Sunday, April 8, 2012

New York Easter Pics

One thing was abundantly clear at the Easter Day Parade (more a promenade than anything else): the Japanese camera manufacturers are making a killing in the American market, especially Canon and Nikon. It's a wonderful thing that so many people are taking photos. It raises the overall level of awareness of how important photos are to our culture, and how difficult it is to take a really good shot. 

I learned two things about the new Fuji X-Pro 1. Firstly, it may have a tendency to slightly over expose. I'll have to do more testing of that. Secondly, the camera uses a lot of battery power. I had turned off the power save feature because when it is turned on for some reason the auto focus functionality is slightly more sluggish. If I want to work with the camera in that configuration I'm going to have to make sure the battery is fully charged before I go out shooting for a day, and I'm going to have to carry an extra fully charged battery with me. The battery ran out of power after about 120 shots. At the end of its life I goosed more out of it by turning the camera off for a little while and turning it back on again only when I knew I was going to take a shot. I squeezed about 5 extra shots out of the battery. And on the train ride home I could review about 10 shots on the LCD before the camera just up and quit on me.
  
I seem to have a problem with using the SD card in my universal card reader. The volume doesn't mount on my computer. Other SD cards work fine. But when I plug the camera into the computer via a USB port the volume mounts easily. It may be about time for a new card reader. Having to use  SilkyPix Developer Studio Pro as my RAW engine is a royal pain in the ass. I've been so spoiled by the great functionality in Adobe's Lightroom. I pray that LR gets updated soon to read the new Fuji RAW format.

The biggest problem I had taking photos at the festivities was a result of the main attraction of the parade. HATS!!! They make shadows over the face, especially on a bright sunny day as it was. Here's a selection of color images almost straight out of the camera. Just a little tweaking.













8 comments:

  1. Gene galleria strepitosa. Noto che la Tua nuova macchina fotografica lavora bene, ovviamente grazie alla Tua bravura. Un abbraccio, ho poco tempo, ma ti seguo sempre.

    Wonderful Gallery Gene. Notice that your new camera works well, thanks to your course. A hug, I have little time, but always follow you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gene io ho Lightroom v. 4 e mi sembra che Camera Raw 7 abbia i nuovi modelli macchine fotografiche, fammi sapere che versione usi di Lr
    Effettivamente 120 scatti con pacco batteria sono pochi, io con la canon eos 1 riesco a farne450 con la massima risoluzione e non spengo mai la macchina. Ciao

    Gene I have Lightroom v. 4 and it seems to me that Camera Raw has 7 new cameras, let me know what version of Lr uses
    Actually 120 shots with battery pack are few, with the canon eos 1 I farne450 with the highest resolution and do not turn off the machine. Hello

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great work gene, and really interesting to have news about Fuji directly from a talented photographer as you are.
    A presto,
    Walter

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice shot, and i hear you on the battery issue, that was the biggest change for me as well going from D90 to my G3, battery was not anywhere near the nikon levels, but i learned to live with it and did buy a second battery, its still a smaller package :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hello Gene,

    You caugth a nice street moments with your new camera.Like quality and the deatails on the pics ,but it is something wrong with white balance.I played with eye dropper tool in PS4,on Pic 1,and set it to white suit on the man with the hat.Try it.I got much more natural and warm color.I suppose you had set WB on your camera to AUTO.I do not know that SilkyPix Developer.Why you did not use a Adobe camera RAW converter?I believe it is the same engine like the one in the Lightroom!I regulary use Camera RAW in my PS4 and I am very satisfied with results.Good light my friend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Darko, You are indeed correct about the white balance on the man's white suit. As I said, I did just a little tweaking before posting. I will be processing the images further and posting them individually over the coming days. I keep the camera set to AUTO white balance, because all the camera settings really only affect the image if the camera produces a jpeg. That's really what you see on the LCD of any camera - a jpg interpretation of the raw data. I always shoot raw, which gives me control over all the data in an image. I would usually do the white balance adjustment in the raw processor or in Photoshop. I cannot yet use Adobe Camera Raw (the same as Lightroom) because it has not yet been updated to recognize and accept the new Fuji raw format. I would LOVE to be able to use Lightroom. So far I am very impressed with this camera.

      Delete
  6. wonderful shots Gene! Have a couple of words about camera's tendency to overexpose. When I first tried Nikon D7000 it seemed to me that it does the same thing but later I read and understood that this is the way Nikon's new metering system works. It preserves shadow details. Maybe it is the same thing with Fuji metering system? Did you try to switch to another metering mode?

    Regards
    Fuad

    ReplyDelete
  7. hello my friend
    I forgive you all about images, is natural to understanding, what I can not forgive is the lack of energy in the chamber, is vitally important that when buying new camera also have a second battery, you can not tell the editor that ran out of battery, you lose your job, hahaha...
    a big hug to our friend Gene
    Manuel Tello

    ReplyDelete