The Practical Impractical - Or Using The Fujifilm X-70

I looked at the Fujifilm X-70 some time ago from a seller's point of view - the sleek appearance, the specifications, etc. Trying to push your urge-to-purchase buttons, but without charging up a battery and seeing if it would actually do the job. Today I took that extra step.

My experience with the Fujifilm system grows as I add new lenses and bodies to the X system...but one thing has remained much the same for a long time. I have an original X-100 camera that is the daily shooter throughout the town and has gone on holiday with me many times. It is the camera du jour for many of my trips to car shows, together with he EF-42 flash from Fujifilm.  The basic reason is that it has a leaf shutter that allows me to use high shutter speeds in sync with the flash in sunny conditions.

The X-70 also has this sort of shutter. It can sync perfectly well all the way up to over 1/1000 of a second with no complicated behaviour on the part of the flash. You can balance ambient lighting with fill flash easily. The only awkward part of it might be the physical size and balance of the EF-42 and X-70 combination

The other two advantages of this camera over others in the X-series lie with the 18.5mm focal length of the lens and the fact that it is a fixed optic. 18.5mm on an APS-C sensor approximates the view of a 28mm lens on a full frame camera. Not too wide as to distort groups unmercifully, and wide enough to get a medium car in frame from a close distance. Remember my propensity to take car shots...

The fact that the lens is fixed on means there are no intervals when the body of the camera is open to ingest dust particles. I do not have to present it to the techs for a swabbing-out every three months.

Note that there is an wider-angle supplementary lens for this camera that widens it to an equivalent of 21mm in full-frame terms. A little wide for me and certainly prone to perceived distortion.

Okay. We know it looks cool and sits cleverly in the palm of the hand, but does it take car pictures? Does it take details? Can it take model car pictures? Can it trigger a studio flash system? Is the lack of a fixed viewfinder a hindrance?

a. Yes. The sensor is 16.2 mega pixels - better than the X-100 and that is plenty good enough. The new processor and new film simulations are all working well. 18.5 mm is wide enough for a crowded car show or a suburban carport.

b. Yes, it takes details. I pushed it into the model plate on the Suzuki and it kept focusing far closer than I imagined. No special programming was necessary to go in there - it just worked.

c. Yes, it is good in the studio. The trick is to set the tiny little on board flash to commander mode and dial the ISO down to 200. Then with the aperture on f:16 and the shutter speed on 1/250, that little flash contributes hardly at all to the scene in front of it, but cheerfully sets off the slave sensors in the studio lights - they do the exposure. You might want to select a manual focus point or just let the machine run the auto focus on a nearby object.

The detail is actually better at a close range than that of the X-100 lens.

d. Is an eye-level viewfinder necessary? I would have said yes before the advent of the tilting LCD screen. Now, whenever I use a camera with one of these, I tilt it out flat and peer down into it as if it were the waist-level finder of a medium-format film SLR. Works for me.

Note that this LCD screen is also touch-sensitive. You can fire the camera by poking it. As yet I can think of no reason to do this, but there are always new situations. I'll suspend judgement on it.

As I have more cameras than arms at present, I will continue using the other cameras, but the ease of operation of this one leads me to hope that the next iteration of the X-100 series will also have a tilting screen. That would be perfect!

Just A Light Wipe Around The Edges...With Icelight 2

I'm glad I'm not a cynic.

If I was, the appearance of the Icelight 2 light painting wands in the shop would have led me to conclude that the people who manufacture them are fans of Star Wars movies...and that they know the photographers who buy them are also fans.

It would explain the metal caps on the top and bottom ends of the lights and the on/off and level control buttons in Star Wars terms. I would have this mental picture of photo assistants doing light sabre duelling with these $700 wands during coffee breaks at the studio. I can hear them making "Whummm - whummm - whummmmm" sounds and speaking like Yoda. Right up until one of them hits a studio light with the aluminium casting end of the wand and the whole place starts to look like the Death Star...

Actually, on serious consideration, the aluminium ends of the wand are drilled and tapped for 1/4 threads and it means that they can be bolted to tripods or studio stands or slung from overhead booms. There is some practicality there.

The rest of the design is explainable in photo terms swell. The on/off switch needs to be thumb-operable as you have to turn the wand on and off easily multiple times when you move around the subject...putting it as a slide switch in the base of the handle section would have been easy but ergonomically wrong.

Likewise the power up and down. As you move around you have a limited time and need to be able to run the intensity up and down in the dark by touch.

The kit in the shop had several freebie bonuses; a tungsten-light corrective sleeve that covers the emitting part of the tube, a car charger, and a two-way 1/4" threaded connector. All good stuff. Available separately, but also in stock is the clip-on set of barn doors that restrict the light spread - These may be more useful for the light when it is being used in a fixed position and may approximate a strip light in effect.

For me, the classical use of the strip light is in motor car photography - the light painting that is done with these devices is often seen in professional illustration of new cars - the sleek lines and contours are particularly well suited for what the wand can do - especially if the paint is a metallic one. As everyone seems mad for dark colours, you need some time to build up an image, and there can be a fair bit of wiping about with the wand to get it to go where it looks best.

 Cameras that allow for display of additional layers of light during long or multiple exposures...Olympus does this...let you see what is happening as you go. If you need to take multiple exposures and blend them into each other, a sturdy tripod and a quiet subject are necessary. And you need dark about you to do it with the greatest precision - though some ambient light adds location to the image. You can sometimes incorporate it while you are painting, or deliberately add it at the end of the process.

Here are some Little Studio experiments with the Icelight 2. First, outdoor shots with a metallic car and the ambience of the riverside:

Then an indoor shot with a plain studio background:

A portrait shot:

It is the sort of device that challenges and stimulates. If you get two of them the Force will be with you...and if you try to use them like traffic wands down on the flight line at the airport, the Federal Force will be with you in record time...don't say you weren't warned.

Thanks to Chelsea Bunz AKA the Absinthe Fairy, and Albert the Alligator...the green Suzuki.

The Icelight is available in-store at 230 Stirling St, Perth

Dumbing Up On Sunday Afternoon

Have you ever been bewildered by photography? I'm going to make a candid confession - I have -  many times. The first encounter with a camera that required me to set the focus, aperture, and shutter speed and then advance the film and count how many shots I'd taken was a daunting one. It was at high school and there were girls watching and I was terrified of appearing to be an amateur fool.

I've conquered that fear now and have become a professional one. People consult me for fool lessons. I could fool for Australia in several fields...and I have also conquered the fear of complex cameras. I readily whiz dials, push buttons, poke screens, and pinch and swipe with the best of them. At any one time I have 18 different criteria set on my cameras  - they function like Norden bomb sights.

But just now and then I succumb to an attack of the dumbs and want to do the least amount of thinking and controlling that I can. A Sunday trip to a car musem with the Fujifilm X-T10 gave me a chance to try out a new level of non-control. I switched on the AUTO lever.

This is a lever set under the shutter speed dial to allow the camera to take over nearly all its own functions and decisions. You cannot tell it to do much of anything in the way of ISO, shutter, or aperture and it will only agree to give you JOPEG images. But it shuffles through an amazing variety of pre-set program decisions to give a good result with no more than pointing and shooting.

The excuse Fujifilm gives for this is the idea that you hand the camera to spouses, children, or lesser mortals when you want a picture of yourself in front of the scenery. As you are not there to be fabulously technical, the lesser mortals have just one button - it is presumably all they can cope with. A very condescending lever...

Well I descended all afternoon and I am delighted with the results. I did put up the on-board flash of the X-T10 to fill some of the shadows, and I did make use of the fold-out LCD screen at the back for waist-level and floor-level shots but pretty near all the rest was just between the X-T10 body and the 27mm f:2.8 pancake lens. The percentage of keepers and usable illustration shots was over 90, and the only real danger for me was having no lenshood on the little lens.

It was good enough to encourage me to dumb it for more of the Camera Electronic equipment reportage events I do. Speed, discretion, and handiness are of prime importance for these things since any delay means that the snacks are gone before you can get to them. And I suspect that there will be a number of other cameras out there in the mirror-less or compact range that also have hidden control positions on their mode dials that allow them to run on autopilot very well.

Let " George " do it.

Never One To Let Well Enough Alone...With the Promaster LED 120

Ah, that is the universal motto of the photo enthusiast. We read a little, think a little, google a little, and then go out and fiddle a lot. We invent things to do that need not be done, and ways to do them that make no sense, and then lash the ideas together with 1/4" bolts and gaffer tape.

Just as well we are playing with cameras. If we were amateur explosives enthusiasts there would be smoking holes in the ground all over Perth...

Inspired with the Icelight 2 light painting wand, I decided to see if some of the other LED light devices in the shop could also do the same things...albeit on a smaller scale. Because I am a man who does things on a small scale - the name of my studio - The Little Studio - is not just cute marketing. I really do little bitty stuff. Not as little bitty as the macro workers, but small enough.

Okay - we have had a number of small light panels in at various times. LEDGO, Promaster, Metz amongst others. They go for various prices and are different sizes and shapes. Different price points too, but as with most things, you gets what you pays for.

I grabbed a Promaster LED 120 panel with, you guessed it, 120 LED lights on the front. It runs from 4 standard AA batteries and has a simple on/off switch. There is a shoe mount with a standard 1/4" thread on the bottom and they throw in a small bracket to bolt it onto the bottom of a camera as well. The extra icing is provision of a plastic orange cover to compensate for tungsten lighting.

Cheap as, and even cheaper now since it is on a 50% off sticker. Ideal experimenters gear.

I tried it as illumination for a colourful studio car. The first idea involved a darkened studio and the whole panel lit up from several directions. The shutter on the camera was open on bulb while this was going on - 3 seconds at 200 ISO/f:11. The switch at the back was less convenient to use than the thumb switch of the Icelight 2 but then we're talking $50 vs $700. If I was going to use this technique extensively I would add a handle to the panel using the threaded socket in the base and put a thumb button on the handle.

Then the panel occluded by several strips of gaffer tape to narrow down the beam:

Promaster don't quote their bare light temperature as such - only referring to the plastic filter as yielding 3300ºK. Ian guessing about 4500 - 5500ºK. It is times like these that I wish I had a small cheap colour temperature meter. Indeed, since we encounter light sources out in the real world that don't actually seem to HAVE a colour temperature...or if they do it is fitful and feverish...that meter would get more use than you'd think. I note that Kenko make several colour temperature meters, but they are out of my price range.

Here's a less dramatic portrait shot of Chelsea Bunz - the Absinthe Fairy - done with only the Promaster LED 120 playing on the scene.

Postscript: I have been told that there is an app for colour temperature meters. I have an app installed that prevents me from purchasing apps. It is a part of the sOS - the Stein operating system - it is a product of the CheapJohn company, and it is free...

One Owner - Never Raced Or Rolled ...

I wouldn't be selling it except I'm going overseas...

Well, before you rush me with offers I have to confess that this pristine Rolls Royce does not belong to me. It is in the possession of a chap named Bill. He let me photograph it at Cannington but made me promise not to touch the paintwork in case I left any fingerprints on it.

I can respect that, as I have seen some terrible things done to vintage cars in Melbourne when the Australia Day crowds start fingering the Fords and smearing the Simcas. I would not have the nerve to exhibit a veteran or vintage car in the RACV show in the park because I have seen how invasive the spectators can be.

Well, back to my car shoot for Bill. I scoped out the car the day before the shoot and took some preliminary shots in monochrome - just the on-camera flash tube that pops up over the lens on the Fujifilm X-T10. I selected the 27mm F:2.8 lens as the most convenient one for this sort of work - I am going to look at the new 23mm f:2 WR when it arrives.

Good shots. Good record shots, but somewhat flat - even for monochrome. So on the shoot day I opted for the Fujifilm EF-42 lens with the new Mag Mode mushroom dome diffuser in front of it. The real secret of getting modelling, light and shadow, was the use of a TTL cord from camera to flash.

I was able to see the car in the tilting LCD screen at a convenient angle, and then use the flash in the other hand to rise up above the scene  and let light fall naturally. The roof of the building housing the car was a long way up and would not have been a good bounce reflector so I opted for the hand-held light.

A two handed shoot is not much fun if you have a long lens on the camera - the moment of force generated by the 18-135mm f:3.5-5.6 WR is such that you can hardly hold the camera body steady as you work. But anything that is physically smaller, from the 60mm macro on downward to the 27mm is a breeze. You can also make use of the camera strap braced agains the back of your neck for even more steadiness.

I would also particularly recommend that users of the Fujifilm X system look into the film simulation settings in the menu and seek out the PRO Neg Hi setting, if you have it. I can get it on three of my cameras and I must say it looks as though it is finally the way that I see colour. I still like Classic Chrome for the retro look, but PRO Neg Hi cuts it for nearly everything else.

A Year Later - The Cold Wash Up For The New Lens - And It's A Hot One

About a year ago I posted a column about the Fujifilm 27mm EX 2.8 mm lens I had just bought. I speculated that it would be a useful addition to the menagerie of glass I keep. I didn't know the half of it.

For the last 40 years we've been accustomed to thinking of standard prime lenses as wide-aperture affairs. Ever since the 50's we have clapped lenses onto our cameras with maximum apertures of f:2...f:1.8...f:1.4...f:1.2... If not a national obsession exactly, it has been the expected norm for a lot of natural-light shooting. People make careers of portraiture at maximum aperture - particularly if their clients are older, richer, wrinklier, or have hairy ears. You can hide a multitude of sins in back of a shallow depth of field...

Yet...every camera maker worth their multicoating has always had a standard length lens that has a smaller aperture - frequently combining this with some other useful feature like compact size or collapsibility. It has also usually cost less than the low-light lens. And frequently had better peripheral resolution. The only disadvantage for most of the film era was the fact that it had less bragging power than the f:1.4 version...

But it could be superb. I took years of tourist shots and weddings with the 50mm f:2.8 collapsible Elmar on the M2 Leica - and a lot of working shooters did too. It was the photographic equivalent of a .303 SMLE...and quieter.

Well, the 27mm Fujinon lens is in the same class. Small - look at the profile picture of the lens:

Simple. Only one ring turns - the manual focus ring. Lightweight. Fast. Precise. And of a focal length that can be turned to most tasks in street, social, or studio photography on the appropriate Fujifilm X series camera.

I use mine to take studio portraits:

I also haunt Camera Electronic beer-and-new-camera nights to gather reportage pictures:

It records all the little details of modelling projects:

And cars at shows:

It goes on holiday to the art galleries:

And sometimes it has adventures that it doesn't even tell me about:

I shall leave speculation on the last picture to the viewers - I know I am puzzled - but I would point out the interesting detail in the next-to-last one...the gentleman capturing the picture of the lady is using a mobile phone while a perfectly good Canon DSLR is hanging from his left shoulder.

Sigh...

The Custom Menu for Custom Shooters Of Kustom Cars

Pardon the Kustom there in the header - it is an affectation of the hot rod publishing world to refer to modified motor cars in a weird way. Not that some of them do not deserve it...a fillet of lead and 14 coats of Candy Apple can hide a multitude of sins. At least the magazines don't use an inappropriate a'postrop'he or several ümlaüts...

No, we speak of the custom menus that some digital cameras have - collections of settings that may be different from those that ship from the factory. Settings that might suit the camera better to the needs of a particular individual. Special combinations for particular jobs.

All cameras that have adjustments can be changed - we did it in the days of film by buying different film, exposing it at odd settings, and then trying to see if we could bully the emulsion into an image later in the darkroom. Now we do it with WB, ISO, Colour Space, Sharpness, Foam, Azimuth, and Snarkiness settings. (Those last three are imaginary, but camera designers are imaginative people so don't get comfortable yet...)

Many cameras provide  what they refer to as custom "channels", "settings", "programs", or " sets" that let you have a bunch of ready-made changes you can access at the press or turn of a control. Thus, if you are doing one class of shot regularly that requires a special WB or dynamic range or exposure compensation, you can get it without navigating the menu again on site. My Nikon D300's were good for this.

Make no mistake - you WILL do some serious button pushing to set up the custom system in your camera but you can do it slowly in logical sequence at home. And you can have 2, 3, 4 or more of these optional layouts ready all the time. Go to a new job or a new shoot and twist one dial, once.

Wise manufacturers have arrangements in their menu systems to identify these custom sets by name - actual written titles that you button into your camera. Otherwise, if you are just confronted by seeing Custom 1,2,3, etc you quickly forget what exactly it is that you are coping with and the whole exercise is difficult.

If the camera maker has made provision for a "Q" button in the back of the camera it can show you a small précis list of the the most important settings and you'll get a quick visual confirmation of what's going to happen. Here again it is wonderful if the maker has made arrangements so that you can decide for yourself what will be shown on the Q window.

Specifically, I know Leica will do this. So will Fujifilm. So will Olympus. It means you can suit yourself rather than others - I know I went into my Fujifilm X-T10 and X-E2 and threw out the noise reduction setting and dialled in flash compensation as it is far more important to me. I don't need to change much for my purposes but I do make use of 2 additional recipes in addition to the basic set-up, and the convenience it gives is amazing.

Historical note: I remember that Konica-Minolta had a system of small computer cards that you plugged into some of their last film cameras to program them in the same way. It was a gimmick before its time and deserving of all the criticism levelled at it at. But it was a signpost to the future.

For Basic Camera Training hit up Shoot Workshops' Learn to Shoot course

The Spur Of The Moment - With The New Fujifilm

Finding myself sober and dressed, and in Camera Electronic, and no-one making use of the new Fujifilm X-70 camera for the moment, I clapped a card into it and shot out the door.

I then shot up the Suzuki, the street, and the skyline. Then the staff. If this was Georgia you'd have heard about it in the news, but as it is just Stirling Street and the only reports heard are good ones, you can relax.

The little X-70 was fitted with the supplementary viewfinder to make for snap shots. The viewfinder is the Albada type and is fitted with two sets of markings - one approximates the view of the unaided lens at the equivalent of 28mm focal length. The other delineates the view when a supplementary lens is screwed onto the front of the camera - it widens things out to an equivalent of 21mm.

The results were every bit as good as I expected - the ease-of-use of the X-100 series of cameras combined with the fast focus of the X-T10. And the Albada finder was brilliant and clear - you don't get absolute framing but it is glance quick in use.

As with the X-100 series I would thoroughly recommend this camera for tourists, art gallery shooters, and car show enthusiasts. The standard lens should be perfect for most capture, and if you needed more fill flash than the little tube provides, the hot shoe is fully TTL- operational with Fujifilm flashes.

I was honest. I put it back in the cabinet.

Reluctantly...

The X70 and all it's accessories are available now from our online store.