robvisual - photography

Fuji did it again: a massive firmware update has arrived! As an old Nikon shooter I have some inhibitions to criticize Fuji, because I never got new features and bug-fixes through fw-updates from Nikon or Canon back in the days. I had a petition running because my Nikon had no light metering in conjunction with manual lenses back in the days. Even with many subscribers I never received an answer or an update from the manufacturer. Sad but true. waiting for KaiZen... So this is why I am happy about a camera manufacturer who is still supporting his customers one or two years after the product was launched. I follow some X-Photographers and they reporting quirks and improvements to Fuji. Sometimes you don't get what you expect when Fuji releases new software, but they are still moving their asses instead of sitting on it. My thoughts about some features of the new firmware-update that caught my attention Minimum Shutter Speed I love the addition of the new "AUTO

I want to share my further experiences with my new Fuji X100F with you. I had a long weekend in Munich last week and my new camera sniffed some Bavarian air. I tried to capture my daily experiences and the places we went to. Here is a little commented selection of the resulting images. All photos are out of camera with some retouching done with snapseed on my phone. This combination is great to create some great images on the go without the need of a software like lightroom. I don't need to mention again that all Fuji camera have great color profiles that produce great results (even without editing). At my first day in Munich I convinced my wife and friends to go to a third wave coffee place called Gang und Gäbe . We had some great roasted beans from Ethiopia, Honduras and Guatemala and I asked the owner for a portrait and the result can be seen above. I only had a few seconds to take the shot and I wanted to create a little sense of depth by using an open  aperture at f2. The

If you want to document a certain topic or event you may have different needs when it comes to the camera. For my taste the camera needs to be small, quiet and unobtrusive. The performance in low light should be good because of changing situations. I recently visited a video games exhibition with a friend and I captured some images there. even in this situation Mark wasn't noticing me The first thing to mention is that no one asked me to lock the camera away, because they are not allowed. A good thing to have a camera that doesn't stand out too much. There were some situations were a big and loud camera would also have spoiled the situation. The Fuji was near silent with it's leaf shutter and most of the people were too busy to notice someone holding a tiny thing to his head and looking into their direction. Do this with a big bulky DSLR with that loud shutter. That is why most of the documentary photographers used a Leica over the years. The new X100F is instan

How many followers do you have on social media? Do you have more than 10k followers on Instagram? How many real likes do you get? How much does it mean to you and your art? There are profiles on Instagram stuffed with terrible images receiving hundreds of likes and "get more followers" spam. Don't get me wrong. It is good to share your art and see if people like what you do. But in the first place the whole thing should only satisfy one person: you! After that comes a circle filled with friends, good contacts and clients (if you do this for money). The problem with social media is that people like other peoples content because they want to gain more followers and likes on their profile. In the end you can't decide which like is honest except the ones from people you know better. And this is where the quality comes into play. I have some great contacts on twitter and Instagram (sorry...no facebook etc. anymore) who are really into photography and when those peop

...is still life. And sometimes it is great to enjoy the silence (like Dave sung back in the nineties) and wrap your mind around things that are not moving.

I love street and documentary photography from my heart but sometimes I need a little break from it to gain new inspiration. Do I need to put the camera away for a certain amount of time? No. I can have a break without doing so. the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (long exposure, XT1) I use long exposure, architecture and travel photography as a break from the daily routine Sometimes I meet with a friend who is mainly addicted to long exposure photography. We meet and look out for some nice places to take some photos. At the end we have a nice (vegan) burger and a craft beer. For me this kind of photography is the opposite of what I do most of the time with my camera attached to my eyes. It is more reduced to one subject. You try to find the right exposure and viewing angle. You play with the settings and the whole thing feels like fishing: it's quiet and slow. You focus more on one perfect shot out of fifty or hundred resulting images. That one big fish. the stage (X

Time to share my further experiences with Fuji's new model of the X100 family with you. As I wrote in my last X100F article I was coming from the older X100S and the changes for me were huge in terms of the auto-focus, the sensor and the overall speed. a lung-bun (Lungenbrötchen) as we say in Germany  After one week of taking this camera to different places I want to show you some images and share my views about the changes Fuji made in the product line. Auto-focus and EVF/OVF If you're coming from the X100S you will notice the difference, because the auto-focus was really bad back in the early days of this product line but I managed to deal with this flaw. Now it feels fast enough, more accurate and serves my needs as a documentary and street photographer very well. There are faster systems out on the market but this is not the aim of this camera. Most of the time the auto-focus delivered just the way I expected it, even in OVF-mode. EVF is bliss! It is fast

"One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll." - Guy Debord (Theory of the Dérive, 1958) I stumbled upon this word by reading a book about the your rights to be idle and non-productive. The author mentioned an art movement (if you can call it like that) known under the name " Situationist International ". "Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through objects. The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly lived experiences, or the first-hand fulfillment of authentic desires, to individual express