Fujifilm X100s, low light, ISO 6400 capabilities!

Man, do I love this camera? Oh yes, as much as one can love a mechanical thing that makes pictures. Yesterday my wife and me celebrated our 10 years together at a nearby restaurant. Not too much light, and I took some pictures of her with my Fufilm X100s, the settings were f/2.0, shutter 1/35, iso 6400. I took both RAW and JPG's together. Frankly, the jpgs look like shit, too much noise reduction even with the camera set to -2 NR. The skin looks like plastic, and no details in the brick wall behind my wife. The raw files.. oh man. Good. Of course there's some noise at iso 6400, but still, it's more like film grain - but only if you use a program outside Lightroom to do your sharpening! Lightroom 4.4 itself introduces the water color effects even with just a little sharpening put on. So, I used Nik Pro Sharpener 3.0, which easily works with Lightroom. Remember to set your raw file to zero sharpening in LR before opening in Nik software, or else you'll get water color artifacts with Nik too.
Here's a shot from yesterday, raw file developed in LR 4.4, sharpened in Nik. The reduced size doesn't really bring justice to the camera or the Nik Pro Sharpener. See below for my details.

For a more in study comparison with Nik and Lightroom and SOOC jpg's, head over to this thread at DPReview forum.

Here's another shot from 8. May this year. I was awarded a medal for one of my missions in Afghanistan in 2010! I would never bring a big dSLR to such a ceremony! But my Fujixfilm X100s fitted right in this situation.

So, I gave the camera to my brother, who doesn't know a thing about cameras, and he took a picture of me (to the left), the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (middle) and my wife, Joy, obviously to the right ;) The settings were ISO 3200 (auto iso), shutter 1/125, aperture f/4.0. Again, this picture is developed from the Raw file, no noise reduction, no sharpening in Lightroom, all sharpening is done in Nik Pro Sharpener 3.0. In this picture there's a lot of details which clearly would have been a mess if sharpened in Lightroom!

Here's another picture from the restaurant. Rawfile processed in Lightroom 4.4 and sharpened in Nik Pro Sharpener 3.0. Camera settings: f/2.0 @ 1/35 sec, ISO 6400!

Some Fujifilm X100s pictures

Been a while since my last post. I'm still in love with my Fujifilm X100s! The best thing about it is that I bring it along everywhere I go. It's so small (it goes in my pocket), it's so quiet (because of the leaf shutter), and makes wonderful files. Here are some examples from last weekend, taken at the barn at my father's farm - where I grew up.

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All photos in raw, of course, adjusted in Lightroom 4.4.

First impression of the Fujfilm X100s

As much as I like my Fujifilm X-pro1 I still feel the need for a camera that I can put in my pocket. Also, I've been missing a 35mm (in full frame) lens, and knowing that the 23mm (which on that camera gives 35mm) lens for the X-pro1 doesn't come out until early 2014, I recently bought myself a Fujfilm X-100s.

The Fujfilm x100s has an X-trans sensor like the X-pro1, and the 23mm f/2.0 lens, on the 1.5 cropped sensor, gives me what I've been looking for. The marketing guys over at Fuji have been hyping the autofocus on the X100s to be very, very fast. So I was curious to see if that was correct. Unfortunately I can not confirm this to be true. Yet. Not with the current firmware, 1.01. Maybe it's faster than the old x100, but after a couple of hours shooting on the street, I can't say it outperforms my X-pro1 in a way that really made me notice it. That being said, outside in good light, and after the latest firmware updates, my X-pro1 is pretty fast anyway. So, even though the X100s doesn't seem to give me anything extra over the X-pro in terms of autofocus speed, I'm happy with the performance. And if Fujfilm continues to improve on their firmware on this camera like in the past, I'm sure we'll see some improvement in the autofocusing performance too.

Some street photographers prefer to shoot with a 35mm lens, and some prefer a 50mm. I've sometimes felt that my Fuji XF 35mm (which is 53mm on a cropped sensor like the X-pro1/X100s has) sometimes has been to narrow when on the street. Especially if I want to capture more of the buildings and architecture around my subjects. Likewise, the XF 18mm lens (27mm in FF) has been to wide for me. So, the X100s fits right between these two with its 23mm lens (35mm in FF). Also, for indoors use, it should be execellent.

Here are some shots. All these photos are from rawfiles postprocessed in Lightroom 4.4.

So, am I happy? Oh yes. Quite so. But... being so used to the 35mm lens on the X-pro1, sometimes I didn't get close enough to my subjects. So, some of these shots are cropped somewhat. I need more practise! But it was fun to shoot with, and being dead silent, I wasn't so scared of disturbing the people I was photographing. That was nice. 

Fuji X-Pro1 - Winter in Norway

Just thought I'd post a shot I took in Trysil, Norway, earlier this winter. Fuji X-Pro1 of course, XF 18mm lens. F/11, 1/140sec, Iso 400. Processed in Lightroom 4.4

Fuji X-Pro 1 - some winter street shots and Lightroom 4.4

Fredrikstad is a small city in Norway that I really love spending time in during the summer. But, summer is at least 3 months away, so thought I'd post some pictures from last weekend. All the photos are taken with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and processed in Lightroom 4.4 RC-1. I'm very happy with LR 4.4, the water color effect is gone, and color artifacts are gone too. I used Fuji's own XF 35mm f/1.4 lens for all the shots.

Now, just what is she looking at? See the picture below for the answer.

A TV with cartoons on main street. :)

For this picture I used VSCO film pack 03 in the processing.

Fujifilm X-Pro1 - Street photography JPEG

Earler I posted some street shots here. Those pictures were made from the RAW files processed in Lighroom 4.3. For them I tweaked many parameters, including white balance, exposure, converted some into black&white and so on.  But many Fujifilm X-Pro1 and XE-1 photographers are very pleased with the out of camera JPEG quality. For me, part of the photography is the post processing, so I like to shoot in RAW and tweak the pictures myself. Even though the results in other peoples opinion sometimes are better out of the camera, I like to do this also to learn Lightroom and post processing.

Anyway, I thought I should post some of same street shots, but this time with no post processing, just JPEGS out of the camera. I usually shot in JPEG  + RAW, which made this comparison possible. But some of the pictures in my other post was only shot in RAW, so no reason to post JPEGS of them here since then it would be the ACR/Lightroom engine resonsible for the look, and not Fujifilm.

No tweaking is done to white balance, color og exposure. Unfortuneately I can't remember the in camera settings for JPEG. The only thing I've done on my PC is to crop them into the same size and framing as the RAW pictures in my other post so the comparison is easier.

This in one I shot with B&W for the JPEG in camera. 

Maybe I could have opened up the shadows a bit in lightroom, but I chose no to so that you could see how the light meter on X-Pro chose to handle this. I think it's actually pretty good.

Fujifilm X-Pro1 street photography RAW files

The Fujifilm X-Pro1 seems to be a popular camera for street photographers. Its light weight and relative small body makes it more pleasent to work with than a big dSLR. Also, the optical viewfinder makes it easier to time your shots because you can see elements that are outside the frame. For example people, as they move from outside and into the frame.

The execellent image quality, even on high ISO, makes it a joy to work with because you can set your ISO as high as you need to freeze the action on the street. Here are some shots taken during the last six months or so, on the street in Oslo and Stavanger, with the X-pro1. All shots are taken i RAW format and processed in Lightroom 4.3.

Why I won't sell my Canon 7D just yet...

For any readers of this blog, which is quite a few after the Fuji site http://www.scoop.it/t/fuji-x-pro1 linked to it, it is well known that I really like my Fuji X-Pro1 very much. Its fantastic image quality, low light performance and compact retro design makes it my everyday "go to" camera. But, there are certain things that this camera cannot do. Sports photography being one of them - and bird- and wildlife photography being another. With that I mean any situation where you'd want a big zoom lens and good tracking autofocus capability. The Fuji has neither, but my Canon 7D has both. The fuji is about to get a 55-200mm zoom in 2013, but still the tracking autofocus of the Fuji is not up to the task. But it's not designed to be such a camera anyway.

Here's some shots taken with my Canon 7D and the Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8L IS II USM lens - with a 2x teleconverter - making it a 140-400mm f/5.6 lens. All shots are taken at 400mm (x1.6 crop factor=640mm FF), f/5.6@1/1600sec, Iso 160 for the first two, Iso 320 for the last one. Shot in RAW, post processing is done in Adobe Lightroom 4.2.

I guess it's all about using the right tool for the job.

Fuji X-pro1 winter pictures

On Christmas day I was out testing my Fujifilm X-pro 1 in a cold condition again. I was out for about 2 hours, and it was - 13 degrees celcius. The camera worked flawlessly. I love using this camera. All of these shots are done with Fujifilm X-pro1 with either the 18mm or 35mm lens (27mm and 53mm full frame). They are JPG shots using the Black&white yellow filter output option. The shots are from the Trysil area in south eastern Norway.