If one were to review my postings on the Fuji X-Pro1, you might think that I'd become a fanboy of this "vintage" digital camera. However, I don't take it out very often, perhaps because owning them is more fun that actually shooting them. This may be the reason why so few of my photos, working or otherwise, were created by this particular body style. This is a screen shot of the ad for the first X-Pro1 I purchased a few years ago. The transition from the E series camera was simple, as I had already acquired enough Fuji lenses to fill out a well stocked camera bag. I remember feeling that I now had a "big boy" camera, one that allowed to me to enter a parallel version of the Red Dot Universe. I saw myself waxing eloquent on how this (relative) upstart company successfully challenged the Leica orthodoxy. More important was my newfound ability to play the rangefinder game within the confines of a normal, hobbyist's budget. In my mind I was rubbing shoulders with the legendary Leica shooters like Cartier-Bresson, Gary Winogrand, Eugene Smith, and of course, Shawn Terry. 
Shawn and I got together for lunch in Half Moon Bay, and as is our practice, had an impromptu photo session using the back streets of the town as our subject. I brought my first Fuji X-Pro1 with a wide angle16mm 2.8 lens, similar to the 17mm 1.4 TTartisns lens I frequently carry. The weather was cloudy and cold, and the lighting not particularly appealing. While searching for images to capture, our conversation turned to the finer points of exposure, composition, and lens selection. In spite of this overabundance of inspiration, I resorted to photographing this cable box cover with its detailed Coastside Water District logo prominently displayed.
Our wanderings took us to a Portuguese Catholic cemetery. This photo was monochromatic to start with, made bleaker by the overcast sky. The bright plastic flowers provided the only actual color in the image. Oddly enough, the majority of graves were decorated with flowers, as you might expect to see flags on Memorial Day. The image was purposely vignetted for effect.
There is a feeling of cohesion found in small towns, and the community art reflects it. Murals like this on just off of Main Street seem to draw together commonalities of the residents while avoiding the potential morass of "secular politics" championing one viewpoint or another based on party influence. The overcast sky really muted to this colorful mural. I attempted to restore some semblance of its actually appearance in post production.
This particular photo shows Shawn evaluating the composition for a photo of an sculpture on an multi-use building. Meanwhile, I unsuccessfully attempted to make a flower closeup without the benefit of a waist-level viewing option. By accident, the auto focus chose the more viable subject (Shawn) over my intended target (the flower), a level of control I surrendered to the camera when I mounted a autofocused prime lens on the camera. It's funny how quickly I had misplaced the skillset I worked so hard on developing when using manually focused lenses. I might have had better luck if I had shifted to manual and used focus peaking to help me isolate the flower's plane of focus. But I didn't, an oversight I will give some serious thought to. The overexposure? I forgot to re-set the exposure compensation factor. Oops.
More X-Pro1 samples will certainly follow, but probably not with this particular lens. I suspect things will be getting back to "normal" shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment