CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

A Christmas shopping trip to Edinburgh gave me the opportunity to grab a few night shots on the Fujifilm X100T of Edinburgh Castle. I usually have the X100T in my coat pocket when I am walking about and with it's wonderful 16mp X-Trans II sensor mated to the Fujinon 23mm f2 lens I am always ready to grab a picture should the occasion arise. The images of Edinburgh Castle meant the ISO was set at 3200 to keep the shutter speed high enough to allow me to handhold the camera without fear of camera shake ruining the final image, but I know from experience that the X100T is quite capable of getting relatively clean images at 3200ISO, as the three images here prove. The three pictures were shot in RAW and JPEG (Velvia film simulation) and these images were taken from the JPEGs with small tweeks in Photoshop in post production. The second and third images were cropped to a 12:5 panoramic format because I felt the images suited the crop.   ------------------...

Yesterday evening we went over to Edinburgh to see the 'Street of Light', a structure built in George Street with over 60,000 lights synchronised to festive music.   This was the second year Edinburgh had staged a Street of Light.  In 2015 the spectacle was held on the Royal Mile and was well received by the people of Edinburgh.  This year the organisers, Underbelly, moved it to George Street which is wider and can accommodate more people. The event also included a Scottish Christmas market. Here is a short video of the 15-minute Christmas spectacle with music from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus. The Street of Light runs until Christmas Eve and is free to attend.   Tickets are recommended and are available via the event website at www.edinburghschristmas.com   All images were shot on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 with either the XF56mm f1.2, XF18mm f2 or Samyang 8mm f2.8 Fisheye.  The video was shot on the X-Pro2 or on my iPhone ...

Fujifilm X-Pro2 + XF50-140mm f2.8 On Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure of joining fellow photographer Rob Gray on the touchline at Murrayfield for the first of the three Autumn Tests where Scotland would be taking on the might of Australia.   The last time the two teams met was in the quarter finals of the 2015 Rugby World Cup and Australia won by just one point when the Wallabies were awarded a controversial penalty in the dying seconds of the game to win 35-34 and a place in the semi finals against Argentina.   So this was a rematch that everyone was looking forward to and Murrayfield was packed with over 64,000 fans anticipating a great game of rugby.  They duly got their wish as the the game was one of the best I have ever witnessed but, once again, it was Australia who triumphed by a single point. Fujifilm X-T1 + Samyang 8mm f2.8 fisheye I was given a green bib, which meant I could shoot from behind the touchline in front of the south stan...