Checking in with the Fuji x100s

I feel like I haven't made serious photographs since early March when I shot about 10,000 race photos in two weeks.  I've been making pictures with the Fuji x100s as I go about my day and several landscapes have found their way to my Facebook stream.  One of the great things about the camera is it's with me almost all the time.

I do find myself looking for the Nikon and more lens flexibility when I'm shooting landscapes.  But the x100s is still lighting in bottle and keeps showing me great stuff.  Today was an example when my boys and I hit our favorite coffee shop for cocoa and cappuccino.

The light was nice from the big plate glass windows and I popped out to the car to grab the x100s. The boys and I always have a blast making photos of each other.  It must have been the cappuccino because my youngest was in rare form.  You get the many faces of Turner.  Of course I'm kidding about him being hopped up on cappuccino!  But, more importantly for our purposes here, this is the x100s pretty much straight out of the camera.  These photos are ultimately just snaps of my kid, but I also think they are beautiful images with great color, tone and contrast.  I'm always amazed at the way it handles shadow.  Sweet!!!  

So, you be judge....

By the way... do you think Fronside Grind in NoCo knows they have such great light in the afternoon? Dern it's nice!

Fuji X100s: First Look

RICH  adjective  \'rich\

rich·er, rich·est.

1.

having wealth or great possessions; abundantly supplied with resources, means, or funds; wealthy:a rich man; a rich nation.

2.

abounding in natural resources: a rich territory.

3.

having wealth or valuable resources (usually followed by in  ): a country rich in traditions.

4.

abounding (usually followed by in  or with  ): a countryside rich in beauty; a design rich with color.

5.

of great value or worth; valuable: a rich harvest.

After owning this little wonder of a camera for five days, one word, "rich" sums up my first thoughts about the Fuji X100s.   I still feel like I haven't had time to shoot it in a focused way, but I've made about 500 shutter clicks and can share some initial impressions.  Despite it's obvious limitations and less obvious quirks, it's definitely one heck of a camera that delivers an amazing image file in a package barely bigger than an iPhone.

The X100s has been a hot topic in the photography blogosphere.  Pros Zach Arias and David Hobby have been particularly enthusiastic about what the Fuji X100s can do calling it the "new Leica" and "the best camera I've ever owned".  Both have said that they are using the camera for pro work and letting their  DSLR's lay dormant.  Some of the videos produced by Hobby about describing his reverence for the camera are about as inspiring photography porn as I've seen in a long time.  

So... why is rich the right adjective?  The files from this camera are beautiful.  They have depth and substance.   All of the files you see in this post are barely touched in Lightroom and are a good reflection of what comes right out of the camera.  

In one of the first images I made with the camera, you can already start to see this... great skin tone and the x100s manages the light and shadows beautifully.  But, this image also shows one of the quirks... The camera makes razor sharp images and the fixed focal length 23mm, f/2.0 is a killer lens, but there is a learning curve to getting focus right.  In this shot, I used the optical viewfinder (OVF) and the nature of the OVF requires some practice to know where the focus point really is.  Fuji ingeniously has two viewfinders on this camera... the OVF and an  electronic viewfinder (EVF).  You quickly learn that the EVF can produce more reliable results for the newbie.  

Of course my children were the handy and sort-of-willing subjects of my shakedown photographs.  I'm starting to figure some things out as I make the images below and, while this isn't a camera you can effectively shoot sports with, I was glad to freeze my youngest in action here. The photographs are giving me an indication of the secret sauce of depth and richness of color and contrast that I've read about. 

36 hours in to owning the X100s, I hopped on a plane to Florida for a business trip and this is where things get a little crazy and cool.  It's not uncommon for me to haul a DSLR out to dinner when traveling, but the Fuji makes that a no brainer and nobody even notices it slung over my shoulder.  Best of all, I don't notice... roaming around a city with a DSLR and pro lens can start to be a real drag.   I'm starting to see the camera definitely has some juice.  This simple shot of a storefront window in Clearwater, Florida at about 8:30 pm was made at f/2.0 and handheld at 1/8th of a second at ISO 200.  Handheld and sharp at an eighth!?!?  Not since I was 12 and scored a set of neon green Kyrptonics wheels have I seen skateboard wheels look so beautiful.

Landing in foggy Boston on the way home, I'm thinking about Revere Beach before we even hit the ground... a ready spot for a few more test shots.  Check out the depth of field with the f/2.0 lens.

By now I've discovered Auto-ISO and set it to shoot a minimum 1/30th of a second in an ISO range of 200-1600.  This image was shot at 1/30 sec at f/16 and ISO 1600.  It's very clean, with no noise for such a high ISO shot. 

A black and white conversion done in Lightroom.

 I get a new piece of gear, I'll often sit in front of the TV at night and noodle with it, dialing in settings and testing different capabilities.  More high ISO and shallow depth of field here with one of my favorite new books.  The focus point was on the cheek of the cover shot subject, Luis Sarria.  The only light in the room is a table lamp to my left with 75 watt equivalent CFL bulb and the Sochi Olympics men's Slalom on TV. Sharp and clean at 1/13th of a second, f/2.0 and ISO 1600.  Fantastic depth of field.  

So, my first thoughts are that this camera is remarkable.  There is a learning curve and I still have a lot to explore about what makes it tick, but there is a unique quality to what it produces.  Point of view is so important in creating a compelling image.  The photographer definitely creates the photograph, not the gear.  But, this is an example where the gear offers something new and opens up possibilities that didn't exist.  I don't want to over state this but there is a soul to the files from the X100s... a deep feeling of richness in color, tone and contrast.  It won't replace my Nikon DSLR, but it will definitely bring something new and valuable to my photography.  Stay tuned!

A New Arrow in the Quiver: The Fuji x100s

Yeah... so it snowed today. And I got one of these. I'm excited to see what the camera called the "new Leica" can do!  At first glance, its unbelievable to have a camera with such amazing image quality barely noticeable around my neck and the files are clearly something different and beautiful.  But, it's a quirky little bugger to shoot.  Stay tuned...

If you're not in the loop on the Fuji x100s, then dig this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omL9HOudSwc

Look here!

I'm not one of those people hung up on age, so I don't have a problem telling you that I'm 47.  Getting older really doesn't bother me although there is one thing that is driving me a little crazy.  My eyes just aren't what they used to be.

I've worn glasses since the second grade, so I'm plenty accustomed to not having perfect vision.  But this feels like it happened overnight and now I don't seem to see things up close very well.  If there isn't adequate light, it's gets even tougher.  So, I try to remember to schlep reading glasses around, but more often than not, I forget.  My iPhone has proven it's worth once again as it makes a dandy way to shine some light on a menu in a dark restaurant so I can read the damn thing.

Now why am I boring you all with this on this blog post?  Well, I'm here to tell you that this is no fun for a photographer.  It's made verifying focus, checking for blown out highlights and reading camera settings pretty darn hard.  There are even times when verifying a good facial expression is difficult.  The good news is I'm also here to tell you about an awesome product delivering me from the blur of middle age eyesight.  I give you the Hoodman Loupe!

This isn't a new product, but in my view it had always seemed a bit of a luxury.  One of those must haves for the overly indulgent gear head or the thing to get the photographer who had everything.  But with my 40-something eye challenges, I can also tell you it is making me want to look at my camera LCD again.  I can see!

The loupe features a diopter like you find on a binocular so that you can dial in a sharp view of the LCD.  It has the added benefit of blocking glare to make viewing the LCD a better experience than it's ever been... even when I had the eyes of a 30 year old.  I can easily verify sharp focus, validate a great composition and check for blown out areas and poor exposure.  I have to say that the Hoodman Loupe is allowing me to once again walk away with confidence knowing that I got the shot.  While not technically true, it makes the back of my camera look like high def.  It even has a nifty lanyard to hang it around your neck so you don't lose it.  Which is great because you know what goes after your eyes?  That's right... your memory!

Carbonite is your Kryptonite... Stay away from it!

I like to try to keep this blog on a positive note, but sometimes a story must be told.  This is something you have to know or you'll blow $60 too.

In the spring, I decided I was way overdue implementing a good offsite backup solution for my photo archive.  After reading some positive things, decided to get a subscription to Carbonite.  Ironically, I signed up just about April 1st of 2013.  I had some fits and starts in getting the back-up running, but that was mostly my error.  For example, I didn't realize something that makes total sense... I needed to leave my computer on for the backup to work on the initial upload.  Therefore, at the start, my backup made very meager progress and I started leaving my computer on 24 hours a day.

Once I got that straightened out, I locked into what Carbonite considers normal upload speed... about 20 gigs per day.  I have a note on my desk that at 7:41am on May 11th, I had backed up 88.08 gb of data.  Another note shows 5/12/2013 at 1:43pm... 110.61 gigs.

I resigned myself to let it percolate and checked again on 6/6/2013... 229.83 gb of data had been backed up.  I once again forgot about the slow grind being done on my back up, but this week decided to check again.  On August 11, 2013, 295 gb of data has reached the safety of the beloved cloud hosted by our friends and protectors of data at Carbonite.  Huh?  It's getting slower.

When I emailed Carbonite support asking if this was normal, they politely told me that backups over 200 gb are adjusted to be slower than back ups under that threshold.  Now again, user error on my part.  Or buyer beware.  I didn't read the fine print and I didn't do enough math to calculate just how horrible this service is.  While I maybe unique in having over 500 gigs of photo files, I think most people I know now have music and photo archives in excess of 200gb.  At this rate, it will take a full year and I'll be up for renewal before my data is secure and backed up on their servers.

The reply from the folks at Carbonite basically said that's OK with them.  I don't know how that can be.  This is all just bad business.  If someone purchased a stove only to learn that it turned the heat down just as the burner hit the temperature and duration to boil a pot of water, we'd all agree that was a real problem.  Regardless of any fine print from the stove manufacturer, it's betraying the essence of what a stove is and what a stove should do.  It's not delivering on what any reasonable person would consider the purpose of the product.  This is analogous to Carbonite's service.  It's backs up stuff, but not in a way that is a solution for what most people need it to do.

Then they did something I really don't like... and I'm guessing you don't either... they referred me to their terms of service for justification of their performance and the fine print on throttled down back up speeds... as if to say "tough, sucker".  There are hundreds of ways to make people happy in the face of losing a customer.  A coupon code for next year's renewal probably would have made me feel like these people had any concern for me as a customer.  Seeing as my data will probably be backed up by then, it might even have saved me.  Out of curiosity, I followed the link they provided for their terms of service and the screen shot below is what I found.  Good stuff.

In the final email that they sent, they conceded to me with "You are absolutely right, we are not truly designed for use by customers with large video or photo data (archives).... please accept our deepest apologies for any misunderstanding regarding our product".  Take a look at www.carbonite.com and see if there is any attempt to portray their product as having that limitation.  And like I said... who doesn't have a large photo, video and/or music archive these days?

Now I realize this is just $60 and maybe this is all a little over the top.  But, I'm on a roll and I'll admit it's sort of fun to rant.  It's also months of time and months of leaving a computer on 24x7 and it's just plain deceptive.  I think it's what is so often wrong with businesses today... an approach to the customer filtered through policy and defying conventional wisdom.  They have little understanding or concern for how customers really use their product.

I'll keep the backup running on my machine through out this subscription year and commit to keeping my computer on 24x7 so it can continue the process.  Just for fun, I'll let you know what kind of progress it's making from time to time.  But to be crystal clear, I really don't recommend this service to anyone for anything.