Speed Up - Fine Focus - Mighty Macro - The New Fujifilm

Did goe to a lecture laste night at Shoot Photography and was greatley entertained*.

The exposition was of the new Fujifilm X 100t camera and a gentleman who has been using it as a street-coverage camera in New York recently. While he has used other cameras in the past to do photojournalistic coverage and advertising work, he used this new little compact to make a series of images about a young skateboarder. Significantly, he used the Classic Chrome setting in the camera to give a richness to the colours.

Well, it worked. The reds in particular were really slide film reds. And the output in large fine jpeg was so detailed that it could be run straight out of the camera onto a large wall print. I suspect that Fujifilm are the jpeg kings in photography right now.

Playing with the camera after the show, I was using it as a fast-capture shooter at 3200 ISO. That's the image heading this report. Literally point and shoot and a snap focus that left no time for the wildlife to become alarmed and scatter. The colours are exact. Jpeg. Just as fast as that. Faster than my X 100 by far.

The other experiment is putting something under the macro this morning. Logic tells me that the lens is the same as my X 100 and the macro should be the same but the new configuration seems to be faster focusing and closer. Perhaps it is my imagination, but this sort of performance should be seriously considered by all those people who go out to take orchid pictures in the gloom of the forests. That is seriously good shooting at 3200 ISO and might well obviate the need for strange flash set-ups in the field.

The cameras, in black and silver versions, are in-store now.

*While the guests watched the slide show the staff made inroads into the beer and sandwiches. No-0ne said we had to be stupid...