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
If there has been one company more outspoken than any other on the subject of APS-C sensors vs Full Frame it has been Fujifilm. Because of the insistence of company executives that their X-Trans technology makes their smaller sensor superior to full frame, many fans of the company’s products have been active and vocal supporters of this viewpoint. It has reignited an argument that many had previously considered settled: the merits of full frame vs cropped sensor.
While there was nothing preventing you working with Fuji files on Lightroom Mobile before, now that the latest version supports presets and preset syncing, the workflow has gotten a lot easier. If you follow any of my techniques for sharpening and managing Fuji files, you can now apply many of these to Lightroom mobile as well. There are of course limitations still, but its come a long way in just one version.
I set myself a little project the other morning, and that was to venture around the streets of Dublin city looking for interesting colours I could see. It’s become something of a running gag now, that my “Street Photography” isn’t technically street photography. But then, the definition of street photography is so vague anyway, at this point it doesn’t really matter. It was an interesting exercise, and it was quite revealing to me.
A while ago I wrote about my current workflow for processing Fuji files, and how I’ve simplified it recently. However, it was important to note that the way I work isn’t necessarily for everyone. A lot of it comes down to personal choice. I still get asked all the time by people as to which application they should use, and this is a tough question to answer because so much of it is down to personal choice. With that in mind, I wanted to see if I could break it down and come up with some methodology for helping people decide. So here is what I’ve come up with. It's not perfect, and as always, my best advice is to try different applications and see what works best for you.
I discovered the other day, quite by accident, that my Fuji X-Pro 2 is two years old this week. Tomorrow in fact. What a few years it has been. I’ve had ups and downs with the camera, but it’s also been good to me. Writing about it and processing Fuji files has undoubtedly made a name for me in certain corners, and I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today if it hadn’t been for buying that camera.
Today, Fuji launched the newest camera in its lineup, the budget conscious X-T100. Its kind of a cross between an X-A5 an X-T20, and I have to say, I think this is a really interesting camera. It gives you a well-equipped body, with a high-quality EVF but with a Beyer sensor instead of X-Trans. This means that you don’t have to worry about any changes to your workflow to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of working with X-Trans files, but still, have all the other advantages of a Fuji camera.
There’s an issue that can occur with Fuji cameras when you go to charge the battery. The light on the charger flashes, and instead of charging the battery, it will drain it completely. I’ve had this problem a couple of times now, and at first, I thought there was something wrong with my battery, but it turns out that it’s a fairly common issue with the charger. I’ve googled it and researched the problem, and while it’s fairly well known, as is typical with such things, there’s a wide range of conflicting opinions as to the cause and solution. So here’s what I found works for me…
While Fuji no doubt has a great range of lenses, and it certainly has some high-quality Primes, there are a couple of holes in its lineup still, in my opinion. There is one lens, that is very popular on some other systems, and it’s the lens I miss the most from when I had it for my Canon 5d. For me, it’s the ideal walk around focal length, and that is a 24-105mm equivalent. For a Fuji X-series system, that would be a 16-70mm.
When Skylum released the latest version of Luminar last month it had some significant improvements to the RAW processing engine. This included some much-needed features such as a significant speed increase and automatic lens corrections. I wanted to see how well it could now be used as a RAW processor for Fuji files, and so I put it through its paces and came up with some basic workflows.
Over the years I’ve covered a lot of different applications and ways of working with Fuji raw files. During the time I’ve been shooting Fuji cameras, I’ve changed and honed the way I edit and process images, and while I continue to do so, I’ve started simplifying things considerably. Whereas before I worked with many different applications, I’m now pretty much just using a few.
In the past, I haven’t really covered the notion of using X-Transformer converted Fuji raw files with Capture One, because I didn’t really see the need. Capture One does a pretty good job on its own of converting Fuji RAW files, so I didn’t really see the point of going through the process of using X-transformer to convert the images first. However, I recently came across a situation where you may want to use X-Transformed DNG files, which I hadn’t thought of before, but now it seems obvious.
I was passing through a very sunny London city twice over the last week. On each occasion, I was only there for a day or so, and so I didn’t have a lot of time for photography, but I still managed to squeeze an hour or two in on both trips. I hadn’t really intended to shoot street photography specifically, but it sort of ended up that way. I was originally planning to do more “travel photography” style shots, and I was also shooting a video for my new travel vlog series, but in the process of trying to avoid the typical shots of London everyone takes, I somehow ended up shooting street photography. I was actually really lucky with some of the shots too.
I recently posted a video about processing a photoshoot that I did with my Fuji X-Pro 2, and in that video I used Iridient X-Transformer to convert the files to DNGs. I got a number of questions after posting this, with a number of people still unsure as to why one would want to use this software in the first place. I had thought that most people understood what the software did, and why you might want to use it, but as that doesn’t seem to be the case I thought I would clarify it a bit. So here is an extract from my X-Transformer book where I outline what the software does and why you might want to use it.
Perhaps it is the designer in me, but I love capturing images of details, whether it’s graffiti, street art, quirky objects, or simply bold colours and textures. Dublin city is full of these sights. I recently set out on a photo walk/shoot to capture a set of this kind of imagery for my Streets of Dublin project, and I decided to record the process of processing these when I got back to the computer.
This is another short excerpt from my latest eBook on working with Fujifilm Cameras. In Chapter 3 of "Fuji Jpegs: A Shooting and Processing Guide, " I cover a collection of tips to help you get your images as close as possible to what you want them to be in-camera. In the chapter, I point out that it’s important to understand that in many cases, a lot of what is “right” is subjective, and depends entirely on the look that you’re aiming to achieve. In the following excerpt, I discuss one of the side effects of using an EVF and why you need to be careful with your exposure.
Last week I launched my latest in a series of guidebooks for Fuji shooters. This one focussed on using Jpegs, and how to shoot and process them to get the best results. It dealt with some of the quirks of Fuji’s in-camera options and so on. I was actually surprised at how successful it was, and I was actually afraid my store would crash on the first day, as the interest was so high. I want to really thank everyone who bought a copy as I really wasn’t expecting it to be so successful. For this who haven’t seen it yet, I wanted to give you a taste, and so here’s an edited excerpt from the guide about how Fuji’s Highlight and Shadow Tone options work…
It was a lovely sunny day in Dublin the other day, and it was surprisingly warm after a long cold spell. I grabbed my cameras and headed out to do some street and cityscape photography in the city. As well as trying to get some new street photography, I also wanted to shoot another episode of “Street Photo Diary”
The much rumoured new top end Fujifilm X-Trans APS-C camera has been announced this morning. The X-H1 comes in a new body design that is similar to the medium format GF-X and the big headline feature is the addition of in-body stabilisation
