South Bank Gallery 1

You'll be wondering, of course, what sort of bag I brought home from my recent hunter-gatherer expedition along the Thames embankment.  The light was good but not ideal, fading rapidly from a nicely overcast sky to the threat of rain by lunchtime.  But, I'd far rather have had that than a blandly sunny day.

Appearing Rooms fountain, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Waterloo Bridge

Under Waterloo Bridge

I've pretty much decided to make the move from Micro Four Thirds to the Fuji X system; there's no arguing with the results.  As a preliminary, cautious move, I now have an X-E1 kit, as these can be had very cheaply (for a top-rated camera, that is) if you shop around.  The kit zoom lens is Fuji's clear declaration of intent:  mainly metal construction, f/2.8-4, image-stabilised ... It's a pleasure to use, if a bit heavier than I've become used to.

One massive advantage of the X system is that using Auto ISO up to 1600 is a genuine "set and forget" option -- any degradation in image quality (for my kind of work, anyway) is negligible.  I'm having to use JPEGs at the moment, as my versions of Elements and Camera Raw don't support raw conversion from the X-E1.  Nothing -- NOTHING -- would persuade me to use the supplied software, the egregious SilkyPix.  Why do camera manufacturers insist on bundling such cheap rubbish with their expensive cameras?  But it's barely an issue: the out-of-camera JPEGs are humiliatingly good.