robvisual - photography

This one sentence you will read often on the web in lots of articles. The problem is that I can't follow that rule (and a lot of others). I mix black and white with color and love to change the camera and the focal length like I change my socks every day. ;-) I tried to stick to one format, focal length or whatever, but it doesn't work for me. My eyes are detecting a scene and my brain screams out for a certain look or focal length. I found out that I am not this consistent type of photographer who does a series of photos that all have the same look and feel. It is nearly impossible for me. But if you are a careful reader of this blog you know that there is nothing wrong with you. Don't follow any rules and take everything to serious. Many good tips and thoughts from other photographers can help us getting new inspiration and getting better every day, but you know what's best for you. Just follow your inner voice and do what your love. That is the key to ...

Lines and shapes guide us through our life. The horizon is a line and the sun is a disc shaped object in the sky. A street leads into the horizon and the sun is setting behind it. We all know that we can use these lines as visual elements in our photos. The following images are all full of lines and shapes that are used by me as guiding elements in the composition. Some of these elements frame the subject and some other lead the viewers eyes to it.

Some days have passed by and the camera feels more like an every camera does. I find it always interesting how hard we suffer when we wait for a new gadget and how fast we forget about those feelings after a short period of time. "Hey, come on! It's is a brand new X-Pro2!" ;-) I did a little trip with my wife and my parents in law to a nice little hotel in Kuehlungsborn (a place at the Baltic sea coast of north/east Germany) to enjoy walks at the beach, a hot sauna and a good dinner to forget about work and get some fresh air into my lungs. The camera was with me (as always) and I took some more photos for this little real life review. Will it blend? The mother of all questions. This camera does the job and feels great in the hand of a photographer. My lineup for the weekend were the XF 27mm and the 60mm lenses. The last mentioned glass is said to be sluggish in terms of auto-focus so I was curious about how it will perform on the X-Pro2, because on my X-T1 it...

Today I found an envelope in my mailbox. The long awaited Sailor Strap has arrived from Poland with love. The design is simple and useful. The round sailor rope feels great on your skin and has a strong and sturdy look and feel. It looks even better attached to a retro camera like a Fuji, Leica or an Olympus for example. After I applied it to my camera I was ready to set sails into the streets ;-) If you're interested in getting one than look on this website: sailorstrap.ecwid.com Cheers, Nils PS: I am not getting payed by the creator of this handcrafted strap. I just want to share the things I like with you. You won't find any affiliate links etc. on my blog. I keep this free of any banners and other things that have to do with money!

This is not meant as a review. There will be no pixel peeping or dynamic range and resolution tests and comparisons. This article reflects the experience in had with this camera in the field (not in the lab). There are great resources out there that squeeze every tiny detail out of this camera (if you need that). This article is more about the feelings I had by using the tool and how it helps me getting good resulting images. This is the first of a series of articles about this new camera. You discover new things every time you go shooting and not on one weekend so there are new things to write about from time to time. It is more a kind of a long term real life review I am doing, because I bought the camera for my personal enjoyment and I am not a (sponsored) reviewer who makes money from creating such content. So there is no marketing buzz behind this article. All photos in this article are in raw format developed in Lightroom. I think that the final results are more important ...

When you ask photographers who are using old rangefinder cameras and what is so special about using them they will respond that you can see the things coming into frame what gives them a better aid to release the shutter at the decisive moment. This is why Fuji is doing the right thing (in my opinion) with the X-PRO and X100 models. They have a hybrid viewfinder where you can choose from looking straight through the glass or the sensor with just one flick of a switch. With the optical viewfinder you have a great composition aid when you shoot reportage or street photography. There is no lagging or other disturbing things between your eye and the scene in front of the lens. You see frame-lines that help you composing your shot. You can see people, cars or whatever moving in and out of the frame waiting for right moment. I don't think that the OVF is some kind of a retro-thing like many people say. I think it is a serious way of helping you getting better photos in certain si...

...the bus ...something to happen

There is a big nowhere-land between street art and that soulless smearing you will find in the streets. If you like to document the actual state of your surrounding environment you can point your finger at things that should not exist like dog poo, waste and other things that will feed the broken windows theory . Many foreign visitors think that Germany is a nice and clean place to live, but the reality is that there are a lot of places full of waste, cheap graffiti and vandalism. The most extreme spot is the Sternschanze (and surrounding) district where the streets are full of dog turds and stuff other mindless people have thrown away. For me as a photographer it is also important to point my "camera eye" on this serious deficit to show it to a wider audience. The most awkward thing is that this kind of decay is attracting people with a good income (working mostly in media) to live in areas like this, paying high rents and wearing expensive clothes. Cheers, Nils