Fonthill – Fuji X-E2 and 23mm 1.4 lens

Its been a busy couple of weeks.  I had the pleasure of speaking at the Churchville Camera Club meeting on Monday as well as the Digital Image Makers last week. This coming Monday, I’ll be at the Doylestown Camera Club presenting my program “Discovery and the Creative Process”.  

Next week, Dan and I are looking forward to leading a group in the Smoky Mountains!  I am so looking forward to this tour after this LONG cold winter.

Speaking of tours, due to cancellations, we now have a spot open for each of our Palouse Tours.  We know the Palouse very well and would love you have you along!  We also have a few spots available for the fall Colorado tour.

Just a reminder that I’ll be in Hawaii co-leading the “See the light” workshop with National Geographic Photographers Jonathan Kingston, Dewitt Jones and Rickki Cooke.  Who doesn’t want to be in Hawaii the first week of December?  Very excited about this workshop!

FUJI NEWS AND THOUGHTS

Lightroom 5.4 was released yesterday along with ACR 8.4 which now supports the Fuji X-T1!  Good news.  A tip, you can now apply the wonderful Fuji film presets to your RAW images.  In both ACR and LR simply go to the camera calibration module and then click the profile drop-down dialogue.  There you will find the film choices.  COOL!

Really Right Stuff will start shipping “L” brackets for the X-T1 next week!  WOO HOO!

I am loving the Fuji X-T1.  Was playing with the face recognition with Abby and its pretty darn good. (see below) Always tracking her face allowing me to not worry where the focus point is.  Its not perfect, but I would venture to say it allows me to capture more “keepers” than if I were not using it.

The EVF on the X-T1 is CRAZY GOOD!  So big and bright.  It really is as close to an optical viewfinder as I’ve seen. And when you rotate the camera to vertical,the data in the viewfinder rotates too.  A first for a digital camera I believe. For handholding I’ve been using the optional grip along with a Gordy’s Strap, really great for folks with big hands like mine.  The images coming out of this camera are really quite stunning.  The image below of Kara was shot with the 35mm 1.4 lens shot at f/5, click on it to make it bigger. This is a jpeg straight out of the camera, no post processing applied, NONE, okay I cropped it.  Look at the skin tones and sharpness!  Crazy.

The image below is another made with the 10-24mm f/4 Fuji lens from ESP.  I’m in love!  I love to shoot wide and have been waiting patiently for this lens.  A comment about the files I’m capturing with the Fuji X-T1 and X-E2 which this image was captured with, the dynamic range is very good.  Imagine the range in this particular image.  Bright light from the skylight streaming into a dark cell at the prison all captured with one shot. With the limited time I’ve had with this lens, I would say it out performs my Nikon 16-35 f/4 in terms of distortion and sharpness. Oh there is some minor distortion at the edges but most wide angle lenses do.  Overall, I’m a very happy camper!

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