These are photos from my time living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and the annual Zombie Walk and this is the 2012 edition. These shots were shot with my old trusty Canon EOS 20D and either the Canon EF 80-200mm f/2.8 L or the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8.
As usual, I will divide it into a few different posts. It was a fun spectable to watch, hope you think the same.
This is the 7th post with photos from my trip to London this summer, and probably the last.
This trip was shot with my Canon 5D MkIII with Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L (Leake Street shots) and Tamron SP 24-70 f/2.8 Di VC USD (pretty much everything else) and while it's an awesome camera and great lenses, it probably won't come with me on any more trips to a city, since it's too big and heavy to walk around with all day. My Fujifilm kit will take that roll in the future, if not take over completely. We'll see...
To have a look at previous post, follow these links to see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.
Another post with street photography from Denmark's capitol. More will follow...
More street photography from Copenhagen.
More stuff from the Danish capital (with much more to come, since I tend to go back again and again).
Autumn leaves...
Some more street shoots from this great city.
More street photography from the danish capital. Enjoy.
So, after using this camera for a little while now here comes some more thoughts on it.
I'll start by saying that this little camera is in general really awesome. When it comes to handling though, in some ways it falls a bit short compared to my Canon EOS 5D MkIII. The autofocus is good on the X-T1, but it doesn't come close to the 5D MkIII either. As someone who likes to shoot HDR now and then, it comes a bit short so far. When it comes to doing handheld HDR (or on a tripod), the 5D MkIII is much better, since it can shoot up to 7 exposures in auto exposure bracketing mode (I shoot 5) of +/- 3EV (I usually do +/- 2EV) and the X-T1 can only do 3 bracketed shots of maximum +/- 1EV. Not that great. Though I should add that in some cases that might be enough since (at least it feels like) the dynamic range is a little bit better on the X-T1 than the 5D MkIII. I also should add that I haven't really done a real comparison between the cameras or even done much HDR with the X-T1 yet, I simply base this on the feel of the cameras so far.
And also, the camera I will keep on using for landscape/nature for example will still be the 5D MkIII, since it's much more rugged and suited for taking out in that type of environment. Don't get me wrong, the X-T1 feels good and rugged for such a tiny thing, but the feel and handling is important to me and in that way, the much bigger 5D MkIII wins.
Though I have to say that the X-T1 so far delivers really great photos. The Fujifilm X-Trans CMOS II sensor is simply awesome and the XF 35mm f/1.4 that I have with it delivers tack sharp results. The lightness of the camera when walking around a city, doing street photography and the image quality it delivers makes it simply great and that's where I believe the strength of the X-T1 is. I walked around Copenhagen for a whole day with the X-T1 + XF 35mm f/1.4 combination and I didn't even feel it. So as a camera for street and travel photography, it easily beats the 5D MkIII in that way.
When it comes to the coolness factor, I don't really care. I'm not a hipster, so I don't care what the camera looks like, it's not a fashion accessorie and I'm not into the whole retro look that is so trendy right now. The camera strap that comes with the X-T1 one is not great (not the one for the 5D MkIII either by the way) and I will ditch it when I get my new one from Crumpler. I'm in favour of more modern materials for a strap and don't fancy the overpriced leather straps that hipsters seems to love so much. It's just a matter of taste of course. I also might go for one of the grips (not the battery grip, since it kinda takes away the purpose of having a small camera) to add a bit more to hold on to and to feel more secure while handling such a small camera.
Another thing that is a bit on the bad side with the X-T1, is that its fastest shutterspeed is 1/4000 of a second. Fujinon XF prime lenses are ususally really sharp wide open and if you've got lenses like that, why stop down to a smaller aperture? If you want a greater depth of field, that's pretty obvious, but if you want the really shallow DOF on a bright day, shooting on f/1.2, f/1.4 or even on f/2.8 will end in an overexposed picture since the shutterspeed is to slow. An ND-filter can be used, but I'd like to keep that for when I want to take long exposure shots. Fortunately Fujifilm will correct this (together with some other stuff) with new firmware in December, I think. This is already corrected on the new X-T1 Silver Graphite Edition and will be corrected on the regular black version, so hope is there to come.
But as a conclusion so far, the X-T1 is still a really nice camera. I might sound negative, but that's not really the case, I'm just being honest about the few shortcomings that I think it has. Others might think differently. To me it's not a replacement for a DSLR, with the shortcomings that it has, but it's a really nice complement to a DSLR and especially for the times a smaller and lighter setup is wanted/needed (while travelling, doing cityscapes and street photography) and I do really like the X-T1.
This is not gonna be a long post, like the last one on the same subject. This time it's pretty much straight to the photos. Enjoy.
So, I went to Copenhagen again yesterday to do some street photography. Street photography is not my speciality, but it's pretty damn fun to do. I went to Christianshavn, and to the world famous and unique place called Christiania. For anyone who doesn't know about Christiania, it is a freetown within Copenhagen city limits, develop in 1971 with quite a "hippie" feeling to it. Hard drugs are not allowed here, but soft drugs like cannabis/marijuana and hash are sold more or less openly (under stands with camouflage nets) on "Pusher Street" (called Green Light District by the Christianian council).
So, there are a few sketchy characters here and if you take out your camera on "Pusher Street" they will pretty much smash it and fuck you up, since selling drugs (even if it's the soft ones) is illegal in Denmark, these people don't want to be caught on camera doing that. There are a lot of signs around this area saying "No photography" and you really can't miss it, so if you'll get your camera smashed and your teeth kicked in, it's pretty much your own fault and it wasn't that you didn't get warned before.
I talked to a lovely local woman about photography and she said that it's no problems around Christiania, just not in the Green Light District and the area just next to it, so I took some photos and I'll go back and take some more another time. This place is truly unique, filled with houses looking like no other houses anywhere else. Many of the buildings in Christiania are old military buildings since pretty much all of Christianshavn is a former fortification and naval base from the 1600's, and others are built by people that actually were not carpenters or masons, they just had some vision and put all kinds of stuff together to form houses.
So, after Christiania on my way to take the Metro I met a girl and three guys coming from a party and definitely in a party mood. The girl asked if I wanted to take a few photos of her (she's the brunette in the brown jacket) and after reviewing it and happily saying "look, I'm a model" to her friends, she hugged me really hard and said "have a great day". That was fun and surprising and after that I took the Metro and I went on to walk around Strøget (Copenhagen's main shopping area) and do some more photography. It was a nice day and some of the shots are not that bad, I think.
As usual, I will divide this trip into a few posts, otherwise I believe there would be too many photos at once. Please enjoy.
I've had thoughts about getting a smaller camera. Not to replace my Canon 5D MkIII, since it could not do that, but as a complement to it and a backup. I've been thinking of maybe getting a new and higher end compact camera, maybe like the Sony RX100 (or II or III). Since I've been, not against since that would be totally the wrong word to describe it, but I haven't really embraced the compact DSLR before, since I like a camera to be a bit chunky to have the right feel to it. I still like my camera to be chunky, like my 5D MkIII with batterygrip, since it's perfectly ergonomic and suits me, but I've started to maybe consider looking into getting a compact DSLR as a second camera. I'm still not very fond of the 70's retro style, since that just seems trendy, and the couple of cameras I've had a look at before did not impress me. And also, I really don't like EVFs.
But these thoughts have come more into mind after my recent trips to London and Copenhagen, where I've had to admit that it would have been nice to have had a smaller and lighter system. It wasn't so much that it was too heavy to carry around, but it being a bit bulky and you sure stand out a bit more with a camera like the 5D MkIII + lens.
Though I haven't had my hands on the Fujifilm X-T1 and tried it personally, the reviews I've seen and read at least sounds more like it would actually be worth looking into. Sure, the Sony A7r takes very impressive photos, and I could use my EF-mount lenses on it, but that would still make it pretty big, since the lenses are still a bit big. And also, the autofocus seems sucky on the A7r which would somehow take away the purpose of getting another camera (since it would be for cityscapes and street photography, not for nature/landscape/seascape).
There are still some concerns, the EVF (but the X-T1 is supposed to pretty much be the best one so far), the limitation of only 3 auto-bracketed photos of only 1 EV (since I do a bit of handheld HDR), and fastest shutter only 1/4000 of a second (bad if you want to shoot on a large apperture in daylight and don't want to put an ND filter on just for that).
Anyhow, I will probably go and have an actual hands-on look at the X-T1 next weekend and then have another thought of what to do. I'm not in a rush.