Published on: 18th Jul 2016
On my recent trip to China, I was privileged to test the new Fujifilm X-T2 (pre-production model) camera. When I received the camera I was told that there will most likely be firmware updates every couple of weeks, but being away and without a PC I had to live with the firmware I received with the camera. I was brave enough to leave my X-T1 at home (but like always did take my X-E2 backup body along). I was lucky enough not to experience any serious issues with the installed firmware.
[ Read more... ]Published on: 18th Apr 2016
This is the second article in a series about my lens usage on a specific trip to Shenzhen in China. In the first article, I gave an overview of the distribution and end the article showing the photos taken with the Fujinon 27mm pancake lens.
[ Read more... ]Published on: 18th Mar 2016
Last year (2016), in preparation for my trip in May to China, I decided to analyse the photos I took on previous trips so that I can consolidate and optimise my lenses for this trip.
[ Read more... ]Published on: 18th Jan 2016
Last year in July (2015) I had the opportunity to attend the GPU biennial photography congress in Morocco. The heading of this article does not refer to the amount of money the trip cost me, but rather about my battery usage! Let me explain.
[ Read more... ]Published on: 5th Dec 2014
In 2013 I was privileged to be invited to form part of the judging congress of the China 15th International Photographic Art Exhibition. My fellow judges were from all parts of the globe and were a very diverse group of distinguished photographers. Although most of our time was taken up judging the 153 000 photographs, we did get some time for photography. One thing I noticed on these photography outings, was that I was the only person with huge photo gear (Nikon D700 with 14-24, 24-120 and 70-200 lenses). Most of them were using smaller cameras and two of the four fellow judges in the Visual Arts category were using the Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera. This obviously created some debate and they tried their best to convince me that they nowadays prefer these over their professional medium format gear - even for commercial jobs. One judge (from the UK) is a professional model photographer with Hasselblad equipment, and he showed me some of his photos asking me to tell him which were taken with the Hasselblad and which were taken with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera. Based on the image quality and tonal range I could not find any obvious differences, but in some cases, the shallow depth of field was a giveaway for the medium format sensor! (In my research I later found out that Fuji manufactures the Hasselblad H series cameras and all Hasselblad lenses).
[ Read more... ]Published on: 3rd Jan 2014
When the Nikon DF was locally announced on 5 November 2013, I requested to evaluate it and received one of the Nikon demo models on 9 December. The first impression is that it is very different from all previous digital SLR Nikon cameras. It actually looks and feels very much like a film camera when one uses it. If you follow some camera forums on the Internet, you will be aware that this camera has split the typical Nikon followers into two camps, namely those who want it because of the nostalgia around a retro looking camera, and those who do not want it, because of its looks! For the past month, the Nikon DF forum has been the most popular forum on dpreview.com.
I mentioned on Facebook that I was going to test it, and received responses such as "Why test it? You know it will be good". Currently I own a Nikon D700, so testing the Nikon DF will be beneficial in helping me to make up my mind whether or not this will be my next replacement /upgrade body.
I agree with the "You know it will be good" remark on Facebook as it is based on the 16 megapixel sensor used in the Nikon D4, but there is more to a camera than just the sensor.
[ Read more... ]
