Haven't updated much here and I see it has passed nearly a month since my last update.
But the thing is that autumn has hit the south of Sweden where I live, and weather usually turns to shit and unshootable (probably not a real word) conditions. Especially for model and portrait stuff, the things I do mostly these days.
The weird thing is that I have a new camera and I haven't used it that much, but the reason is pretty much the above. And the lack of models. And my regular job that includes on call duty which I hate to such a degree...
BUT this weekend I've been shooting in Copenhagen with the amazing Diviana. Both on Friday night and on Saturday. I got off work earlier on Friday and travelled to Copenhagen, met up with Diviana and took her to Tivoli in the heart of Copenhagen. What I haven't mentioned yet is that the weather obviously turned out to be the worst so far this autumn. I mean why the fuck wouldn't it?...
It rained all Friday, with a few minutes here and there in the evening when it actually didn't. I had this idea of shooting inside of Tivoli, when they have fixed it up for Halloween. That would have been pretty cool if not the rain had ruined most of the mood. Where there should have been smoke and stuff, there were none since the rain killed it. And it was too dark and even if it was shit weather, too crowded with people. Sure, I brought one of my Rotolight NEO's with me to lit Diviana with, but it was still hard to get anything decent. But we tried for a couple of hours before I gave up and let my poor model who was all damp and cold, go home and I went to my hotel.
And then yesterday morning when I had the first look outside from the 15th floor, it was the greyest sky I've seen for ages and of course it was raining, and the wind was more present. Awesome...
I checked out from my hotel after a few hours and met up with Diviana again, this time we went for Botanisk Have (the Botanical Gardens) and it was much colder outside than on the night before, but we shot some in the gardens and then we went inside the big glass house where it's a bit more tropical feel than outside, to both get away from the rain and for Diviana to get a chance to warm up a bit. After that Diviana went for a change of outfit and we went for Christiansborg Palace to shoot some more.
In all, yeah, the weather fucking sucked, but Diviana is really nice, a great model and was a champ even if the weather was bad and I still think that we got some pretty nice shots (that I'm currently working on) in the end. And we have ideas for more shoots, so we'll work together again in a few months. And until I'm done with these new photos, have a look at my other portraits of her here, or nudes of her here.
So, real testing of the X-T2 right? Still, this is not a review, more thoughts on actually using it.
I guess I've done some testing of it now, this was the third time I used it to shoot a model and it's working pretty good I'd say. The autofocus is faster and a bit more exact, but it still struggled pretty bad when it was dark, but that was together with the XF 35mm f/1.4 R, which is a great lens optically, but focus motor not so much.
And I've shot with high ISO on Friday night at Tivoli. Is it better than the X-T1? Well, I haven't compared but maybe, I still think it looks like shit though. ISO can go up to 12800 while shooting in RAW (obviously, since who shoots JPG?) but it's really noisy and it lacks so much detail it's not even funny. And while the X-T2 is really awesome, ISO still sucks. And I'm not talking about shooting at ISO 12800, I'm talking 6400, and it's not usable. But otherwise, it is pretty great. It's been raining on it, not too much since I've mostly been using the mentioned XF 35mm f/1.4 R and the XF 56mm f/1.2 R and they're not weather resistant, but worked perfectly. I only used my favourite lens, the XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR for a few shots. Weather resistance or not is not so vital, since you can't really shoot when it gets too bad anyways. It's another thing while shooting seascapes or something like that.
I've only used the X-T2 together with the battery grip, but maybe I shot around 750 shots yesterday, and only one bar dropped on the internal battery on the screen and none on the two in the grip. If that is true or not, I don't know, but seems unlikely. But I've shot 1500 with the X-T1 with battery grip, and only one bar went down on that one as well, so I don't think it's reliable on either of them. But as long as you have spare batteries it's okay.
I might sound critical, and I am since it's not a cheap camera. But it's still a great camera and it's better than the X-T1. But I don't love it, and I don't love any of my cameras, since they're cameras which are tools to capture images with. Some people want to give them "souls" but that's stupid. First, souls does not exist, and second, they're dead things. But what they are, is cameras for photographers. There are many great cameras and I don't want to bash any, but what I've read and seen (and tried) about SONY cameras, well it's miles between them when it comes to being "real" cameras. Don't get me wrong, SONY make awesome sensors (it's a SONY sensor in the X-T2 as far as I know) and you can capture amazing photos with them, but the handling of them, well it's not the best. I haven't tried them all, but for the A7RII for example, it feels so backwards and non user friendly and those menus are ridiculous. With the Fuji's like the X-T2 you've got a camera, that feels like a camera, with the SONY's you've got electronic gadgets that you can capture images with. Great ones though, but I will never want to own one.
Anyhow, I will get back with more thoughts about the real use of the X-T2 along the way.