The X Files

It's been back to earth, and business as usual, for the last couple of weeks.  I may have a few more Innsbruck posts in the pipeline, but felt the need to revisit some pictures I had made before going away.  Above, I have paired my favourite telephone kiosk with the  "Appearing Rooms" fountain on the South Bank.  Below, an intriguing South Bank window with a "campus corner".

These were all taken with the Fuji X-E1.  I don't think I mentioned my decision to take the Panasonic G3 to Austria.  Mainly, it was a classic case of convenience (smaller, lighter body, much lighter kit zoom lens) winning out over the clear advantages of image quality, when it came to packing a travel bag.  But there was also the issue of familiarity:  I'm well past the stage of wondering which button does what on the G3, whereas I'm still either accidentally pressing the wrong buttons or discovering useful new settings on the X-E1.

There was also the issue of raw file conversion.  Although the Fuji JPG files are extremely good (these are all out-of-camera JPGs), you would have to be a little reckless to entrust the outcome of an important one-off residency to JPG files.  The X system raw files are allegedly not well converted by Adobe Camera Raw:  I wouldn't know, as the X-E1 was released after the latest version of Camera Raw that my version of Photoshop Elements can handle.  So, I'm now giving PictureCode's Photo Ninja a try -- I've read good things about it, and have long been a user of the Noise Ninja plugin.  So far, it seems pretty good, and as a combination of file browser and raw converter it has improved my workflow considerably.  However, if any Fuji X user out there has alternative recommendations, I'd be glad to hear them.