CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

One of the beauties of the Fujifilm X-Series compact system cameras is the fact that you can have a professional level camera and lenses with less weight of the equivalent DSLR.  This usually means I can take three camera bodies, eight lenses and all the support material in one carry on piece of luggage that weighs less than 12kg.  However there are some countries that carrying that amount of gear will raise questions at the point of entry and one of the places for potential issues is the People's Republic of China. As regular readers of this blog will know, I am the Media Delegate for the World Endurance Championship and we visit China every year for the race in Shanghai.  I have a business visa in my passport as I am not a member of the press corps at the event and a business visa is a lot easier to obtain than a media visa.  Therefore carrying lots of camera gear might raise an issue at immigration, so for the past few years I have taken minimal equipment in...

Yesterday I spoke about using telephoto lenses and how they can be used for landscapes.  This got me thinking about zooms and prime lenses and how I do tend to reach for a prime lens over a zoom for most of my work.  There is nothing wrong with the Fujinon zooms, they are as good in the quality stakes as the prime lenses I own, but the primes are by their nature smaller and have a faster aperture. The three primes I tend to use are the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 (top image), Fujinon 18mm f2 (second image above) and the Fujinon 56mm f1.2 (third image below).  All three images were taken from the same position at Skateraw Harbour showing Torness Power Station lit up last night. All of the images were shot at 30 second at f11 on the Fujifilm X-T1, which was attached to the Manfrotto 190 tripod.   To demonstrate that zoom lenses are as good as primes here is a shot taken on the Fujinon 10-24mm f4 at 10mm.  The other lens is the Fujinon 55-200mm wh...

Six months ago I bought the ultra wide XF10-24mm f4 Fujinon (15-36mm equivalent), the sixth lens in my Fuji line up.   I have always had an ultra wide angle lens in my photographic arsenal and while the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 (21mm) is an excellent wide angle lens, there were times when I missed the extra field of view offered by my old full frame 17-35mm f2.8 Nikon.   So I decided to add the newly launched Fujinon wide angle zoom to my inventory in May of this year. The zoom range of 10mm to 24mm is very flexible making this lens a good all rounder. Here is an image at 10mm and here is the same scene at 24mm So six months on, what do I think? Well I have to be honest, while I enjoy using the lens, it hasn't been used as much as I thought it would be.  The build and optical quality is fantastic and it is a joy to use, but it is a big lens.  I find myself reaching for the 14mm and 18mm primes a lot more times than I thought I would. ...

What happens when your subject you are trying to photograph is just that little bit too far away for the lens you have on your camera?  Do you - a) Not take the shot? b) Curse the fact that you don't have that longer lens and not take the shot? c) Go out and buy that £9000 600mm f4 lens to get the shot? d) Take the shot and see what you can do in post production? Well if you answered d) then give yourself a gold star.  If you answered a) or b) then I have to ask 'why not?' the only thing you've done is wasted a frame or two, which at worst, you will delete.  If you answered c) I will just think 'lucky person to have the money to go out and do that.  however I can recommend a good chiropractor which you will need after lugging that heavy bit of kit around. Now all joking aside, it is always best to get the image right in the camera, BUT the beauty of digital photography is there are plenty of ways to improve a photograph in post production.   I lo...

The standard lens is one of those photographic legends, it is a relatively cheap addition to your camera bag that gives more bang-for-buck than any other photographic purchase you will ever buy. So what is a standard lens?  Well it is a lens that 'sees' the world with same field as vision as we do with our eyes.  Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4R In the film days this was a 50mm and this is the same today for full frame cameras such as the Nikon D800.  For crop frame sensors the standard lens has become the 35mm.  The advantages are they are relatively cheap to make because they don't need as many glass elements and they are a 'fast' lens with a wide aperture, usually f1.8 or f1.4 and some manufacturers have a f1.2, so they are great for shooting in low light.  They are also relatively cheap with Nikon and Canon 50mm f1.8 around the £100 mark brand new and dirt cheap second hand. They were the standard 'kit' lens that all cameras were sold wi...