cameras

Somewhere mid-summer I decided to take a break and head for the coast. I found a room with a small kitchen close to the beach in Manzanita and I set out to do nothing but walk the beaches in the area and take pictures at my own pace. As COVID-era vacations go, it was just right. I also pulled the trigger on a Q2, Leica’s compact, fixed-lens, full-frame camera. I wanted to start this sentence with “Reasoning that a great vacation deserved a great camera,” but I have not, five months later, convinced myself that reason was involved....

When I first got the X-Pro3, I wondered if I was going to have that nagging “oh, this wasn’t the right thing” feeling I’ve had over the years when a camera doesn’t quite click with me. Back in my point-and-shoot days, it was with Canon’s followup to one of the Powershot S-series. In my early dSLR days, it was Pentax’s followup to the K10D, and then the Nikon 5000. Back on the point-and-shoot side, it took about a week to decide the Fuji XF10 was largely a dud....

A while back I found a really interesting blog post by Peter Evans on using Fujifilm film simulations to emulate the look of famous photographers. It was interesting as a study in using digital technology to reconstruct some of the elements of each photographer’s style, but also because it helped my understanding of the highlight and shadow tone settings gel. The film simulations are one of my favorite parts of shooting with my Fujifilm cameras, and I love the way the highlight and shadow tone settings can dramatically affect the mood of a photo without needing to do much in Lightroom....