Travels With Fuji

Bless the lady who bought the bag yesterday - she was very pleasant to deal with and knew her stuff - she is going to make a dedicated journey to take travel photographs and needs to pack a lot of gear into a backpack. I do hope the one we dediced upon does what she needs and that she has a safe and productive trip. Most of all I hope she does not lean over sideways on a slippery road in the jungle because the weight of all the stuff in her bag is going to pin her to the ground - and I told her this as she went. We laughed.


I too am going to make a journey to take photographs but I do not intend to fall over, unless it is in the 1809 cocktail bar. I plan to take my Fuji X-10 camera in a small shoulder pouch and enjoy the freedom of movement and expression it provides.

See what happened when I went to Melbourne last year? Despite the Melbourne weather the pictures of the cars came out beautifully. Had I been photographing landscapes or horse races or people on the beach it would have been just as successful. I shall try my luck next time with just these subjects,

Did you want to do the same, I can cheerfully recommend this brand of camera. The jpegs are good enough to form the bulk of the output, with the proviso that if I need RAW work I can do it. The cameras they make have good ergonomics - or "eye-gonomics" as I call it. They have eyepiece viewfinders up at the left of the camera back and they can deal with bright conditions that would baffle the plain exposed LCD screen. As I have a nose, the fact that there is space for it to breathe alongside the body of the camera means that shooting is a pleasure. And the LCD screen stays free of nose prints.

Had I not had the X -10 in hand, and been delighted with it, I might have been tempted to the X-100 or the X-Pro 1. I am certainly tempted to the X-E1 camera and I am particularly curious to see how far it might be used to shoot into professional work once the 18-55 zoom lens kits come in. It wants only a little imagination and  some experimentation here in the shop to come up with a rig that would be reminiscent of the wedding tackle of the 1960's

We used Leica M2 bodies then with collapsible 2.8 Elmar lenses and Metz hammer-head flashes. I recall the Metz units had battery packs that we slung over our shoulders. Loaded the Leicas with FP3 or FP4 and focussed the Elmars at 8 feet and away we went. Singles, two-ups, four across, the groups...well the dear old M2's just kept blatting away at 1/60 and f:8. Day by day by day.

Now wouldn't it be sweet if the new Fuji X-E1 with the zoom lens and auto focussing and TTL flash was just as easy to handle? And we could plonk a Gary Fong Lightsphere over the flash head and it would all be balanced and fast and light and our old age would be wonderful?

I'd almost be prepared to fall over sideways for that...