robvisual - photography

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...

Every year the camera manufacturers releasing new cameras. They claim that the new one will take better photos than the predecessor because of new sensors, better noise reduction and other nice scientific developments and discoveries. I think that it is great that digital photography gets better every day. Mankind always try to improve things. But from an artist and taoist perspective it is not that important for us.  A photo remains a photo. And the changes are in technology are small and doesn't matter in real life. The only exception are special things that can only be archived with new technology (just thing of the possibilities of ultra high ISO etc.). But if you mostly shoot at normal conditions, like people did 30 years ago on film, you won´t see any real difference. Lets have a looks at these two photos I took: Both images were taken with the XF 27 at 2.8 (1/160 / ISO 1250) freehand. Can you tell me which one was made with the X-PRO1. I think this example will s...

A review of the Zeiss 12mm? Better late than never. Fuji did a great job with their excellent lenses. So good that other manufacturers suffer from it a bit. Because you don´t need another brand when the original will serve outstanding quality and a wide variety of focal lengths. But after a small price drop for the Zeiss Touit 12mm in the past I decided to buy it to have a good ultra wide lens in my pocket. And I don´t regret it! The lens comes with an max. open aperture of 2.8 what gives you a lot of headroom in dimly lit conditions or for portraits with some "Bokeh" in it. The build quality is okay. I read some bad articles about the lose aperture-ring and the rubber like finish. I also wish that the lens could look more like the metal ones from Fuji, but I don´t care too much about this things. The image quality is way more important to me. Even the speed of the focusing system is not interesting for a 12mm lens. I mostly use this lens in manual mode and set it to...

Last weekend me and my wife were in Munich to visit some friends. The next photos are some impressions of this Bavarian city in the south of Germany.

I was invited to a wedding in Hamburg as a guest. I took my X-T1 with me, because you don´t know what life will offer to you. The place of celebration after the marriage took place at a tall building near the harbor and St. Pauli. I had the chance to take photos from the rooftop of this place. The light was golden (near sunset) and we had a rainbow over the city (what a great coincidence for a wedding-celebration). So I did a quick handheld panorama and some shots of the rainbow and the Michel (church). I also took some shots of the wedding ceremony (I can´t show all the photos without permission) and my trusty Fuji did a great job. So don´t forget. Always have your camera with you!

Just my favorite photo of my last photowalk with a friend. We were driving around in industrial areas near the south side of the Hamburg harbor. This is a classic shot that works great in black & white. I love the darker background and that 3D like steam. steam - (X-T1 / 200mm @ f9.0)

When you know what the title means you are a Fuji-nerd. Today is firmware-day. The new FW 4.0 is ready to slip into the flash memory of your X-T1 to give you better AF performance and some new features like wide-tracking of objects. Get the firmware here: http://www.fujifilm.com/support/digital_cameras/software/firmware/x/xt1/index.html Read more about the firmware and best settings here at Fujirumors: http://www.fujirumors.com/download-now-the-amazing-new-fuji-x-t1-firmware-4-0-share-your-first-impressions-on-fujirumors/ I had to think about how important the update is for me. No big deal. But when I´m traveling I always take my X-T1 with me. It is more versatile for this kind of photography and has built in WLAN (and a tilting screen etc.). And when you do travel photography there are situation were you need a fast AF to track moving objects. For street photography I don´t need this update. I use mostly zone-focusing together with my X-PRO1 so I can concentrate more on framin...

Yesterday was fantastic. The sky was overcast so I had perfect light. It was warm enough to feel comfortable and I walked just across the city without a destination. My entry point was the warehouse district (Speicherstadt) were I took this shot after waiting for something good happening at the long end of the bridge. And it happened! cyclist passing by - (X-T1 / 60mm @ f2.8) The I decided to head over to St. Pauli by and then Karolinenviertel that is very close to St. Pauli. There is a place called Schlachthof (sloughterhouse). At the backyard I met a funny guy. I saw him and he asked me to take a photo of him. He had a bit of rest-alcohol in his veins. He smiled at me and I decided to take some photos. After taking the first shot I asked him to stand up. So he did and opened his jacket and showed me the little sock he pulled over his knob. I instantly laughed and he smiled back. What a crazy guy. Then we talked about the musical genius Michael Jackson and I gave him my card ...

One reason for me to buy a Fuji camera was the strong support of the customers. Back to my Nikon days I had some problems with no light measurement with manual lenses on my D60. So I wrote to Nikon and I even created a public petition without any success or answer. After buying my X100 there were also some quirks that annoyed me. But Fuji listened and tried to eliminate them with some firmware updates. I never had such an experience with Nikon or Canon. And Fuji also put some new features into some of the updates that made me even happier. And now I have a "Deja Vu" again. Fuji is releasing the 4.0 firmware for the X-T1 in the next days. If you followed  Fuji-Rumors recently you will be well informed about what´s coming with the next big update. The biggest change for me beside the new auto focus features is focus speedup for the 35mm 1.4. There is no focus-pumping anymore. If you can trust the early testers you will have a whole new lens on your X-T1. Great news for me. I...

A hot topic for all Fuji-Fanatics out there ( look here  / fujirumors). I would buy one (if I had so much money). But in most cases you don´t need to. Because there is a great way to get the same look (and even more) without the need of a new device. You can use the Brenizer method to archive the medium format look. That means that you use your lens with wide open aperture to create a shallow depth of field. And then your took some surrounding images and stitch them together to get a wider field of view. Brenizer goes Schwerin castle-park! (x-t1 with the 60mm at 2.4 / 4 images stiched in Lightroom 6) I love this technique. It creates this unique look. When you crop the photo to 1:1-format the illusion is perfect. And the resulting photo has a lot of detail because the pixelcount will raise after the images are glued together. That is perfect for large format prints. I will test that in future. This is one of the many benefits (more me) to shot digital. You can do things l...