robvisual - photography

Sounds a bit weird but there are many scenes in daily life where people aren't moving or just a bit to leave a trail in you photos. Yesterday I visited the "Planten un Blomen" park in Hamburg after work. I had my little Gorilla Pod and a 8ND filter with me. I wanted to take some long exposure shots of the little waterfalls and fountains there. After taking some nice shots I also discovered that some places cry out for a shot with people in it. Tourists and locals crossing the river and taking selfies The shot above looks better with people in it. I first captured the falls without any people and it looked nice but lifeless and dull. After waiting a for some people to enter the scene the shot reflects the purpose of this place better. The park was built in the sixties for an international garden exhibition and it was meant to be explored by visitors. I love how the guy to the left is not moving that much and the girl in the upper part of the image is moving faster. ...

Adobe is trying to gain more money by selling software only bundled with subscription. That is not really my cup of tea. They also don't speed up the whole software and it runs not that great on my up to date Mac mini. I love my LR workflow, but I made the switch from Aperture (bye bye you great outdated piece of software) and it wasn't that hard. And having a look at some demo software is not that difficult. I installed the latest ON1 raw software (2017.5) on my mac and fed it with some sample images. I only want to share my first experiences with that software. So bear in mind that this is not a detailed review. There are great reviews on YouTube if you want to see this software in motion. Fuji The first thing I wanted to know was the handling of Fuji files. So I took a photo with my old XPRO1 at 6400 ISO with some patterns (carpet) and a colorful thing in the middle. The image above was edited and exported with ON1. First I was quite surprised how nice the i...

A good question. Let us put the price beside and pretend you have enough money to buy every Fuji camera out there. Would you buy the GFX? It has a resolution of 50 megapixels and you can do different shots with a different depth of field and less noise etc. I know that there are some reasons to gain more resolution when it comes to product photography or fashion photography. But keep in mind that you can archive medium format like results for many occasions by using today's panorama algorithms. 35mm f8.0 / 50 megapixels by combining two images free hand - works even with street shots Just think out of the box. Aim your camera at a subject and think about the possibilities in post production. The next image was taken in London at the Barbican Centre (a nice socialist looking urban landscape) and I had my 35mm attached to my XPRO2. A wide angle lens was not at hand and I wanted more resolution so I can crop the images and print it on a larger scale. Barbican Centre London ...

When you're on the go with your digital camera you might enjoy the wireless LAN features it offers these days. Today's cameras have a superb JPG support inside producing great results in-camera. Fuji is well known for their excellent in-camera processing in terms of sharpness and color reproduction. I want to share my workflow with you. RAW At first I want to mention that I shot RAW and process the final results in-camera afterwards to get the final JPG file. That gives me more control about the applied color profile, sharpness and other aspects of the image. Maybe the image needs some shadow recovery or reduced highlights. You can't do that with a JPG file because there is no headroom in it that allows that kind of editing. my apps I use an android phone in conjunction with Snapseed. There are no other apps involved because I want to keep the editing process simple and get the most out of one app instead of creating more clutter. Snapseed is an easy but powerfu...

"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...

I always have a camera with me (at least my smartphone) and I took my X100s to a "the rifles" concert yesterday in Hamburg. The light was very dim and the room was small and packed with people from door to stage. The X100s has only a 23mm lens and I was standing in the sixth row. The challenge in this situation is to capture not only the artists on stage. In such a narrow space you can also create very close images to capture the magic of the moment. I set my cam to an ISO value of 6400 and a shutter speed of 125 of a second. And then I just fired away. I did not care about the results. When you shot low light and very high ISO the images become a bit blurry and grainy, but bear in mind that no one looks at photos in a hundred percent view. The contents of the photo are important, not the quality. This is not fine art photography! The photo above was shot with wide open eyes at f 2.0 to add some depth from the crowd to the stage. The light from the right creates a great ...

A lot of people on the web are writing about the new AF performance of the new X-T2 and how good this camera will perform when it comes to fast moving subjects. Yesterday I had my old trusty Fuji X-T1 hanging around my neck with the Fujinon 55-200 mm attached to it. I love to use this combination when I am out in the wild or - like I did yesterday - at the beach. It gives you a good range from normal to telephoto and helps you to compose your shots under changing conditions when you are for a walk like my wife and I did. After composing some dense shots like the one above I spotted some kites in the sky and by following the ropes down to the ground I saw some guys with surfboards. Usually I don't do much sport photography, but the setting and the light was perfect. I dialed in a fast shutter speed and a wide open aperture going into the maximal focal length of 200 mm. I also activated the continuous AF and drive mode to get some material to choose from. I took plenty of...

I know that it could be a pain sometimes to cary your camera almost every day with you. It feels like a little brick sometimes in my messenger bag, but there is this little moment where you wish you had your camera with you. I took this shot on my way home from work. I was waiting for my wife to pick me up by car when I saw a muslim girl smoking an electric cigarette. I took five to six photos an this one was my favorite. Trust me: the best opportunity for taking good photos in the streets is here and now. You can't leave the house to take good photos. The situations are coming to you. They just happen in front of your eyes. And imagine all these moments without where your camera was at home laying in a cupboard. Try to love your little brick and cary it around, even if your heading for some groceries. Cheers, Nils

My camera is always set to a distance between 2,5 and 5 meters and an aperture of 8.0 (Auto ISO turned on). From time to time I turn the shutter dial to match the situation (between 125 and 1000). For most situations the camera is ready to take a photo instantly having everything in focus. There are so many things that are suddenly appear in front of your eyes and most of the times there is no time left to make various settings and get the focus right. The composition and the right moment are enough work to do in such a short time-frame. Segways are nearly noiseless and the was a whole group of fancy dressed men passing by. This was the only usable photo I got in that split second. With this setup you can react very fast and it is easy to set the camera back to auto focus or other settings. Remember how good it feels when you hang your camera around your neck ready for action. When you own a camera with simple dials like the Fuji X100s, you can set aperture and shutter-speed ...

Composition and timing are good friends. When you find a good spot it is useful to camp there and wait for something to come into the frame. The following photo was made in a backyard of a group of small skyscrapers. Each building was painted in a different color and the backyard was mostly grey with some trees in the middle. I stopped by an interesting scene full of diagonals, shapes and an open frame that called for a moving subject walking into it. The walking subject adds more life to the photo. The lines are leading the viewers eyes into the hole in the upper middle where the movement is taking place. The different shades of grey and the green and blue tones in the fore- and background creating an artificial and futuristic look. Perfect for an urban street photo. I will print this one and hang it on a wall at home. Cheers, Nils

After a little defragmentation of my desk at work I found an old USB card reader in a drawer. I remembered that I also own an USB connector for my Samsung Note 3. Most of the time my X100s is always with me. But this camera has no wireless transfer. So I decided to use my time on public transport to edit photos on the fly. And this was the first time I had this clicking noise in my head after I edited my first photo with snapseed on the fly sitting in the train on my way home from work. The results were awesome and it is so much fun to add some contrast and highlights to your photos instead of checking twitter and wasting time without creating something. And don't forget that your phone is also a quick and powerful camera in your pocket always ready to capture great photos. I started to play around and create a visual diary that is more based on a quick and dirty workflow than sitting in front of an illuminated big screen at home trying to master lightroom. I exper...

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...

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...

Street photography is not only about the people. For me it is about the combination of time, place and people. Sometimes you walk by a a interesting place and stay there and work the scene by finding the right angle, light or other things that reflect the scene like you see it (yes, we are manipulators and nothing is real!). I start to play around with the settings of my camera. I try to be a child again and just shoot away some photos trying to shut down my brain (meditating). Let the surroundings become your feedback. Maybe you are photographing people in a subway station and you notice that every five minutes there are people running into your field of view to catch a certain train. So you can use this information to create two different shots out of it. Maybe you want to blur or freeze the motion by changing the shutter speed. I always try to let the ideas come to me. I don't want to fall into a scheme and pay attention to every small detail. Trust me, there are so ma...