CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

This shot was taken in October on my second trip to Japan this year.  We traveled up to Nikko National Park, 160km north of Tokyo, to photograph the famous autumn colours.   This image was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and the Fujinon XF100-400mm lens.

I spotted these spider webs on the shore of Lake Chuzenji in Nikko National Park in Japan when we visited a couple of weeks ago.  The lake was shrouded in mist and the scene was very spooky as there were boats and pedalos pulled up on the beach after the summer season. The shot at the top of the page was shot on the Fujifilm X100T on the macro setting, which allowed me to shoot a little closer than normal to focus on the centre of the web.  The lens was set at F2 to give me a shallow depth of field. The second shot below is of a web attached to a boat winch was taken on the Fujifilm X-T2 which was fitted with the XF50-140mm f2.8 zoom lens and set at the 140mm end of the zoom range. Both images were shot in colour and converted to mono in NIK Silver EFEX Pro2 software in post production.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISE...

On the second day of visiting Nikko National Park in Japan the morning started off very misty and grey ( see Misty Pier image on Thursday's blog ).  We moved along the north shore of Lake Chuzenji and we suddenly saw some breaks in the clouds covering the lake.  We came across a beach with a car park so pulled over quickly and unpacked the camera gear. I noticed the clouds hugging the tree line on the mountains on the opposite shore so set the X-T2 up to record a timelapse video of the scene.  I used the XF50-140mm f2.8 or the XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 telephoto zoom Fujinon lenses. Using the Interval Timer Shooting function I set the camera to record one JPEG (Fine) image every 3 seconds and took a sequence of approximately 200 images before recomposing the image.  The result was a set of images that I could use to show the movement of the clouds in a timelapse video. The individual images were combined with the frame rate of 10 frames per second in Windows Mov...

The main reason we spent two days in Nikko National Park in Japan was to capture the autumn colours that this region is famous for.  Unfortunately we arrived in Nikko Province about ten days too early as many of the trees were still in their summer livery.  But when we headed north of Lake Chuzenji, climbing up into the mountains, the leaves started to show their autumnal sheen, with some trees a blaze of fiery reds and yellows.  The trees surrounding the impressive Ryuzu Falls provided a great display and the shot on this page is one of my favourites from the whole day.  The picture was taken on the Fujifilm X-Pro2 with the XF100-400mm lens. I will be posting a series of features of the travels in Japan in the coming weeks once I have completed the European Le Mans Series event in Portugal this weekend.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY ...

This is an image of one of the wooden piers on Lake Chuzenji in Nikko Province in Japan.  This was taken just after sun up but with low lying cloud covering the mountains and the lake. The visibility was very limited and you couldn't see the end of the pier. Using the Fujifilm X100T I took the above image, getting down low so that the end of the pier disappeared into the mist.  You can just make out the mooring posts further out in the lake.   The image was converted into mono using NIK Silver Efex Pro2 software.

When you asked what is a good landscape lens you would probably say a wide angle prime or good quality zoom.  My preferred wide angle for landscapes would be the XF10-24mm f4 or the XF18mm f2.   However a good telephoto lens can be used to great effect to isolate parts of the landscape or compress the perspective and while the new XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 Fujinon is probably thought of as a good lens for sport ad wildlife, I use it a lot when I am out shooting landscapes. Earlier this week I spent two days shooting in Nikko National Park in Japan and I used the X-Pro2 with the 100-400mm telephoto zoom to good effect.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ---------------------------------------------...