Fujinon XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR

I received this lovely lens this Thursday after ordering it on the day before (holy fuck ScandinavianPhoto, that was quick!). 

I’ve taken a couple of test shots with it and damn, this lens is sharp. And it’s got the fastest autofocus of the four Fujinon lenses that I own. It’s not a small lens and it’s kinda making this mirrorless setup not so small and light anymore. And it also kinda makes me want to buy a battery grip to get the second shutter button for example, and to make it balance better on the X-T1. That will definitely make it not so small and light anymore, though it would be for when I’m doing model shoots (which I tend to do often now, and is very awesome) and it’s easy to put on and take off. We’ll see about that. 

Anyhow, this is not a review of any sort since I haven’t really tried the lens yet. Today the weather is shit, but tomorrow I’m doing another shoot with my lovely friend and model Hanna, and I’ll probably be using the 90mm quite a lot. 

I’ll get back on how the lens handles. 

And here's my review of the lens.

Landskrona Crime City

Did another model shoot yesterday with the beautiful and awesome Hanna. 

Our plan for the day was to go to an abandoned dairy plant in the middle of Helsingborg. I’ve been there once before, but that was 3 years ago and it was pretty trashed but really cool and so our hopes were to get some cool shots there. 

The place was totally locked down, might be because of vandalism or place for drug use, might also be because Sweden is run down with gypsies and way too many immigrants/refugees (too many, since Sweden can’t take care of them and all sorts of trouble is caused daily across this country because of this) and they had made it their home, I don’t know. 

But I know that typing things like this is not politically correct, but fuck political correctness (political correctness is a huge problem in its own)! 

Just yesterday I saw a tent city, a fucking tent city, in Sweden?! That’s crazy. And it’s not supposed to be like that.

The government is not acting responsibly to either Swedish citizens who pay their (way too high) salaries or to the immigrants/refugees who comes here.

Anyhow, the place was barricaded and we saw no use in trying to get in, but had a plan B which was to go to Landskrona. Landskrona is, well, was a nice little city, but is unfortunately weighted down with crime, a lot related with (once again) immigration. The day before (or maybe the day before that) someone got shot (again) in Landskrona. 

We had our sight on the old industrial part at the south part of the city, to take some shots and we did. We had my new machete as prop (and weapon, you never know in Landskrona..) and it turned out pretty cool I think. And we had lots of fun.

I've updated my Portraits section with maybe too many photos, but it was hard to decide. Enjoy.

Live concert photography pt. 11

This time it's Swedish power metal band Steel Attack.

I shot these ones (like many others) at a festival called Gates of Metal, held in Hultsfred , Sweden and while listening to one band I was approached by the (dark haired) guitarist, the vocalist and their manager asking me if I was there to do photography and if I wanted to shoot some shots for Steel Attack's website. I agreed and the shot their performance and while I'm not a fan of power metal, it wasn't bad. My photos ended up on their website and I got credit for it. They have changed line-up a few times I think and the shots are not on their website anymore.

But nice guys and cool to be asked like that.

Rant

This is a rant, about halos. 

I fucking hate halos! 

I’ll be the first to say that I’m far from perfect myself and I know I have a little bit of halo here and there, but I do my best to try to limit them to a minimum, and at some points it’s nearly impossible not to get them and sometime even I have to accept a tiny bit of them. But every day I see photos with so much halos that it’s crazy! What’s the matter with people, do they not see them? 

I see so so many landscape photos with massive halos around tree lines, mountain edges, well, what ever edge or line there is in a photo and where the contrast is really high. 

People always add so much contrast and darken their skies to make them less uninteresting and more dramatic (which they don’t, they just look weird if it’s done in the amount that I’m talking about). And then they lighten up the ground so much and it all just looks so fake and unnatural and usually results in massive halos. And the same goes to many shots with people in them. People are lighten up so much that it looks nearly like they’re radioactive with a glow all around them. And this is not only in amateur’s photos, I see them in commercial photography too, in magazines and online. All the time. 

I mean, what in the actual fuck is going on? 

This do have a lot to do with badly done HDR photography, since nicely done HDR photography does not suffer from this problem. But not always, a lot of it is just from regular single shot photos. Photos that are destroyed. 

And I don’t know how it can just keep on going, are people blind?

This leads me to my second hate object, crooked horizons. I mean, holy crap, people can put effort into some type of post production (like making halos…fuck me) and still they post a photo where the horizon is tilting to one side or the other. The first thing is to straighten the horizon! That’s what you have to do first, before any other post processing. And of course, this should be done in camera, so you don’t have to sacrifice anything of your actual photo in post production, while straighten and cropping out the tilting bits, but that doesn’t always happen and that’s okay since it’s fixable in post (with the sacrifice of pixels). 

I’ve had to do it myself, like I said, I’m far from perfect. And to level up the horizon in landscape shots, before with my old DSLR I used the focus points in the view finder, then got a level for the hot shoe which made it much easier. My cameras today all have built in electronic levels for the view finder and back screen which makes it really easy. So if you have a modern camera, there isn’t really any excuses for not getting it right in camera (except for not using it which is dumb), but if so, it not only can be corrected, it should be done before posting online. 

End of rant.

The Angry Photographer

This is going to be a post about Ken Wheeler a.k.a. The Angry Photographer (after this referred to as TAP). 

This guy is well known in the photography community by now. He’s got a lot of videos on YouTube and he has been pissing me off for a while now. 

He presents himself pretty much as all knowing, loving everything Nikon, bashing everything that he in his own opinion does not like (like Sigma’s ART lenses, which pretty much destroys his beloved Nikon’s equivalent ones) whether it’s fact based or not. 

And he’s been bashing american photographer Jason Lanier for ditching his Nikon cameras and going mirrorless with Sony A6000 and A7 series cameras. Just stupid.

And while he’s been bashing mirrorless cameras for a long time, now he’s suddenly a big fan of Fujifilm X cameras and lenses. Though he doesn’t like the XF 90mm f/2 (which is the sharpest Fujinon lens to date). So yeah, he just posts opinions, not facts.

Myself I wasn’t very impressed with mirrorless cameras at all until I tried the Fujifilm X-T1, but I’ve never been bashing them before that, I was simply not impressed until the X-T1. Sure, I don’t like the handling of Sony’s cameras, but they produce amazing image quality and are great in that way. And I’d definitely say that mirrorless cameras is the future whether we like it or not.

Back to TAP. Okay, I’m not saying that everything this guy has said is wrong, and he does have knowledge about Nikon gear, but you really have to know that it’s still mostly his opinions. So after saying that TAP is claiming to be such an awesome expert on all things photography and everything else (if he can say it himself and he does), you would think that his photography is awesome. 

Nope.

While googling him, trying to find his photography, all that can be found is a link to Flickr. And while I don’t see or present myself as an awesome photographer, the photos on The Angry Photographer’s Flickr page is to say the least, a bit underwhelming. Snapshots of girls/women in bikinis and some other snapshots is not something that is making me very impressed.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/134746128@N05

The only thing great with this guy is his own ego. It is huge.

 

Update June 28th 2017

To be honest, I’ve actually thought that “maybe I was too harsh” in my criticism of TAP in this post I made nearly a year and a half ago. 

But after watching the video TAP made together with Jason Lanier it’s painfully obvious that I wasn’t harsh enough.

TAP does not know how to take a decent photograph. 

He was using a Fujifilm GFX 50S, and he made it look like he took bad snapshots with a mobile phone. What in the unholy of fucks is this guy even doing with a GFX 50S!? That must be the single largest waste of money ever! 

I was hoping that maybe I was totally wrong and maybe I would be blown away about the awesome photos TAP would take in this video, but no, it just made it crystal clear that every thing I’ve ever thought about TAP was true. 

Once again, I very well know I’m not the best photographer myself ever and I’ve never claimed to be it either, but holy crap, TAP pretty much claims that he is and this is what he has to show off? Taken with a camera like the Fujifilm GFX 50S?! And while the Sony A9 that Jason used probably is a nice one, I'd believe the GFX 50S should have shown even better results, but in the hands of a total noob, nope.
It just makes it really clear that it doesn’t matter if you have the best tool ever, if you have absolutely no idea of how to use it, it’s pretty useless…

Anyways, have a look at the video. 

 

Also have a look at the photos taken at the time for the video. Both Jason Lanier’s and Ken Wheeler’s are posted on Jason’s blog. 

http://www.jasonlanier.com/blog/2017/6/12/the-shoot-between-jason-lanier-and-ken-wheeler-the-angry-photographer-using-the-sony-a9-and-the-fuji-gfx

 

Update May 11th 2018

Since I'm currently on a photography trip to the U.K. and with really slow wifi at my hotel and so on, I haven't really kept up to date of things going on. I got the link to this new video from one of my returning commenter (thank you), but since this video was only posted yesterday, I guess I'm not that much off. :) 

But I had to add this video to this post since this is truly a new level of disgusting behaviour from this hate spewing and constant liar. 

I don't know neither Jason Lanier or Ken Wheeler, though I have no reason to disbelieve in any what Jason Lanier says, since he does seem like a very genuine person to me, but I have all the reasons to disbelieve Ken Wheeler for all the evidences of the horrendous behaviour and his constant lying through the years. 

I really do hope Jason gets Ken this time, hopefully legally, since he really does need to be stopped. He has spread his bullshit and hate for too long. 

So for any Ken Wheeler fan and apologetic, you really have to think about what you're supporting.

 

Update June 3rd 2018

The above video is taken down for obvious reasons.

And I have cancelled the comments section on this post, since it's gone too far. 

Allegations thrown out against not only Jason Lanier but even Ken Wheeler without actual facts is not really cool, and the level of the discussion has been spiralling down.

So I have deleted all the last bullshit about allegations towards Jason and Ken.
The truth will come out sooner or later, and then we will all see what's been going on. 

I might open up the comments again at a later state.

Rotolight NEO

Since I recently started doing more model shots (which is awesome and super fun) I’ve been thinking of getting some extra lighting, since it's definitely needed in many situations, both as fill light or as an effect.

I prefer shooting in natural light, since I’m usually not that fond of the looks of most flash light photos, even though some are extraordinary. Also since I don't have all the equipment or the experience with using it either. 

But since I started following Jason Lanier on YouTube a while ago and saw him using the continuous LED lights from Rotolight, that got me interested and thought that it might be something for me. Continuous lights are much more appealing to me, since you can see the actual result directly in camera (specially if you're using a mirrorless one). 

So just now (after waking up in the middle of the night) I took the plunge and ordered the NEO directly from Rotolight (cheaper w/ 10% off through Jason Lanier, and also, it’s available which it’s currently not in Sweden) and I’m really looking forward to using it on a model shoot (my next one is on Sunday, so I guess next shoot after that) and I’ll write something here about my experience with it.

P.S. I should actually make my self clear here. What I meant with not liking flash lit photos is flash lit photos shot in studio, mostly since I don't like studio shots that much, since it looks, well, like shot in a studio. I specially don't like photos shot with cheesy fabric backgrounds. I shoot on location, only on location. And one rewarding thing is to find something that works great as a background for these shots and it's not super easy to find interesting ones.

Upcoming model/portrait shooting

I'm currently planning upcoming stuff together with my collaborators including buying and fabrication of clothes and props. I'm really looking forward to the next few months and will post new stuff in my Portrait section as soon I've got, well, new stuff to post. 

Art exhibition.

So, I went to an art exhibition today at "Dunkers Kulturhus" with my friend (and model) Hanna. It was awesome. I went there mainly because of my friend (Necrolord) Kristian Wåhlin's amazing paintings, but there were lots of paintings by Marcus Larson (Swedish dramatic landscape painter) from the mid 1800's and they were just wow! There were also paintings and a couple of photographs by other artists, mainly record covers for hard rock bands like Black Sabbath and Dio, to metal bands Amon Amarth and Slayer for example. 

I've said to myself for quite a while that I should go and see the exhibition, but haven't come around, but now it's only a week left, so I had to finally get the thumb ouf of my ass and go there. 

There were also another exhibition by Danish artist Michael Kvium. It was pretty weird but cool. A good day, good exhibition in good company. 

One thing though. In one room there were a couple of couches, a big black wooden chair, a candelabra, stuffed crows, very dark and it looked really cool with a gothic kinda vibe. So I thought I should take a couple of shots of Hanna there, since I was bringing my new and very nice Wotancraft Scout bag and my Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF 35mm f/1.4 R and XF 56mm f/1.2 R. But since it was so damn dark in there I had to crank the ISO to 6400, to avoid camera shake. Afterwards, well, I never should have done that. It turned out bad. And I mean really really bad. Not only did it get noisy, which I could have lived with, but there were weird looking patterns all over Hanna which there was no way of getting rid of. That was weird, and not good at all. I've never used this high ISO before and I guess I never will again since it turned out totally useless. That's a big minus for an otherwise really good little camera. 

I ended up doing one shot black and white and fake scratched the hell out of it to cover it up. 


New model shoot

A little bit of winter around here today, so we had to take advantage of a snowy day when we have one which resulted in another model shoot today, with beautiful Hanna. Shots are posted in my portrait section.