It's Been A Year Now ...
Derek Smith • 4 January 2023
A Face in the Crowd - 27mm pancake
Photo By: Derek Smith
Mam Tor - 16-80mm zoom
Photo By: Derek Smith
Darcie - 50mm prime
Photo By: Derek Smith
Ladybird on Seed Head - 70-300mm zoom
Photo By: Derek Smith
It has been just over a year now when I sold all my Olympus cameras, and lenses, and bought into the Fuji camera system with the purchase of a second-hand Fuji X-T3, and a second-hand lens the XF 35mm f/2 Fujinon, both delivered on Christmas Eve 2021. Adapting from the Olympus system has taken a while, getting used to the controls, and the colours has been a bit of a learning curve, but I am very pleased to have made the switch of camera systems.
Both of my Fuji cameras are X Mount APS-C mirrorless cameras, and the lenses are interchangeable between them. I like to think of my lenses as “tools” to achieve a particular result, each of my lenses has a focal length, or characteristic to capture a scene.
Fuji X-T3 – This is my principal camera, always feeling great in my hand, it is my workhorse, I have got used to the 26 MP APS-C X Trans sensor now, although it was quite a learning curve in the beginning. The analogue dials on the camera make for a great user experience, before turning the camera on I can set the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. The Manual, Single, or Continuous focus can also be selected via the front switch. As an example, during a recent photo shoot in a studio, equipped with studio flash soft boxes, I was able to set the ISO 160, aperture f/8, and 1/125 shutter before even switching the camera on. It was then a matter of adjusting the power on the flash units to obtain the correct exposure. The camera handles well, is water resistant, and dustproof. The features that I particularly wanted, that the Olympus didn’t have, was the focus point joystick, and the UHS II dual SD cards. Not especially worried about SD card failure, but it helps my image editing workflow to have the cards set to record .jpeg on one, and RAW on the other. The “D” pad on the rear of the camera, and the various buttons are all configurable.
Fujinon XF 16-80mm f/4 lens – This stabilised lens is nearly always mounted on my Fuji X-T3, it’s an extremely good camera / lens combination. With the lens having a versatile full frame equivalent of 24-120mm, and a constant f/4 aperture throughout the zoom range, the lens performs well, focuses close to a subject, and produces high quality images in all weathers.
Fujinon XF 70-300mm f/4 – 5.6 lens – My telephoto zoom, stabilised, with an impressive performance, producing near macro close focus images. The lens compliments the 16-80mm zoom, making an ideal “twin lens” kit with the Fuji X-T3, coping with most scenarios including landscapes, and wildlife, the lens is also weather resistant and dust proof.
Fuji X-T20 – My “backup” camera, with a 24MP APS-C sensor, so much of an improvement ergonomically over the Sony A6300 I previously owned. Using this in combination with the Fuji X-T3 / XF 16-80mm zoom lens, and a prime lens mounted on the Fuji X-T20 to avoid lens changes. On recent outings this arrangement has served me well, using a wide-angle lens mounted on the X-T20, and the zoom lens on the X-T3. The Fuji X-T20 is also a great travel camera, being physically smaller, and lighter than the Fuji X-T3, with a useful “pop-up” flash. Because the Fuji X-T20 has only a single SD card slot, I usually take images in .jpeg format, with auto ISO selected as it lacks a dedicated ISO dial. All the buttons, and dials are configurable, so I have the AF-L button set to turn on the WiFi for image transfer, and the AEL button set to control the ISO, the “D” pad is configured the same as on the X-T3 camera for ease of switching between the cameras.
Fujinon XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 lens – It may seem strange to have two 24 – 70mm full frame equivalent zoom lenses, but this is smaller, and lighter than the XF 16-80. This is the Fuji “kit” lens, but has far better resolution, and brighter aperture than most comparable “kit” lenses supplied by other camera manufacturers. The lens is stabilised and makes an excellent pairing with the Fuji X-T20.
Fujinon XF 50mm f/2 – In my opinion nothing beats a good prime lens, I enjoy my portraiture, and this lens is one of the best I’ve ever used. The lens is an unusual focal length, at about 75mm full frame equivalent, but I find this to be an ideal focal length especially for indoor, or studio shoots, I normally use this lens wide open at f/2 for natural light photoshoots. The lens is tiny, lightweight, and weatherproof.
Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 – Possibly my least used lens, nothing wrong with the lens, it’s a gem of a lens, tiny, lightweight, and weatherproof. Most of the photography experts recommend a “nifty fifty” 50mm focal length, and this 35mm is a full frame 50mm equivalent, and was the first Fuji lens I bought. I just don’t find that the 50mm focal length suits my photography, I had a 25mm (50mm equivalent) Olympus lens, but preferred either the Olympus pancake 17mm f/1.8 (34mm equivalent), or the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens (90mm equivalent).
TT Artisans 27mm AF f/2.8 – My newest purchase, an "autofocus" third-party lens, I needed a small “pancake” lens to make the Fuji X-T20 a truly “pocketable” camera. I have been delighted with the size, and performance of this lens, it’s not the sharpest lens I own, but at just £160 brand new I have no complaints. The focal length is just right at a 40mm full frame equivalent, and I’ve been able to use this for street photography. For travel as part of a lightweight system, I will have the Fuji X-T20, the XF 18-55mm zoom, and this the TT Artisans 27mm lens. I used the Fuji X-T20, and the 27mm lens, shot wide open at f/2.8, at the Buffet & Quiz night, obtaining some interesting “impromptu” shots of members, the images were very pleasing, taken in only the room lighting, the auto ISO of 3200 still produced a quality image, and that for me is a real testament of the Fuji camera system.
Samyang 12mm AF f/2 – I deliberated between buying the Fuji 10-24mm zoom wide-angle lens, or a wide-angle prime lens. I had a manual version of this lens with my Sony APS-C camera and was impressed with the image quality, just never used it much. I’m well pleased with this lens, at an 18mm full frame equivalent focal length, I have extensively used this lens for landscape photography, and it has been a real boon for the church photography project.
So that is the summation of my Fuji camera system, I’m very pleased with the image quality, and usability of the cameras, and lenses. Routinely I would select a camera, and lens combination to suit the task. The Fuji X-T3 camera, 16-80mm, and 70-300mm lenses for wildlife. For landscapes the Fuji X-T3, the 16-80mm zoom, the Fuji X-T20 with the Samyang 12mm. Portraiture, must be the Fuji X-T3, the 50mm prime, the 16-80mm zoom, and the Fuji X-T20 with the 35mm prime lens, giving options to suit indoor room sizes, or outdoor locations.
The big advantage of any interchangeable lens camera of course, is being able to tailor the lenses needed to suit the intended genre of photography.
Louth Photographic Society
Our highlight competition, Print Of The Year (POTY) competition was held last night, with our judge Grahame Dunkin giving his experienced critique on the excellent images submitted. Congratulations to Dave Turner for his Monochrome image of the year: West Pier Watchtower - Whitby, and Graham Harrison for his Colour image: Hairy Shield Bug.
Good Morning All Last week we went to have a look at the Lancaster sculpture at Norton Disney, it is open for visitors at certain times and although work is still ongoing the main Lancaster is finished and a car park in place. The sculpture is full size weighing 100 tons and honours WW2 RAF crews. Last week at the club Derek Smith ran an editing night, members were asked to bring their laptops in and Derek gave us all an SD card with some images to edit and information regarding the free editing software. A different and interesting night and hopefully we all learnt something and anyone new to photography would have learnt quite a lot. Thank you Derek for running the evening. This week, Wednesday 11th February, we have one of the clubs yearly highlights, the Print Of The Year (POTY) competition to be judged by Grahame Dunkin, all the entries are now in and you should have checked the scoresheets to make sure yours are included. Dave Turner is also asking for prints to enter into the Foster Challenge and LPA Print Battles. He will ask to use prints that are in the print of the year but if you have any prints that you think would be good to enter in the two competitions please bring them and hand them into Dave Turner. The following week we are having an evening collecting everything in for our exhibition at the Louth museum, if you can sort out any prints especially local prints that could go into our exhibition please bring them in on the 18th February. Regards Graham
Last Sunday I was in Stockton on Tees working with Izzy, a favourite model of mine she enjoys cosplay, that’s dressing up as a character from Marvel, Hasbro, or film titles. This photo is of Fey, a woodland sprite, pictured against a woodland backdrop that I bought for the photoshoot. I stayed overnight at a Premier Inn, and in the morning drove to Staithes, as I had always wanted to visit this fishing village, Staithes in the February rain wasn’t much fun, and the tide was out, but I did manage to take a few photos, and I captured one for the “Water” project so I was pleased with that. I was quite surprised how vibrant the colours were in the drizzle, and misty light. Driving back over the North Yorkshire Moors in rain, and fog, didn’t allow for much photography either. Yesterday, walking along the harbour front in Bridlington the high tide, and strong winds had thrown lots of debris onto the promenade, seaweed, nets, tree branches, and cuttlefish kept council workmen busy clearing up the mess. With the right clothing, and a weatherproof camera photography can still be enjoyed even in poor conditions.
A photo editing workshop was held last night, with members bringing in their laptops, and post processing sample images. Members were able to practice processing bracketed, and focus stacked images. Simple editing tasks of cloning unwanted items from images, cropping, and resizing of images were shown. The excellent FastStone photo viewer, and editor was able to accomplish most tasks apart from developing of RAW images, this free software is a “must have” for those with Windows computers. The Affinity photo editor has now been acquired by Canva, and the changes applied by Canva have made the software very confusing to use, and on my 14” Lenovo Thinkpad, it was very difficult to view the master layer to apply adjustments. PhotoScape X is a simplistic photo editor, for all that the software was easy to use, and the RAW processing was seamless. It was an interesting evening, and hopefully members will have attained some new skills in post processing, some of the images edited are shown here.
Good morning All I did manage to get to visit Gibraltar Point last week, very few birds to photograph at this time of year but I took a few and a Grey Squirrel. Last week member Dave Mann showed us photographs from his visit to Beamish, it's a great day out and Dave went round most of it and showed us some photographs from the new 1950's town as well as the farm, pit village, town and trains. Thank you Dave, and Harry for helping out with refreshments. This week, Wednesday 4th February, Derek is running an editing night, he has sent us all information on what we could download, if you have a laptop remember to bring it along. Print of the year is fast approaching, if you are entering make sure you send Dave Turner a list of your entries with which subject they are in and bring your prints along this week. Regards Graham
Fed up with watching the rain coming down, I set out yesterday into the rain to Normanby Hall to try and get a photo for the “Water Project”, I have one potentially good image, but I always like to see if I can get something better. My OM Systems OM-1 camera, and 12-40mm Pro lens are weatherproof, but obviously I wasn’t, but really lovely to get out.
Last night Dave Mann gave an excellent talk on his visit to Beamish in May last year. Dave explored much more of the Beamish site than when I visited in April last year, Dave mentioned the difficulties of getting on some of the vintage transport around the site, I experienced the same during my visit. It's a fascinating historic working museum and well recommended for a visit. Many thanks Dave for an entertaining evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club we had our yearly project night, last year it was one photograph a month with the same focal length, there is a full report on the evening on our blog page, but four members did last year's project with newer member Sam Collet showing photographs at the club for the first time, some excellent photographs taken in Japan. It would be good if a few more members took part this year, just one photograph a month with the subject being water. Attached is my January photograph from last year, it would work for this years project as well. This week, Wednesday 28th January, our catering manager Dave Mann will be having a week off and showing some of his photographs. His presentation will be a mixed bag of photographs. Don't forget to send Dave Turner an email with your titles for the print of the year. Entries will need bringing in on the 4th February. Regards Graham
We held our "Project Night" last night, the theme being "Prime Time", one photo each month taken over the previous 12 months, using the same focal length "prime" lens. Myself, Harry Kerman, Keith Rossington, and Graham Harrison, had each completed the project and were able to show their results as projected images at the meeting. The results of the project were very interesting, seeing how each photographer had approached the theme, and their interpretation of the project. I have posted here one image from each photographer. The evening was rounded off by one of our newer members, Sam Collett, displaying some of his images taken on a visit to Japan, his wildlife photography was stunning in detail, and quality, well done Sam.
Good morning All Last week at the club we held our monthly competition, a PDI, with the categories of "Insects" and "Open". There was a good level of entries and some excellent photography. The competition was judged by Colin Lusby of NELPS Photographic Society. The "Open" category was won by Dave Turner with an excellent landscape of Llanberis, and I managed a first place in the subject competition with a Willow Emerald Damselfly, still quite rare but I photographed this one at Bressingham Gardens Norfolk. The results and photographs are on are website under competitions. This week, Wednesday 21st January, is our project night, only four members took part, hopefully more will take part this year. The subject was "Prime Time", one photograph a month with the same focal length lens. To finish the evening, Paul Twomey is showing his mini lecture that he missed last time, and newer member Sam Collett is showing some of his work. The new project subject is Water, one photograph a month including water. There is plenty of water about at the moment, the rivers are flowing well for a start. Dave Turner will now accept your titles for Print of the year, the same subjects as the PDI of the year but with the addition of Best mono in competition as well. This is chosen by the judge from any mono print in the six subjects. Regards Graham
