a big thing for me, consider this bokeh that I give a shit about see above out-take).
I mentioned that the technical performance is mostly on-par with other crappy-ass $100 kit lenses which aren’t so bad either. They are but I like the way the Fuji looks a little better. One way I like it a little better is how it looks where it’s not so great in technical performance. Do I like it as much as the 23/2 welded to the X100? No but but I like it better than say the Nikon 18-55 VRII.
Where it is absolutely fantastic? The 18-55 sings somewhere in the neighborhood of 25mm to 35mm around f/5.6. Anecdotal evidence suggests the range 27mm to 30mm but lets call that within experimental error tolerance. At f/4 it’s probably in that singing place around 27-30mm too. Even in the extreme corners and close up (see below).
I’m still not completely confident with the VR/OIS in terms of what’s absolutely reliable vs what’s iffy. I get inconsistent results that are perplexing. Still have to play with that a bit more.
This lens has delayed my purchase of the 35mm/1.4. Still on the list but I’m in no rush. I kinda want to see a version II of this lens. Maybe an f/1.0? Maybe with a better/quieter motor?
Bottom line is this is about the only X-series zoom I like a whole lot. I am not a big fan of the size of the other zooms in this range. I much prefer primes on either end. The 18-55 is tiny and gives up not a lot. Is it as fan-tabulous as my 14mm or 56mm or 23mm at the long or wide end? No but it gives me a viable 28mm and 50mm equivalent in a tiny package that I will use a lot. Here’s a question; Why the hell don’t they use that motor in all of the lenses? I hope there’s a reason and would love to know what it is. It’s not just the speed. I love how silent and smooth it is. Every one of my other lenses feels a lot rougher and louder.

The XT-1 New Firmware 4.00 Features, Etc.

I’ve never been one that’s fond of messing around with focus point selection on the fly. On the fly as in between shots of a any given subject in a fluid situation. It just doesn’t work for me on any camera I’ve ever owned for what finds it’s way in front of my camera. Combine that with the hateful tiny buttons on most X-series bodies and it’s not something that I can do as part of the flow for a dynamic situation. Dynamic as in you’re looking thru the viewfinder of a fluid situation and see something and want to compose a bit differently so you flip the focus point somewhere else… oooops well that moment’s gone.

I’m much better at manual focus, being prepared and knowing I’ll be okay based on how far away I am, my aperture, my focus plane relationship to where the subject was/is… I’ve ranted about how manual focus is in many cases a far better strategy for those situations than attempting to monkey around with focus point positions. The one thing that interested me new with firmware 4.0 was the new group focus combined with one of the advantages of EVF/mirorless/contrast detect AF. The fact I can put focus points anywhere instead of a more limited range near the middle. The 3x3 group focus in both single and continuous focus modes would theoretically allow me to use AF for a ton of stuff I shoot with compositional flexibility that I need without forking around with focus point position every other shot.

How did this play in reality? I have to say it worked great. So ,so, so well that I’m going to stress the limits of group focus under much more demanding circumstances next time I shoot. There was only one instance in hundreds of shots where part of the 3x3 group was off the subject and the camera grabbed something in the background vs the closest stuff. I was wary of this based on my experience with previous X-series AF propensities for doing just that. Seems cured. I’m even going to try tracking with the 56mm wide open and up close and see what happens.

X-TRANS RAW Flexibility, Metering, Etc.

Let’s talk about real world light for the thousandth time. If I care to control every aspect of lighting and fill ratio and all that I can get absolutely pristine results from just about any digital camera ever made. Hell I could do that with my D2H back in 2003 when I brought a bunch of gear to the table. SOOC JPEGS looked friggin’ fantastic. Who cares, it’s not those conditions that have bugged me about digital ever, ever, ever. Honestly I don’t see what gets people that shoot in those conditions so excited about anything in the last 10 years.

One of my overly optimistic assumptions about digital is that any minute now we’ll get the same flexibility, malleability, and ability to shoot real world light that photographers have always had with black and white negative film and since the late 80’s with color neg. I love shooting negative film in real world light. It looks great, always, always, always. Sure high ISO has come a long way in giving you grainless/noiseless results but in not-to-challenging conditions lets take a look at typical digital and real world light. Take my word for it all numerical dynamic range indicators are not created equal. Again, it’s ”but how does it look”. The best camera I’ve ever used at a wide range of ISO’s compared to negative film in real world light has been the Nikon Df. So the big question is how does X-TRANS do? Even bigger is how do I have to shoot it and how does it look when I do…

Looking at the BTS shot at the top again (see how efficient I am, testing multiple things at once) you can clearly see the setup here and I’ll walk you thru what’s going on lighting wise.

There’s a big tall window to camera right and in front of Mary. Let’s call that the main light.
Another window exactly the same but blocked off about 3 feet on the bottom by an air conditioner is to camera right and to the rear of Mary. Let’s call that the subtle kicker.
I moved Mary way back from those windows, about 8 to 10 feet so that there wasn’t fall off from head to toe. That also increased the fill ratio created by the bounce-back of the large room as well as the 4x8 white board you can see in the upper left of the frame.
Now let’s take a look at that fill from a big white card just out of frame for a full length shot. You can clearly see the effect by comparing the shadow on Mary’s rear most leg cast by the closer leg to the shadow cast by Mary’s arms on her stomach. The shadow on the rear leg is easily a stop darker as it’s not being lit by the fill from the white board. You can also see how much that card is adding by the rim light from that direction on her raised leg on the shadow side.
So we’ve added fill, at least a stop’s worth — probably more even at a point that’s relatively far away from that reflector. You can see based on that shadow cast on Mary’s abdomen that shadows get real dark, real quick.
Purely for testing purposes and the fact that I’ve got a thing for white, the challenge is shooting a not so challenging real world lighting setup.

I want white whites but not ugly blown out whites. I want mid-tones, especially upper mid-tones like skin to actually be upper mid-tones and shadows to be ummmm, not black. How hard can this be? Well with digital if I put the skin where I want it guess what happens — yep every bit of the whitest parts of the white on both shirt and shorts gets all rammed up against the right edge of the histo-gram and almost everything white is flashing at me when I chimp. Shooting this on negative film is like falling off a log and it will look great. Not sure of exposure, first time out of the gate with something like this? Great just add a stop to the exposure, hell, add two.

Digital? Well, be berry berry careful… one false move and crap-o-la you loose. Common wisdom suggests that we be conservative and shoot it so no flashy shit is showing on those large white areas. Great, looks like shit in camera with skin way to dark and shadows all muddy. We’re shooting RAW so who the hell cares right? Wrong! You know what pushed shadows look like when you go that route? Very commonly they look really ratty with crappy gradation. The big question in getting to know one’s gear is just where you make trade-offs, how much highlight head-room you’ve really got, how ratty lower-mids/shadows look when you increase exposure in post by how much at what particular ISO’s.

In reality I’m not all that concerned about the deepest darkest shadows. I really only care about where I can and where I must put mids and upper mids in relation to highlights that I care about (as opposed to specular reflections that I don’t care about). I also care how that plays in relation to ISO’s that I commonly use in real world lighting. My most used ISO’s are 400, 800, and 1600 so that’s what I care about. The answer that I arrived at was that the X-T1 has at least a stop less headroom in the highlights across the board with more than a stop at 1600. What this means to me is that I have to expose about a stop lower than I would with the Df to get the same highlight renditions when then push the mids up in post via exposure or whatever. So how ratty do the shadows look doing this… well ratty-er than I would like but acceptable up to 1600. Past that and they really start to get nasty.

The shot above is ISO 1600 pushed 2/3 stop in post with shit-tons of highlight compression via VSCO 400H preset on import. The shot below is also ISO 1600 with a slight aperture/shutter speed adjustment and pushed 1 stop in post with the same import preset to give semi-normalized results.

At 1600 I’m teetering on the edge of completely gone in the whites for the first shot pushed 2/3. No margin for error and maybe even gone here or there but hidden in the compression and the VSCO under 255 cut-off point. In the next shot the highlights are pretty solid but teetering on the edge of any more pushing up of the mids and ratty-ass-city. So I’ve pretty much found where this camera hits the wall. Will I go beyond the wall or just live with denser mids? Sure because in many many cases you don’t need or want a higher key look in real world light or dealing with super bright whites. It sure is nice to have the flexibility though. Hence I’m still waiting for that negative film response with all the other stuff digital gives us. The Nikon Df (and D4) are pretty close. This kind of thing is way, way more important to me than some tiny bit of less noise next year. Also one of the reasons the Df is so great.

Can I live with this? First off shooting this at 1600 wasn’t really required, it’s just an ISO I use a lot. I could have easily shot this at 800 or even 400. I’m surprised that I don’t get a lot more headroom in the highlights at 800 and 400 though. I can also live with this partly due to the smaller sensor. I can shoot scenes that I wanted at f/8, f/5.6 or f/4 at a larger aperture and get equivalent DOF. What you are looking for and what I’m looking for might be quite different. Heck, I don’t really care that much about noise in and of itself, I left the fake grain in the VSCO processed shots above. The point is that really, really getting intimate with how what looks in under what conditions is absolutely essential when out in the field in the heat of the moment as opposed to making arbitrary decisions. All this crap wasn’t specific stuff you can take to the bank as far as settings and numbers, it’s far more to give a general idea of what kind of things I do when getting to know a camera and gear.

Now onto the XT-1 specific stuff, far quicker and more specific conundrums for fellow XT-1 shooters out there. Consider this part both observations of mine as well as questions regarding woking method for all of you and how you deal with it. Here are a few vexing things that just bug the shit out of me.

So let’s talk about the wonders of the EVF. You know the WYSIWYG mantra of see what you are getting before you shoot it and that live histogram… Why oh why does the live histogram smash into the edge before the actual JPEG file does when you chimp what you just shot? Why? For gods sake if I have a live histogram I want it to show me exactly when I’m hitting the edge not sorta-kinda. I can get really close by frigging guessing. I just don’t get this. I thought it might be me and anecdotal so I tested it. Yep live histogram smashes into the edge before the actual JPEG does if you chimp the histogram right after you shoot.

Okay so combine the above with another conundrum. This isn’t really Fuji specific but I shoot RAW+JPEG for two reasons. One is that you sort of have to shoot RAW+JPEG to view it at 100% when chimping critical shots. The other reason is so that I can send out nice looking JPEG’s on the fly prior to uploading all the RAW’s etc… Obviously both the live histogram as well as the chimped histogram show highlights smashing into the edge way before the RAW files in LR do. What do you guys do? Just memorize what JPEG setting give you how much highlight headroom in lightroom? Mess around with JPEG custom settings so that you get terrible looking JPEGS but the histograms match RAW files when imported? Then use the in-camera RAW processing to send out a JPEG here and there? Let me know what you do if you can…

Fuji XT-1 Odyssey Update

2015-07-22T00:00:00Z

You can probably see a pattern here. Wintertime crap-tons of blog posts. Spring and summer, not many. I thought it was about time that I posted something about my six month commitment to use an EVF camera. I’ve what one might regard as considerable milage on my Fuji XT-1. I used the hell out of it, shot everything that crossed my path. I definitely have a lot to say about the camera body itself including the EVF. I’ll save those thoughts on the viewfinder and why I think it’s so different than my previous attempts at using an EVF for another day.

Today I want to clarify a couple of things I mentioned regarding the Fujinon 18-55 XR way back when I said I could probably live with an XE-1 and an 18-55 and be done with it all. I’ve also mentioned more than once since then I wasn’t as happy as I thought I would be with the 18-55 now that I’ve got one of my own.

My particular 18-55 came with the camera. That was a no-brainer when looking at the best prices I could get for an XT-1 with or without the kit lens. The kit in most cases is a steal. It’s not my first experience with the lens. I’ve used them before on other people’s cameras. My disappointment is specifically related to how the usual suspects out on the interwebs pour copious amounts of gushing praise on it. Usually the same kind of words used on Fuji lenses I have owned and became intimately familiar with. All of the gushing and bowing down seems about right for a lot of the Fuji primes based on my first experience as well as my experience with my newer primes this time around. They are fabulous. I don’t even have to qualify that with how great a value they are in terms of reasonable price point.

The problem comes in where my expectation was based on everything I’ve read. That has nothing to do with the 18-55 being a bad lens. It’s just not the same thing I experience when I look at images I’ve shot with any of my Fujinon prime lenses.

So, what does that mean to you if you’re looking at the Fuji system and trying to decide on lenses etc… We’ll I’m glad you asked. Over an extended weekend of making pictures and visiting friends, and all that I decided to use the 18-55 instead of the primes that I own overlapping that range. I also used my Fujinon 14mm about the same amount from an image count perspective. I made the decision for a few reasons. I was shooting some fluid situations, I haven’t yet acquired the 35/1.4 which I needed for a few things, and I was in a situation where I needed to tweak the focal length in very minor ways only for framing purposes. For all those reasons I also said to myself; ”WTF, let’s see if I really could live with it”.

The bottom line is that I could but the 18-55 does have it’s ups and downs. The shot at the top is pristine and looks great no matter how far you pixel peep. The techno-stuff happens to be ISO 1600 f/5.6 @ 1/320s. Oh, the focal length was 25.4mm. Here’s one at 31.5mm.

Truth be told under the same exact circumstances and the same picture I would be challenged to tell the difference between any of the primes and the 18-55. Even if I were using a lower ISO I might have a hard time with this particular scene.

Let’s take a look at another scene with slightly different characteristics. Something I did on a lark that’s actually going to turn into a series, I think. Specnoificaitons are ISO 800 f/4.0 @ 1/180s 35.8mm.

Oh come now, white halter top dress, what the heck did you think I was going to do? In any case that $9 crappy dress looks really crappy just sitting there. Doesn’t look so bad when it’s moving. In this case I still would have a hard time really telling the difference. Subject movement, shallower depth of field, and a bunch of other stuff may overwhelm lens quality differences in %99.9 of cases.

I got really enamored with doing this series so I was actually pulling people off the street to do it… no kidding. Let’s take a closer look for pixel peeping fun of the same kind of thing. Here’s a Lightroom screen shot you can open in a new window to see all the pixels if you want.

This time the specs are 1/125 and f/5.0 22.3mm. All of the motion and lack of depth of field and other crap certainly trump ultimate lens resolution and stuff like that. Truth is I really like a little bit-o-sharp with a little bit-o-motion-blur in many cases. Heck, motion blurry hair looks frigging great at just the right shutter speed. Forgive the fake grain, I used VSCO 400H on import. It’s fine for illustration purposes, the files are pristine at these ISO’s.

So why all the hub-bub bub? Well let’s look a little closer at different stuff shall we?

Woah, what is that crap around the black edge of the table?? Well, a bunch of it is the purple/green stuff you get from being in front or in back of the focus plane on hard black/white edges. I can get rid of that with LR if I want to but guess what, underneath that theres like real CA to and it does it in the corners more than it does in the central part of the frame for whatever strange opto-reason. Also note that as we travel closer to the edge the performance definitely goes down in terms of real sharpness even where I think this lens is best (short to mid focal lengths).

None of that stuff down there is moving. Even at f/4 which is almost a whole stop down from wide open some of the performance is not so, so wondrous as I would have expected with all the gushing fan-boy praise. I mean even the $99 Nikon APS-C lens has VR and is meh, about this good I think. I had one for a bit and it was fine. I also am not enamored with the performance at 55mm. It’s okay for sure but not anything worthy of gushing praise where there really are not a whole lot of horrible performing lenses out there.

Where does that leave you as someone that wants a lens? Here’s a couple of real world things to consider.

In any kind of dynamic situation at middle of the road apertures like 5, 5.6 or whatever you will be hard pressed to see differences with the primes due to other overwhelming factors. If you do see them it’s because you have stuff that’s actually in the focus plane on the outer portions of the frame. I do all the time but usually not critical stuff.
Handheld dynamic situations where you and your subject are moving the 18-55 may actually show better performance due to OIS. Like above, even at 1/125 and at 35mm equivalent (23-ish mm) there’s a good chance you’ll get a bit of sharpness and resolution loss due to your own motion and vibration on more than the occasional shot. Nothing earth shattering but trust me at crazy magnification there’s a huge difference between shooting at 1/125 and 1/250 hand held on more than a few shots.
I personally think the 18-55 seems better at wide to normal ranges and not so great at 55. It also seems not so great in terms of close-up at 55. In fact I think that’s where it really rubs me the wrong way. Without any science I can say I am most disappointed at 55mm and under four or five feet. Longer distances it seems to be better.
Working fast and in dynamic situations where you’re not exhaling and concentrating on no motion between every single shot the OIS may trump optical performance at similar apertures. If you want/need a bit of DOF vs just using one of the fast primes larger apertures.

What about build quality and all that stuff? Well… the 18-55 certainly feels much nicer than all the shitty feeling APS-C lenses out there. It’s also a hair faster at wide to normal focal lengths. That’s good but it’s really not a whole stop faster in a lot of the range but certainly not a bad thing. It’s performance is at least as good as other kit zooms possibly better in some ways, also not a bad thing. It’s small but they all are tiny, definitely a good thing.

The problem is this is a $700-ish lens as Fuji lists it and it’s really not a super great deal bought on it’s own. As part of a kit it seems to be a steal. In fact unless you have no use at all for a fast, small zoom I would say absolutely grab this as part of a kit and use it for when you don’t really feel like having a camera bag. For the couple hundred bucks extra it’s a great value. At $700-ish on it’s own I really would have a hard time getting one vs the 35/1.4 for less or just about any Fuji prime you want for around the same cost.

Let’s put it this way when I and others gush about how great Fuji glass is this is not the lens that proves that beyond a doubt. All of the primes are all that with the exception of maybe the 18mm which I don’t mind either for different reasons. The 14, 23. 35, 56, and 60 I can say from personal experience are truly a cut above and on par or better than what can be had for any reasonable price. I used my 14mm heavily for the first time this past weekend and shot 1,000 pictures with it. I love love love love this lens. One of the best wides I’ve ever had and that includes my Leica 21. Absolutely fantastic and worth every penny. More on that another day.

More On The Fuji XT-1

2015-06-29T00:00:00Z

A quick follow up to my last post on my findings after shooting the Fuji XT-1 quite a lot. In summary it’s sufficient — specifically the EVF is not throwing me off as much as I thought it would and definitely not as much as previous EVF equipped cameras have in the past. I guess that’s good news. There is some bad news as well and for the most part that’s what this post is about.

First up is the EVF. While it’s not throwing me off from a timing perspective there are a few things that are not all roses. Some of them personal that may just take a bit more time behind the wheel, others are possibly more universal.

Repeating myself for the thousandth time. It absolutely sucks that there’s no quick way without menu diving to change up the display options on the XT-1 in the EVF. Yep you can do it for the back screen, just like every other Fuji-cam. The XT-1 is unique in the lack of ability to have an easily accessible way to turn display options on/off without messing around in the menus. Sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks. Got Firmware 4.00, doesn’t seem to change anything. Sucks. And why oh why cannot I not assign anything to a function button or Q-menu? Why do I have to choose from a curated group? WTF?
Shooting outside in bright light blows. Very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
The new option of full/normal you get instead of optional display crap when pushing the disp/back button while looking thru the EVF I sorta get now. I still don’t really use normal but when I’m shooting vertical pictures I have a tendency to leave too much room at the bottom of the frame due to the finder info overlay that’s displayed when rotated. I guess most people might so that’s the reason for full/normal???? I’ll probably get used to that after I concentrate on it for a while longer.
The eyepiece is a little wonky compared to most OVF’s I like. If you’re a little misaligned it gets real blurry real quick. Strange for such a large eyepiece.
The finer gridlines are certainly a lot better with firmware 4.00. I might be able to just leave those one and not have a big distraction as a way to mitigate the lack of quick on/off display options for now. We’ll see.

Moving on to ergonomics — hate that word. Anything you’ve ever read regarding a comparison on camera handling between the Fuji XT-1 and the Nikon Df where the Fuji somehow wins is pure and utter bullshit. Let’s count the ways…

Overall the buttons are little, fiddly, and not well placed. I’m talking every single one as compared to the Df.
The D-pad is a nightmare relatively speaking.
The button above the rear thumb rest is so awkward to use that I’ve written it off. Thank goodness somewhere along the way in a firmware update you can switch AF-on/AE-lock between those buttons. I never really use AE-lock so I just switched and now the AF-on is actually useful for back-button focus.
The trashcan button and playback button should be reversed. Why the hell would you want to reach over the trash button every time you hit playback????? Stupid decision and worse is that it puts the playback button so so close to the viewfinder you sort of poke yourself in the face to use the much lauded feature of viewing playback in the EVF. Stupid. While poking yourself in the face there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll actually hit the trash button as a bonus.
Changing ISO using the wonderful analog inspired dial… this one really is super funny considering how many times I’ve read how awful the Df ISO dial is because of the lock and the lack of auto on the dial. Ha, fucking ha. Armchair quarterbacking at it’s best. Guess what… the top lock button on the Fuji combined with the super slim dial stacked on drive mode is a nightmare. Far harder to turn quickly with one hand eye at the viewfinder and also results in changing drive mode to some random setting about half the time. Nikon Df way way way way better and easier to change on the fly — thumb release lock, index finger spin the nice big dial. Oh yeah and you can setup a custom settings bank for auto iso that you can change up along with every other custom setting in a setup that’s about 100x better and more flexible than the wondrous mostly JPEG setttings Q-menu. At least they put all the new AF options in the Q-menu instead of yet another stupid JPEG thing… Woudling it be cool if you could shift all that shit around with say a dedicated control and button? Oh shit, you can on the Df…
I’ve yet to use the flippy-screen. Obviously useless for verticals but hey, they’re all the rage.
Ever hear all the vitriol about the Df battery door being not up to snuff? Honestly I have no idea what anyone’s talking about it’s no more flimsy than just about any other DSLR that’s not a D4 but let’s talk about flimsy and clumsy… the Fuji battery doors. I’m not worried about it but it’s certainly not on par with the Df that has the nice big key thingy for unlock/lock vs a little flush switch.

That all sounds pretty bad. Not really it’s fine and not going to stop me dead in my tracks. I mean really what is??? It’s just a level set on the level of refinement as compared to say a real DSLR — even a retro DSLR like the Df.

Moving on. I do have one finding that’s probably more a personal thing that I need to concentrate on so that my muscle memory kicks in at some point and I don’t have to think about it so much. This may sound strange but I have a far more difficult time shooting the XT-1 at comparable shutter speed/focal length combos than I do the Nikon Df, D600, D700, etc, etc. I seem to introduce more camera shake at higher speeds with the Fuji XT-1. Before you all start writing in about APS-C vs FF or whatever and I gotta use 2x the shutter speed for the same focal length. Yea, no shit. When I say comparable I do mean comparable with all that taken into account.

Example; I can use 1/30 with no issue whatsoever with a 35-ish lens on a Nikon Df, etc. When I shoot at 1/30th with the 23mm/1.4 and don’t really really pay attention I get at least 20% of my shots with a hint of camera shake. I think it’s a matter of concentrating until I’m used to the way it feels. The surprise is I don’t seem to have this issue with the X100 cameras.

More updates soon.

Fuji XT-1 Update Part I

2015-06-21T00:00:00Z

For those of you that might have had the notion that I’ve gone around the bend, or maybe had some sort of EVF induced catastrophic seizure while using the Fuji XT-1 I’m here to offer a first real update. Real in the sense that I spent the last couple of weeks shooting the living hell out of it. Consciously or subconsciously I chucked subject matter and scenarios at the little Fuji that are difficult by any measure. I pulled no punches my first time out using an EVF only cam. I treated it exactly like I would my Nikon Df — even worse in most cases.

NSFW

Sorry for the NSFW stuff but I didn’t set out to make demo images or StupidCrap™. I did that for the better part of a week when the camera first arrived. Instead I jumped in the deep end. I’ll explain briefly. My biggest gripe with EVF only cameras is I quite literally cannot use them for the vast majority of what I happen to be interested in making. I’ve tried. In real world light that I find myself in the viewfinder is so, so, off in terms of lag that it not only makes me seasick but even more importantly throws my timing off. For those of you that make pictures of static subjects most of the time I guess that’s no big deal. Not at all what I’m interested in at the moment.

So, jumping right in the very first thing I did with the XT-1 was extremely timing dependent. I hosted a workshop titled Painting With Motion. Making pictures of people and stuff that are moving at various shutter speeds to achieve various effects. Some really slow shutter speeds with woosh-y fabrics and colors along with reasonably fast shutter speeds of very fast moving objects/people. It was fun. As usual for this sort of thing I only made a few shots each setup as demos and examples. Contrary to what would have happened if I used the X100S EVF or other older cameras I’ve tried I didn’t completely embarrass myself — hey, when hosting a workshop you need to look like you know what you’re doing…

A little Bettie Page inspired action. Take my word for it when I tell you that the stuff shot at 1/125 that has fast moving stuff is far more difficult to get right timing wise than the slower fabric woosh-y kinda artsy-fartsy setups prior to this. I have to rate the XT-1 as adequate for my purposes on this kind of thing — that’s a huge thing in my book and something I expected to be lacking. Beyond doubt I could not do this with my XPro-1 EVF nor the X100S EVF and definitely not in 4 or 5 shots.

So with that out of the way what else did I throw at the little Fuji? Well without really planning to do so I shot a ton of stuff for on-going personal projects that don’t see the light of day here most of the time. I probably shot more in the last two weeks than I did all winter for a few of those projects. When I’m finally done there will be a book and a print showing but that’s down the road a bit. It just so happens that opportunities presented themselves in the middle of the night. The whole project just doesn’t work with a bunch of gear, lights, setting up strobes, etc.

The shot at the top is a semi-random selection representative of the whole feel. What’s the big deal? Well nothing except I shot it with three 25watt light bulbs. Twenty-five watts, as in incandescent bulbs rather than LED or florescent. That’s damned dark. One in the lamp you see, one bare on a stick without a shade, and the other in a paper globe high in that room. Translation in terms of exposure was 1/125 f/1.8 ISO 1600. That’s definitely EVF no-go territory in my previous lousy experiences. I had no issues with timing to get what I was after in a fluid situation.

Pushing it even further I went to a single 25watt bulb on a stick. Even that was fine. No issue timing what I wanted at all.

Or…

This kind of scenario is pushing just about any camera to it’s limits. I’m talking really dark as in 1/60s f/1.4 ISO 6400. For me timing, gesture, fleeting moment in a dynamic situation is everything. I was shocked that I found the XT-1 EVF adequate for my needs in these kind of conditions.

It may not be clear that gesture and timing is important in the above images. From my point of view it’s everything. It might not be clear how fluid the scene was. Okay, here’s a few more shot with a 150watt bulb at 2 or 3am one night. These might be more illustrative…

or this?

All of these are pretty much similar in terms of the dynamic it’s just a matter of when I decide to hit the shutter…

or…

All pretty much the same dynamic, I can tell and from my POV far different then a subject in stasis. Hope that sums up why things that throw off my timing are a show-stopper.

I’ll be the first to shout it from the rooftops that the XT-1’s EVF is technically adequate for my needs. EVF’s in Fuji’s before that — nope. I’ve tried them under similar conditions. Truthfully even under far better conditions in terms of amount of light and less fluid scenes. I’m going to stick to my six month commitment and have no hesitation that I can make the pictures I’m interested in making under challenging circumstances with the XT-1 and it’s EVF. Does this mean I like EVF’s more than OVF’s? Not a chance. I still like OVF’s better, they’re still more comfortable but I’ve put the question of if I can use them to bed. The bigger question now is if I want to. The six months of EVF only should give me adequate time to get used to them. It will also give me enough real-world experience to determine the upsides and downsides that I care about along the way.

I’ll let this update stand for a bit even though there are a dozen other findings I made while using the crap out of the camera for the last two weeks. I’ll save that for a little later this week.

The Fuji X100S, 10 Pictures Out Of Context

2015-05-31T00:00:00Z

I’ve been working on a few projects for what could be considered a long time, going on two years. The thought for the particular Mirror, Mirror project discussed today crossed my mind maybe a decade ago but I really didn’t work on it consciously until almost two years ago. It’s turned out to be a bit more difficult in many ways that I thought it would be. I thought it might be of some interest to a few people for me to share a few thoughts about a few challenges, mis-steps, overall feel, and my edit process two years in.

I’ve included ten images from the first time I spent any real time on the project. I knew from the start that the project required a sequence of images rather than just one. All of the images I included share one thing in common. They started out as 1-star or not-rated images on my first edit pass immediately after I made them. Over half of them turned into 1-star images from images that were entirely skipped over in the first pass.

One star images have a semi-special meaning in my long and winding recursive edit process. It means I don’t know why I like them but there’s something about them that I find interesting. A few of these passed over images have actually turned out to be some of my favorites with time and distance between when I made them, more experience on the project, and the project taking on a more definite shape.

The biggest obstacle I’ve faced has been that setting out just to shoot this project as an agenda doesn’t work. Sure I get a few decent pictures here and there (maybe even better technically) but not any that work for what I want the project to look like and more importantly feel like. There’s just something different about documentary captured or found moments versus created moments.

The only way I’ve found to work on this project with any remote chance of getting anything close to what I’m looking for is to photograph it as an adjunct to working on something completely different. Specifically setting out to make completely different photographs for completely different purposes even other projects and attempting to grab images for this project as candid out-takes. That works. The problem is it’s not easy, not direct, and provides no clear plan to accomplish anything. Let’s call that a personal challenge. I’m great when focused on one thing — a plan. I’m not so great trying to mix working on this in with that ”other thing”. I’m too focused on that other thing.

That might not be easy to understand. You may say to yourself, well just focus on this project instead and let the other thing go to hell in a hand basket. Nope, doesn’t work. At least not for the way my gears grind. If I do so the dynamic changes. I tend no matter how hard I try to turn it back into a “created moment” kind of thing. I can feel it. It becomes less casual which is quite apparent to whoever is in front of my camera and also visually in the images.

I’ve also found it to be a personal challenge not to even attempt to hurry the process up. It’s a function entirely based on time-spent. I can’t schedule it, I can’t get it done in a day or even a week.

I have managed to get a few shots that work of different subjects on the same day but that was an accident. I’ve got to take advantage of opportunity and that’s it. Typically those opportunities depend on me disappearing. How long that takes and when it happens depends not only on me but on whoever happens to be in front of the camera as well.

Having a discrete camera, a quiet camera certainly helps but how silent depends on ambient noise. Most of these images were made with my Fuji X100S. A few made with the Nikon D600 and 50mm 1.4G.

If you look hard enough you can probably guess which ones are which. Was more of a function of which camera I was using to make that ”other stuff” than any intent.

The other challenge that’s should be obvious but wasn’t so obvious when I started out is that what I had in mind was so narrowly focused the opportunity to make photographs is far more limited than I though it would be. Specifically situations where subjects in mirrors would be in any reasonable position where I could make candid pictures.

I wouldn’t have thought the opportunity was so limited because the circumstance is plentiful enough. For one reason or another the actual opportunity is severely limited. A personal growth experience has certainly been to allow my self to relax and just go with the flow. Another closely related lesson is that it’s okay to try anyway — even when I know it won’t work. My typical mentality that’s developed over decades has been why bother… Attempting this has definitely change that. Of course I’m absolutely spot on 99% of the time — it doesn’t work and I get the negative reinforcement of having no images that work as well. Not a great thing for my head but the 1% that does makes it worth it. Try anyway, not a bad idea.

These last two are two that I really like. The image above is one of my favorites. Specifically that one was a pass-over in my first three rounds of edits separated by months. The one below was flagged 1-star (like it but I don’t know why). Here and now almost two years later the one above is by far my favorite out of both and has not only made the cut for my first planned outlet for any of this stuff but eclipsed every single one of my initial 3-star rated images from this particular opportunity. Most of those are off the list now. A hell of a lot of them I picked do to completely external criteria that has nothing to do with what this project is supposed to be. Some stand-alone completely out of project context criteria as if some dim-witted panel made up arbitrary “goodness” criteria.

One additional note regarding the project as a whole. Since it started I have no idea what audience beyond myself this project is targeted at. No idea at all. Certainly not a good idea from a business point of view but I guess that was at least half the point when I started this as a “real project” that had no commercial thought process behind it. I do have a much better idea of what my final output will look like and what form or forms it will take. More on that some other day.

Feel free to drop any opinions or even questions. I hope I’ll be done making raw material in 2015 but if I’m not, that’s okay to.

Fuji XT-1, The Low Down

2015-05-30T00:00:00Z

It’s been about a week since I decided to take the challenge of shooting exclusively with a Fuji X-Series camera and EVF for the next six months. Since then I’ve been messing around with the XT-1 getting to know the ups and downs. Most of the exercise has been taking pictures of StupidCrap™. Typical of my M.O. before embarking using it on anything remotely real. Call it a quirk, psychologically I can’t bring myself to point a new camera at anything photo-worthy until I’ve got a good handle on it. Forget pointing it in the direction of people, I hate looking like I have no idea what I’m doing, fiddling with camera controls or cursing out loud.

So, what did RB decide to use for the next month to prove or disprove that the arguably best EVF out there would be workable or not workable for me? I did say I could be perfectly fine with an XE-1 or XE-2 and the 18-55 if push came to shove. All the other stuff like OVF, speed, etc are more nits than make or break for the vast majority of what I happen to make pictures of. Personal preference more than anything else. You’ve already figured out I chickened out on the XE series and went with the XT-1. If I’m going to get used to an EVF I may as well give it a fighting chance. As for the glass, I did get the 18-55 but also snagged the 60mm for macro as that was my rationalization in the first place. I figured I would also chuck the 23/1.4 and 56/1.2 into the mix as well.

The Glass

I’ve used the 60mm before. Fabulous lens but a little slow. No need to go into that. As for the 18-55mm, 23mm and 56mm I’ve shot with them as well but only casually on other people’s cameras. The 23 and 56 are gorgeous and worthy of the gushing praise they receive given the cost and IQ. Well at least at 16 megapixels, which for me is fine.

On the other hand the 18-55 is just so-so. It doesn’t have the same bite as the primes I have or used to have with the XPro-1. In my book it’s not even close. Sure it’s fine as a lot of other variables in real life will trump IQ differences but worse it happens to fall slightly on the side of I don’t like it of my arbitrary criteria. It just doesn’t have a look I like. No horrible flaws but there’s just something about it I’m not in love with when I look at images. Sort of like my Nikon 12-24… Meh, whatever.

Most of my ranting about Fuji is not about the company it’s about the user base. You can’t sort the wheat from the chaff. Every product that comes off the line is praised as if somehow miraculous. Take the 18-55; Any reviews out there that have a “meh” kind of opinion? I haven’t seen any from any of the usual suspects. Truly it’s meh… sure it’s a hair faster at the wide end than they typical $99 kit lens for APS-C and a stop faster at the long end. It’s not great close up, it’s kinda crappy at the long end, it extends to twice the length at 55 (I hate extending zooms). Performance wise it’s about on par with the lowly 18-55 Nikon VR II, maybe. Meh. One would think from all the horse shit that somehow it’s comparable in some way to the really great lenses Fuji puts out. It’s not. If you have the 23 or the 35 or the 60 or any of those kind of truly great lenses in terms of look/IQ trust me you won’t be at all happy with the 18-55. I cannot say that’s the impression I’ve got from reading the Fuji zealots opinions of that lens. It’s fine but then again what lens isn’t? Night and day compared to Fuji primes.

EVF

Hmmmm. This isn’t the first time I’ve looked through the XT-1 but it is the first sustained (week) where I’ve used one at least a little while every day. It is a reasonable apparent size looking through it. That’s a good thing I guess. I can see the pixels, which I’m not particularly ecstatic about. The XT-1 is definitely less sea-sickness inducing than the other X camera EVF’s. Definitely a good thing. We’ll see if it throws me off when shooting people next week as I’ve got a crap-ton of stuff lined up including a “people in motion” workshop… The XT-1 totally sucks working in bright sun, like all EVF’s (probably never going to get better).

I will say if you work in auto-exposure modes that evaluating highlight/shadow exposure trade-offs is a bit faster with exposure compensation an optical VF/chimp once you get used to how the EVF translates vs the actual image captured. Even the histogram that’s displayed live seems to be a bit different than the image captured. That’s annoying and begs the question of why, why, why… The real story of most of my annoyance with various camera gadgets and gear is really questions like those. When push comes to shove all cameras have those kinds of hang-ups somewhere. Doesn’t stop me from making pictures or using it effectively.

Are there any up-sides. Any in addition to the over and over and over echoed “You can see exposure before you take the picture” which is far down the list of actually seeing the subject imho. So that up-side is really not a huge benefit to me (hey, film guy here give me a break). There is one thing I do like, EVF’s show a far better and completely accurate DOF as compared to modern optical viewfinders. That’s fantastic. See I’m a reasonable guy.

The real question is if I will learn to like a good EVF more than let’s say a mediocre OVF or at least gravitate towards a more neutral position. I don’t think I’ll ever like them more than a fabulous OVF like my Hasselblad. I may end up liking them as much or more than some tiny OVF on a crappy APS-C DSLR. That’s the mission.

Focusing

Have you ever heard me say anything horrible about any of the Fuji camera’s AF? Probably not, I don’t remember listing any of that as reasons they’re useless. I was okay with all of them, even the original X100. Of course they’re slower than the best DSLR’s out there but for the most part that doesn’t matter to me or my working method. I’ll experiment with working method where it makes sense over the next six months because mirrorless cameras in general do have different properties than DSLR’s. Better overall AF point spread. Super accurate when it does get a lock. Face detection with eye detection soon… I’ll play with those just to see what works and what doesn’t under various conditions.

While we’re on the topic I will say the whole closed-loop, cannot be misaligned absolute pin-point accuracy of mirrorless cameras is a plus. DSLR’s can do this in live view but that’s crazy slow; That’s an upside. We’ll see if I can put it to use and where it works vs. My typical working methods.

The Rest Of It

Is the XT-1 a good camera? Sure it is. Had to put that out there because the rest of this after having messed with it for a week is going to be all negative. The camera has been reviewed thousands of times. Most of the reviews are without context to the rest of the camera world. They exist entirely under the assumption that Fuji cameras are wonderful so they are only evaluated relative to the other Fuji cameras and we gat a bottom line of Wow this camera rocks. Of course there are a few out there that compare it to things like the Nikon Df. There are even comparisons to other DSLR’s or Micro 43. All of them seem to either compare IQ, or focusing speed, things like that. I’ll try to be as objective as possible and come at this from a non-koolaid drinker’s perspective.

Stupid Fuji Pet Tricks

What’s the prevailing Fuji-mob mantra? Fuji listens to photographers and makes changes and blah, blah, blah. Really? You could take that to mean that subtle nuances are carefully considered and integrated into products more and more. The other way you could interpret it is “Hey Fuji-guys, your cameras are totally fucked up and broken. Could you please fix the frigging thing”. Honestly it’s more the latter than the former. To bad in fixing things they totally bugger up the works for other things.

What am I talking about? Let’s take something EVF specific, one of the strong points of EVF’s like custom information overlays. Every single camera Fuji makes has a relatively quick way to switch between a clean VF and a VF with all the optional crap you have turned on. Every camera except the XT-1. I had to search the internet pretty hard to find out this is the case and I wasn’t missing something obvious. Maybe two reviews brought this up. Why the fuck are all the X-Photographers not castigating Fuji about this? This truly blows. Did all of them meet with Fuji and tell them to totally eliminate this? Did the ability to switch all the optional info on/off quickly somehow become a bad thing? You can do it for the back screen but you cannot for the EVF… WTF? Hell we’re coming up on version four point zero of the firmware. Why the hell isn’t this fixed? Yea, either Fuji listens to photographers is kinda bullshit or they’re listening to complete idiots.

The punchline is the completely useless extra button the XT-1 gained specifically for the EVF. It could be used for a dedicated info on/off but no… It switches between “full and normal” EVF. Does anyone use “normal”? The one or two people that do they probably never ever, ever use full. That should be in the menus rather than the optional overlays. WTF????

Handling

The XT-1 distinguishes itself as having most hateful buttons and button placement of any Fuji X-camera. Now that’s saying something. I know everyone has different sized hands but I cannot imagine any adult sized humans that won’t find the button placement awkward and cumbersome compared to any DSLR. Ever read the absolute non-sense and off-handed remarks by more than a couple of reviewers saying things like “The XT-1 is the Nikon Df done right”? Any implication that the Fuji XT-1 handles in any way better for any of it’s controls is pure bullshit. I take that back, the exposure compensation on the XT-1 is slightly more convenient than the Nikon Df.

Why would you put the AF-Lock/AF-On button on the opposite side of the newly designed place your thumb sits?
ISO dial lock on the top vs the side/edge? Not a great idea given how slim that dial is. Changing it quickly there’s an 80% chance you’ll also change the drive mode to a random position as well.
Why would you want to reach over the trash button to hit the playback button. You’d think the trash button is more used than the playback based on ease of access and placement.

I could go on and on but the XT-1 is not a camera that handles well if you need to change things beyond shutter/aperture/exposure comp frequently. Thankfully I don’t but it’s perplexing how anyone could compare the handling of this camera to the Df in any positive way given similar goals let alone a well evolved DSLR. The only real annoyance that may or may not pass in my use is probably the focus point adjustment if I happen to find the increased point spread/AF useful. Definitely the placement of the AF-lock/AF-on is terrible for back-button focus use in combination with the new thumb rest. That may be something that continually grates on me in the real world. The rest are intellectual annoyances like most comparisons. I don’t switch around the way cameras work much. So for my purposes there are only a few things I can see as impediments — I’ll probably get used to those, I hope. At least the on/off switch is reasonable.

Bad placement of AF-on
Hateful, tiny, hard to use, awkward D-Pad
No easy switch EVF extra info on/off
Accidentally changing drive move on half of ISO changes

This brings us to menus etc. I still don’t get it. I still cannot grasp why the fanboy crowd goes goo-goo eyed over the Q-menu. Does everyone but me futz with the JPEG settings and fine tuning a lot? Like every shot? There’s two or three things in there that are useful on a regular basis. The flash crap and the WB stuff. What’s worse is that when I heard it’s now customizable I was like “cool, now I can put useful stuff in there”. Nope, not really. You can customize it to either have one set of mostly useless stuff in terms of things that you may want to change up case by case or a bunch of other mostly useless stuff.

I’ll explain. Most of the way the camera functions rather than the way the JPEG’s look cannot be put in the Q-menu. Example: You cannot put any of the EVF optional info in there… see what I mean. Same goes for “Custom settings” who the hell needs three dozen mostly JPEG look setups they can change between quickly? How do Nikons work? Well, in contrast every single solitary custom function can be saved in a custom setting menu bank. Every flash option (tons), every AF mode, every custom button setup, everything the camera can do. As in the way the camera operates. Hell, the camera even tells you what bank you’ve got selected. Oh yeah you can do that for JPEG output shit too. Independently. Comparatively the Fuji Q-menu, the custom settings stuff, etc just blows. Unless of course you really do like messing with JPEG settings every other shot.

Bottom Line

It’s a perfectly fine camera. It makes fine pictures. It’s not as slow as previous X-series bodies. The primes are fantastic for the price. Easily as good or better than Nikon/Canon equivalents at an affordable price. I’ll update as my six month experiment progresses. I’m cheating a bit because I already know it will be fine. My requirements in terms of camera performance and handling are basic… shutter/aperture/focus/shutter-lag and I’m good. I already know that will be fine. The real question is if I can really live with an EVF or not. Preliminary information is that I probably can but will I actually want to after a sustained cold-turkey immersion without going back to a decent OVF? We’ll see. I may get a bonus and find a couple of new working methods with the increased AF point spread and other mirrorless (live-view all the time) functionality. If not my old ones will be fine.

Fuji X System Crazy Follow-Up

2015-05-25T00:00:00Z

Wanted to post a quick update to the Fuji X System post I wrote last week. A few comments you can see at the bottom, that typically means I get about ten times that number of emails expressing opinions, arguments, etc. Most of them had elements of the public commentary but more than half also had a flavor of “Fuji’s completely suck (due to EVF/clunky operation/speed) or completely the opposite opinions regarding the same”. The combination led me to my typical crazy, compulsive behavior which might surprise a few of you.

Fuji Cameras Suck

I’m paraphrasing the group of people that reacted negatively to my claim that Fuji makes the best APS-C system in the world. The emails were more restrained and polite but that was the pervasive message. Sort of a confirmation of OVF lovers (like me) as well as my observations on operational clunky-ness. Overall there was skepticism towards my claim that I could live with a Fuji EVF camera and the 18-55 (a small exaggeration).

Fuji Cameras Are Better Than You Think They Are

The other faction’s feelings summed up. Mostly centered around my distaste for EVF based cameras with a dash of the usual skirting of the operational inferiority by relegating all the stuff that’s clunky to quirks as if those things are somehow quaintness to be admired and embraced. Hey, I’m all for limitations fueling creativity and all but not every limitation in every situation plays out that way. Everything in moderation rather than taking it a bit too far; Hey drinking water is good for you — ever read about the people that drink so much they kill themselves? You get the point.

In any case most of these people are Fuji system only photographers recounting their similar sentiments. Stories about using their X100/S/T cameras in OVF at first then slowly getting used to the EVF which in turned changed their mind regarding the EVF-only cameras. Bottom line was a pervasive message of “try it, live with it for a while, you’ll like it”.

Strange Things Happen When I Go Shopping

Some of you might remember that I’m in dire need of a new Macro lens. My old as dirt Nikkor 105 AF Micro has been exhibiting extremely quirky behavior for quite a while. A couple of weeks ago this escalated from minor annoyance to intolerable. Since that escalation a brand new Nikkor 105 Micro VR has been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart ready to go. I have a strange quirk that once I’ve set my mind to buying something that money is already spent (even if I can’t afford it or have no urgent need). Combine that with another quirk where I ask myself “what else could I get for that already committed money”. Over half the time I end up buying something that’s not I set out to accomplish in the first place. A very strange feedback loop of justification isn’t it?

Fast forward; A Nikkor 105 VR Micro cost about the same as a really good deal Fuji XT-1 I saw and the Fuji 60mm Macro may as well be free (see what I did there?). So now I have a Fuji XT-1 that is my macro lens for the same price (not really but close enough my powers of rationalization can chalk the difference up to rounding errors). Of course I chucked in an 18-55, they’re dirt cheap too.

Now What?

Well… Ummm… I figure I will sort out this EVF thing once and for all (well maybe not but for the foreseeable future). For the next six months I’m going to shoot exclusively with the EVF camera. Why? Pretty much to prove to the OVF/fast operation zealot crowd (I’m more on this side of the fence) that it really makes no difference beyond personal preference for that vast majority of circumstances. On the flip side I’m going to see if the “I was just like you but stuck with it and now it’s great” guys are right — it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Worst case is I’ve got a macro setup that’s really small where I don’t give a hoot how fast the operation of a camera is nor do I care much about viewfinders (live view is usually better anyway). I couldn’t care less about these things when we’re talking about tripods and super careful focusing etc, etc.

It should be interesting. I’ll give you the strait-up scoop as this progresses. Stay tuned.

Point Of View And Perspective

2015-05-19T00:00:00Z

A brief follow-up to a more technically oriented post regarding lens choice and perspective. At least a half dozen people went out and did exactly what I demonstrated with my StupidCrap™ example shots. Most of them tested my assertion by using a far bigger difference in focal length than my 28mm and 50mm example. Standing in the same place using their widest lens then their longest lens cropping for the same framing they had their collective minds blown that perspective was exactly the same. Great — stupid pet tricks causing epiphany. With that horse dead it’s probably a good idea to talk about ”now what”.

Probably not a secret I rather shoot wider and closer for the most part. What might not be so apparent is how much I move around when working. I move a lot, almost every shot. Sometimes big moves, sometimes small moves. I don’t even notice it but a colleague of mine over at Atomic Canary recently told me it’s impossible to shoot BTS images of me. Funny stuff, maybe I’m the only oddball that wants their subjects to move more rather than less in most circumstances. Here’s a brief example of why this is the case when shooting wider and closer.

At the risk of stating the obvious let’s take a look at the shot at the top. I kind of like it for some reason, not stand alone but more from a feel. I happened to grab it while doing an exposure test when switching up wardrobe/props as well as changing from the Nikon Df to the my Fuji X100S. Patty is about the same height as I am in those boots. Tall for a female, not so tall for a male. I’m a towering 5’10” when not all slouchy. I shot this standing up.

The shot above I shot at about P’s knee level, maybe an inch or two below that. I’m also a couple feet closer. How much closer precisely? About one of my normal steps towards the subject. Only one step. I don’t know about you but these are night and day differences in POV and perspective in my book. The two photographs feel completely different in large part due to that change. If you’re OCD enough to check out the file names you’ll find they’re back to back shots as well. Night and Day, the obvious mentioned above. Ask yourself, do you take advantage of this? I’ll bet academically you know all about it, the real question is do you do it. Having observed dozens and dozens of photographers over the last year there’s a good chance you might not. Try it, especially when shooting 50mm or less and see what it does with your subjects. Worst case is you won’t end up with 47 versions of the exact same picture.

Moving on to some more subtle points. P has a longer torso and short-ish legs. Don’t take that the wrong way, I’m not speaking from a casual observer’s point of view. She’s gorgeous and great to work with. I’m speaking purely from rendering moving, dynamic, three dimensional human beings on a static two dimensional medium. That particular dress hides this physiological fact due to the placement of that blue ribbon and where the flare-out starts. In other words it’s a flexible wardrobe for P’s particular anatomical arrangement. Let’s take a look at something a little less forgiving in the wardrobe department.

Goofy hair shot I kinda like. One of the first for this outfit. Not bad, Im not super close but even at this distance take a look at what a couple — and I do mean a couple — of inches lower does…

P’s also a bit higher in the frame but now but that change in POV of just a few inches makes a fairly big difference. Both shots are below P’s waist and above her knee.

Now just watch what happens when I move just a foot or foot and a half closer and about a foot lower than the shots above…

or this…

Again all sequential shots, easy to see shot to shot with minor tweaks. Hell I’m way to lazy to look for perfect examples that aren’t right next to each other. Sequential contact sheet kind of things might even be more informative. Who knows?

The big effects that jump out are pretty important but so are some of the other ones that might not be as obvious.

Take a look at the last two vs. the first two of that sequence in terms of P’s leg camera right vs camera left. See the proportional difference by moving closer only?
In the last two shots I move a couple of inches around to the shadow side as well. See what happens to the size relationship with P’s legs with that tiny move? The change in reflections contribute as well but that slight move also brings one leg a little closer and the other a little farther away.

Bottom line; Who needs liquify when you can just shoot a little wider and a little closer?

Fuji X-System, A Clarification

2015-05-18T00:00:00Z

Reading posts here and there one might thing I’ve got some strange Fuji vendetta. I regularly poke fun, mock, and cast aspersions on the company and it’s products. Turns out I’m a big fan of the company and it’s products. After an extended email conversation with a reader I thought some clarification of my thoughts might be appropriate regarding Fuji and their X-series cameras.

My criticism isn’t targeted at Fuji or the products directly. It’s more or less aimed at the kool-aid drinking users that heap copious amounts of praise without much context on every single product that comes out of the Fuji factory. I consider it a bit of Yang to all the Yin, a counterbalance of the universe if you will. I’m a Fuji X-system customer. I’ve owned quite a few products, and have enough experience shooting the cameras side-by-side with alternatives. Most of the heavily negative thoughts or opinions is not intended for happy Fuji customers, it’s more for a level set of potential customers thinking of making a leap.

Without snark, sarcasm, or agenda here’s my personal bottom-line on the system and cameras as a whole right now.

Fuji makes the best APS-C camera system in the world right now if you take a step back and evaluate it as a whole. The other guys make okay cameras, in some cases better cameras but in the glass department no other manufacturer comes close. Even the big guys APS-C specific offerings are compromised and have giant holes for most photographers. I consider Canon/Nikon APS-C offerings half-baked. In reality they’re full-frame camera companies unless of course you specialized in super-telephoto shooting.
I recommend Fuji to about 80% of people that ask me based on their needs, what they’re using now, budget, and what they seem to want in a camera and camera system.
Myself? I could easily use a modest sized Fuji system and be 90% happy never looking back. There’s nothing that’s a show stopper, no technical reason I couldn’t, and if I adjusted my personal priorities just slightly I probably would. Heck, I could probably live with an XPro-1 or even an XE-1 and the 18-55 and be done for under $1000. Really I could. Maybe, just maybe I’d have to chuck a few fast primes in there to satisfy my gear lust.

What about the downsides? Why don’t I just shoot a small Fuji system and be done with it? What particular priorities cause me to decide against that?

Tied for the biggest reason is the state of the software and or speed of the hardware that runs the cameras. They just feel clunky and laggy. Far more a feel than a super huge impediment in making pictures. Newer models feel less this way than older ones but still bothersome for me. Highly personal.
EVF’s are just not there for me yet. Again a highly personal point of view. Given a choice I still prefer an OVF. Are they getting better? Sure. Does Fuji have the best EVF’s? Hard to say definitively but that’s mostly due to how incremental the progress has been. If pressed I’d have to say the one on the new Sony A7II might be the best one but that would be a hair different than say the XT-1’s nothing night and day.
The mere fact that when the camera is in use the sensor is always, always, always powered up leading to the related fact that it’s impossible to power manage mirrorless cameras remotely the same way as a DSLR. Which leads to horrible battery life. Not a huge deal if that’s the only thing. Ever wonder why there’s no real advances in battery life… sensor is always on. This is probably not going to go away. I get almost 2000 shots out of a battery in my Nikon Df that’s smaller than my X100S battery. No kidding.

That’s really it. I could go on to list a million minor nits but there really not that big of a deal to me personally. Take a look, they’re all tiny little things — nits. Hardly anything to cast aspersions on. I could do that with any camera I use or ever have used. What’s wrong with the Fuji world in my opinion isn’t the system, it’s the zealots. There seems to be only zealots. Yep, every user base has it’s zealots, there just seems to be only zealots and that’s not a great or even relevant information source for people looking to make decisions with hard earned cash.

An example: Every single product that comes out. Every minor upgrade in the form of a completely new camera is vaunted as a must-have upgrade and completely revolutionary advancement. In reality Fuji has released the exact same cameras they’ve already had every year as a new model. Minor operational or performance differences at best from the last one. Don’t think that’s the case? I’ll break it down.

X100 Class

X100 released 2011
X100S released 2013 new sensor similar IQ, minor performance and operational differences.
X100T released 2014 same sensor, same IQ, similar performance and operational characteristics.

XPro-1 Class

released 2012 no update ummm same IQ as all the rest of um.

XE-1 Class

XE-1 released 2012
XE-2 released 2013 same sensor, same IQ, similar performance and operational characteristics.
XT-1 released 2014 same sensor, same IQ, similar performance and operational characteristics.

These are absolutely not in the same league as the crazy IQ and performance boosts we all saw every year or two when digital was brand new, not even close but somehow in the Fuji world that’s the way it’s shouted from the rooftops. The company has and has had three cameras of very very similar performance, IQ, and operational characteristics. They’ve been about the same for a while. I won’t talk about the X-mount cameras that nobody uses or cares about. They’re the same camera just without the viewfinder. One might argue that the performance is night and day between these. It’s not if you measure from an unweighted baseline. If you make one of those graphs designed to make tiny differences look bigger than sure, you could make them look like giant differences.

I remember the hype surrounding the release of the X100S. I bought one thinking okay, now this is going to be night and day based on all the stuff I’ve read on the internet. Shot them side by side and was like… WTF? They’re the same. The one and only thing that was really an improvement was not having to go into macro mode for a lot of shots I tend to make at distances I tend to work at. That improvement was software which the X100 also got. WTF? Having shot every one of those cameras above I get the same feeling.

Contrast that with what I’ll term similar non-event releases in a more mature system. Lets take the D800 to D810 or the D4 to D4s. Crickets. Hell even the D7000 to D7100 which is REALLY a giant night/day upgrade, still crickets. Sure if you’re in the market for a new camera great but there’s no deluge of current version users trying to convince the world that it’s a must-have upgrade. The real fan-boys and techno-anxiety types must must must get the newest one but that’s not the general notion out there.

I look at it as a public service to just calm everyone down and look at things more even-keeled verse a teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Sort of like that breathtaking nonsense regarding a 50mm-ish 1.4-ish lens somehow being earth shatteringly different in terms of DOF when in reality subjects framed the same way on a FF digi or film body with the most common lens in the universe delivers even less DOF.

There you have it. Fuji — the absolute best APS-C system out there if you want a full range of great glass at a great value with reasonable IQ. Need a sports camera with even more reach and faster response in APS-C without a full lens lineup dedicated to APS-C, there maybe better choices. Want to go mirrorless with a couple of really nice primes Fuji really is hard to beat. I like what they’ve done, especially in the lens department at prices that are real-world obtainable.

Fuji X100 Series Thoughts

2015-05-12T00:00:00Z

I’ve written many times of the evils of automation, how bad an idea it was (and is) to link autofocus to the shutter release and other philosophical ramblings on techno-distractions. I came across an image today as the result of my insanely long and recursive edit process. The mere fact this image came up so long after I made it confirms in some way how valid my own personal process for editing is — for me. It also brought some of those ramblings I mentioned above back to the forefront of my thoughts.

I shot this picture on my first Fuji X100S about a year and a half ago. I never would have made this picture if autofocus was linked to my shutter button. I probably wouldn’t have made it or even thought or reacted to do so if I didn’t regularly shoot manual focus lenses on both film and digital cameras. In your head you can logic yourself into thinking that you could but I know that in my case I definitely wouldn’t have.

A couple of thoughts to consider I’ll re-hash.

In many many cases autofocus is superfluous; A distraction that slows you down and distracts you from the subject in front of you. The act of re-re-re-re-re focusing or re-re-re-re confirmation of focus is slow and unnecessary. It’s a disease I personally acquired somewhere along the line after the introduction of autofocus. If you have AF linked to your shutter release there’s no choice. It’s almost as if that’s what the camera is telling you is the right way. Sure in some critical circumstances like shooting really close wide open where an inch or a half-inch is in or out of focus in a critical way that’s different. Go ahead refocus or confirm focus between every shot.
I happen to make quite a few pictures that are out of focus on purpose. Not all the time. In many cases they don’t work out. In some cases I like them far better because they convey the mood I was attempting to capture better. These fall into the category of forethought just like the pictures I make that are in perfect focus under conditions described above.
This particular image at the top falls into a second category. Let’s call it the reaction or semi-conscious bin of things that happen. I obviously decided to make the photograph. I decided to make it knowing how my camera was set — manual and very far out based on the last thing I shot. I wasn’t standing there deciding that the next image I was going to make was going to be out of focus on purpose. That’s how my camera was set for a shot I made a few minutes ago. The semi-conscious part comes in where I knew all this and decided to trip the shutter anyway rather than hurry up and refocus or whatever. good chance it would have been gone as this particular set of circumstances/pov/gesture/etc lasted milliseconds.

Just one of many situations where due to factors one could consider constraints or flaws causes me to act differently in a given situation. I’m a big fan of certain constraints depending on the job at hand. I’ve mentioned using the Fuji X100 series of cameras does influence a lot of things that are hard to pin down in quantification — one of the reasons I like the little bugger. I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion I tend to be a little looser when using it as my sole camera. This kind of thing is but one concrete example of a ton of stuff I pile into the looser term.

Ps. I’m still working on that eBook A Highly Opinionated Guide To Fujifilm’s X100 Series of Cameras