Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Fuji X-Series
I’m happy to announce that my latest in a series of guides for Fuji X-Series cameras is now available. The official title is “Fuji Jpegs: A Guide to Shooting and Processing” is a 76 page guide with tips and techniques for getting the best results when shooting with Fuji’s Jpeg engine.
I’ve been working on my next Fuji guide for so long now, I can’t really remember when it started. I had wanted to write a guide on the specifics of working with Fuji jpegs, and I had a plan all laid out, but it ended up being more difficult that I had anticipated. I kept deciding to add parts, and then I would rewrite sections, and eventually the plan kind of went out the window. However, it’s finally nearly ready, and so I hope to be able to launch it next week. So what’s it about then?
One of the highly anticipated new features in the latest Firmware update for the X-Pro 2 was the addition of highlight clipping warning in Live view. While you could get the “blinkies” previously in playback, there was no option to see them in live view until now. After you install firmware 4.0, you still need to enable it in the menu in order to turn it on.
While it has been out for a little while now, I haven’t had a chance to try Fuji’s new X-Raw Studio application until quite recently. Part of this was because when it was initially released it didn’t support the X-Pro 2 (or rather the X-Pro 2 didn’t support it) and it was also partly because I have been pretty busy (and sick) and I just didn’t get around to it. Now that I have finally had a chance to test it out, here are my first impressions…
Since my initial testing of the X-Pro2 in 4K the other day, I’ve had a chance to do a little bit more shooting, and to do a comparison of the various film simulation modes. I’ve put together a compilation of clips of the same scene, using the various film simulation modes, and these are all ungraded and straight from the camera.
With the release of firmware 4.0, the Fuji X-Pro 2 now supports 4K video. I did some quick testing, recording some footage in some local parks. There is a mix of hand held and tripod. All was shot using ProNeg Standard as the film profile. There was some very light colour correction done in Final Cut Pro as well as a custom profile to give the footage a slight grade, but this was kept to a minimum. I didn’t stabilise or adjust the geometry of any footage, so as not to affect the detail.
As many of my readers shoot with Fuji cameras, and many of you have expressed an interest in using Luminar 2018 for processing Fuji files, I wanted to give an overview of what I think is the best way to work with Fuji files currently. This is just an overview, and doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail. I am planning do a proper guide for this, but for now, this is a basic outline of what you need to know.
For a while now, I’ve been running a series of posts here on this blog called “Street Photo Diary”. I’ve also been practicing and testing various setups to allow me to produce “Vlog” style videos. After much testing and messing up, I have finally come up with a reasonable setup and idea, and that is to make a video version of my “Street Photo Diary” series. And so, a new monthly (for now) video series is born, also called “Street Photo Diary” !
There is a pretty amazing exhibit on in Dublin Zoo at the moment. The “Wild Lights” experience, is an art show of sorts, featuring animal shaped lanterns which are all around the zoo, mimicking a real zoo experience, only in lights. The artwork was created by a group of china artists, and is really something to behold. My wife and I recently paid a visit to see the exhibit and it was amazing.
As part of my ongoing Fuji Jpeg book project (which is progressing - but still a little bit away) I recently set about working on some recipes for getting various looks. One of the main things I wanted to try, was to see if I could get something similar to “street pan” in look. This is a type of film that gives you high contrast black and white and is a popular “look” with photographers who shoot street photography on film.
In my first look review of Luminar 2018 I mentioned that you could possibly use LUTs for matching Fuji Film simulation modes in Luminar 2018. I dd some research and found some free LUTs online, and having tried them out, it certainly seems like this will work.
Iridient X-Transformer is finally out of beta and version 1.0 is now available to download from the company’s website. The updated version is mainly just bug fixes from beta 4 but it also includes support for the X-E3.
I was having an impromptu photowalk the other day and I decided to record my progress with a GoPro mounted to the camera’s hot-shoe. This is the result! I started out with the intent of doing some street photography, but I ended up walking around a local park, because the Autumn colours were so nice, and the light was just right too.
I’ve been talking about working with Fuji Jpeg files a lot recently, and I wanted to show one way in which I regularly work with them, and that is to use Apple’s Photos application. So, in this video, I take a look at how I go about editing Fuji Jpeg files in Apple’s Photos Application on the mac.
Recently someone asked me how I went about taking certain shots, and I thought it would make an interesting article. I was also in the process of writing something similar for my upcoming Fuji Jpeg book, and so, this post is an early excerpt from that guide (it may well change before I’m finished) on how I go about shooting with my X-Pro 2.
I’ve mentioned before about how much of a fan I am of Macphun’s Luminar, but that I prefer using as a plug-in rather than with raw files. However, there is one exception to that, and that is when I use it with DNGs created by Iridient X-Transformer. In that case the results are actually really great, so I made a little video to demonstrate.
Because I have written a lot on various different software applications regarding raw conversion for Fuji shooters, I often get asked what I think is the best option. This is a difficult question, as they all have their pros and cons. In the past, I have done various breakdowns explaining what I see as the advantages and disadvantages of each. I’ve tried to avoid giving my own take, as I know people’s needs and opinions are different. However, I still get regularly asked, and just today I got another request for an opinion. So here it goes…
I recently had the opportunity to borrow a friends Hasselblad, and so in order to make the most out of it, I headed to one of my favourite places in the country, Glendalough. I haven’t shot with a medium format film camera before, and I didn’t want to waste too much film, so I brought my X-Pro2 with me aswell, and actually ended up shooting most of the images on that.
