Indian Giver!

Ok, a bit of a back-pedaling here. I lost the images to my original blog when I did the transfer *thanks Squarespace* so I’m starting from scratch. I will be putting the original camera reviews and posts back , but I have to do surgery to get the images from my backup drive. But good news! I took the Fuji X100T out. I set it to Classic Chrome, and shot RAW+FINE at our Thanksgiving shindig last night. I had it set to Auto ISO (6400 max) and Aperture Priority. These pics are the FINE JPEGs sent from the camera to my Nexus 6. Fuji does tend to be a little on the cool side – the greens and blues are deep, but the oranges/browns/reds are flat. I find it strange since I was expecting Classic Chrome to be a little warmer, but guess I need to research CC before I make blanket statements, eh ? Also, it was overcast — see below.  I’ll tell you what I do appreciate about the X100T: Autofocus. I actually used this as a point and shoot and it did fantastic! In low-light, the facial recognition was spot on, the multi-point autofocus was very intuitive. I think there may have only been one or two where I had to recompose after diddling with the AF. I would also point out the Auto White Balance is pretty good. In these photos outdoors, it was overcast and the colors are pretty accurate. Indoors things warmed up a bit. Oddly, this one had facial recognition spot on, but I had the aperture at f/2 so the edges softened a bit. Boo! This is one that I probably should have recomposed after nailing the focus. I wasn’t really too serious about a lot of the photos, but yeah this one is blurry. /me hangs head in shame.  Ok, now here’s the scandalous statement that no photographer of any worth ever wants to hear: I could probably do just fine shooting FINE and turn off RAW. Fuji does a fantastic job with in-camera processing and film emulation. Seeing the shot on the LCD in it’s glory, then importing and losing that in RAW just pisses me off, honestly. It’s a hassle. High-res JPEGs for the win, eh ?  Let’s dig into the mechanics a bit. The Fuji X100T is the 3rd revision of the X100 series rangefinder-style fixed-lens camera from Fuji. It’s small, light, sharp, and fast. The f/2 aperture, combined with the clean high-ISO support offers great photos that rival more expensive cameras I own. The JPEGs are gorgeous. The film emulations are really nice, especially Classic Chrome. It has a nice-albeit-finicky WiFi feature that works together with the Fuji Camera Remote app. It’s also a very easy one-handed camera. I’ve got an optional thumb-rest on mine but it’s not necessary. The camera is feather light.  It uses a leaf shutter so it’s extremely quiet. It has fully manual controls for shutter speed (B – 4000/sec). The aperture ring has a tab on it, but honestly it’s a little difficult for me to use by feel alone. Generally when I’m out on the street I set it to f/8 and just shoot. I only ever mess with the aperture when I’m doing portraits or in lower light, so it’s not really that big of an issue. There is no lens hood that comes with it. I skipped the branded one and ordered a knock-off on eBay that ran about $10 and came with a UV filter. The UV filter doesn’t do anything but protect the lens which is NOT OPTIONAL. You need to protect this lens. It’s extremely shallow and will get scratched. Get a UV filter or a lens hood immediately. It’s a great camera and worth the investment. My aversion to digital aside… well, not really an aversion, I just like film… this is a fantastic camera. I am going to shoot with it more over the holidays. I’ve only got black and white film and I’d like to have lots of good color shots for the holidays.I hope everybody had a great holiday and look forward to more posts/pictures now that I’ve got the site up.-Aragon