New Kid On The Block…

X10V0179Hmm, so I may have said I would never sell my X100F, but things change… I decided that it wasn’t really as portable as I wanted, so let it go in favour of the new Ricoh GR3 – similar APS-C sensor, but in body image stabilisation and a touch screen, all small enough to slip in a trouser pocket.

Trouble was, I found it was actually too small! That, the lack of a proper viewfinder, and a slightly wider than ideal 28mm (equivalent) lens meant it really had to go…

So, rewind, (or is it fast forward?) and I seem to have acquired a very nice, black Fujifilm X100V – yep, that’s right, the latest model with articulating touchscreen, a bigger sensor, and new processor. Expensive, needless to say, but a thing of beauty and function. I love the ‘flippy’ screen, and the ergonomics and functionality are at a new level. It also has a new design 23mm lens which apparently addresses the shortcomings of the original lens. So far, I’m loving it, and will do even more when I get all the menus and shortcuts setup.

A fixed lens and modest form factor make for a different shooting experience, but the results so far are good, so watch this space!  Who knows? – I may eventually just be a one camera/one lens photographer…

 

Partial Colour Images…

Standing near Shrewsbury Abbey last week to take a photo of the Victorian letterbox, I spotted a guy walking towards me with a red jacket and cap, and I could see that his red outfit, the red letterbox and the nearby red phone box could make a good photo. I literally only had a second as he walked past, but fortunately the camera was set to f8 and auto-everything – my default settings when wandering around – and I just got one shot off, and it was in focus!

Nice enough in full colour, (I was shooting Acros mono, but always take a RAW shot as well) I figured it could look good in partial colour, ie all mono, other than the red elements.  Cameras I have had in the past can be set to partial colour, but then it’s a conscious choice when shooting, and not something you can instantly set so I‘ve really only used it a few times in the past.

100F1223No such feature on the Fuji X100F, but fortunately it’s so easy to do in Lightroom. Taking the RAW image, I first cropped it to square as that suited the alignment of the three red elements.  Then I increased the saturation of the red colours by +30 using the slider in the HSL/Color panel, and moved all the other colours to -100, pretty much removing all the colour except red from the image.  There were just a few odd little areas where I could still see some hint of colour, so used the adjustment brush with saturation set to -100 to tidy it up, and a nudge of the texture slider to increase the sharpness and contrast a touch.

And there you have it – partial colour in just a few seconds!