First Steps

A couple of initial images with the Fuji X100, taken during a rather overcast lunch-hour yesterday.  They seem quite promising: Fuji seems to like those Arthur Rackham-esque colours that predominate at this time of year, and which I find deeply attractive.

Those triangles in the twisted tape are very nice, I think, like a gingham tablecloth.  Nothing to do with the camera, of course.

Luckily, the "raw" files from the X100 are of sufficient vintage to be included in the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw that can be used with Photoshop Elements 10.  At first, I thought I was going to have to convert them to DNG files using the Adobe converter, but was relieved to discover this wouldn't be necessary.  Conversion to DNG, whilst very useful, is a dishearteningly slow process.  At least, it is on my more-than-vintage Windows XP PC.

I like this one.  I suppose the main attraction of a camera with a fixed focal-length lens like the X100 is "foot zooming".  That is, walking around a subject to find interesting angles that match the focal length (in this case, the equivalent of a moderately wide 35mm lens, in old 35mm money) rather than lazily composing with a zoom, rooted to the spot.  This is also its disadvantage, of course.  It's always frustrating to walk away, thinking, "No, can't be done with this lens..."  The superiority of prime lenses is much exaggerated: I love the flexibility of a zoom covering a moderate range either side of "normal".  One of these cameras fitted with the equivalent of a modest 35-70mm lens would be quite something.

One of the (many) correspondents who prefer to contact me via email pointed me at the blog of Martin Storz, who has been using an X100 to good effect for a while.  Some nice work, there.