X-Pro2 50mm Window Light
So my newborn is like 5 months old. Where did that go?!! And, because she is the 4th child, I basically have no photos of her. LOL. The first kid always has 50 billion photos and the subsequent kids grow up to think that nobody loves them! 🤣 But rest assured baby number 4, we do love thee!
I grabbed the Fuji X-Pro2 and the trusty 50mm f/2 lens and took some candids in the window light. Â All of these photos are completely unedited, other than the resize for the blog. Fuji absolutely nails skin tones. Every. Single. Time.
I shot all of these images in JPEG and used the various film simulation modes. The warmer ones were Astia and the cooler ones are Classic Chrome. I think the warmth of Astia is a little bit nice for a baby especially one as doughy as my Esther. 😊
I was having some weird focusing issues with the 50mm earlier in the year. It seemed to back focus quite a bit/randomly. I was happy to see that this shoot seemed to nail focus pretty good, yielding some super sharp results at 100% crop. The Fuji face/eye detect setting works surprisingly well and is no gimmick. I’ll be using that setup forever when shooting this lens wide open.
The other thing I love to death about the film simulation modes is ACROS. This yields such glorious black and white images it’s scary. To think that you can get this kind of look in camera with no extra editing? It’s just awesome. I’ve always been a huge fan of ACROS and the really nice “filmic” type grain it has. I setup my Q menu settings with NR -2, Across with a Yellow filter (makes skin glow a bit), Highlight & Shadow Tone -1 and Sharp +1. It seems to yield pretty nice results.
For another look at the various filter effects with ACROS, look at this page. It has some really good side by side comparison. The green filter would be better for character portraits to flatten out the skin a bit. But for doughy babies, yellow is where it’s at! 😎 Â
The RedBarn & Family
We went up to the Red Barn north of Kenosee Lake a couple of Sundays ago. It’s quite the place. They have live entertainment, a market with all kinds of sellers and crafts and all around fun atmosphere. We checked it out for a while and used the opportunity to test out my 23mm f2 WR lens from Fuji. Â As I mentioned in my last blog post, it’s a stellar lens. Not too wide and not too close, that 35mm on full frame is nearly a perfect lens for human group life.
It allows you get a cool perspective on life. If you back up, you get more. If you get closer, you get more.
From the Barn we went into Kenosee lake park. I wanted to take some maternity pics of my wife before she had the baby. (This is the ideal way to do maternity photos. lol). For the maternity shoot I relied upon my 50mm Fuji lens. Â It’s a really sweet stunner at an oddish 76mm full frame equivalent. Not many lenses were made at that focal length which adds to the unique feel of the images it produces.
We went to the beach and let the kids splash and play a bit and I captured a few more candids using all the “FujiCrons”.
We finished out our time at Kenosee by capturing a few more family pictures by the chalet. It’s such an incredible building and asset to the park! I shot a lot in ACROS film simulation which I LOVE. I have no problem ditching Fuji’s amazing colour for Black and White when using ACROS. I know I could shoot RAW and have it all but I love the Fuji JPEGs so much that I don’t even bother. There is something magical about ACROS!
Holy Sync Speed Batman!
So I’m really liking the Fuji X100s. Leaf shutters are amazing creations, like hydraulics and GPS. Basically, it allows you to sync a flash at any speed. You don’t have to worry about 1/250 or 1/200. You can rock out at 1/1000s at f/2 in full sunshine and still sync a flash – at 1/8 power!!! 😈 It’s crazy! The flash photo options available with this camera are nearly limitless! 😎 I took a 1 light setup outside yesterday to try and see how the X100s does in full sunshine. I locked on the internal 3 stop ND filter and was able to underexpose the ambient at ISO 200, 1/1000s at f/2. That’s pure sweetness! In contrast, to do this with a DSLR, you’d need to drop your sync speed to 1/250 and crank your aperture to f/5.6 to get the same exposure (before an ND filter). But the Fuji nails the sweet bokehlicious backgrounds and, I can overpower the sun with a speedlight on 1/8th power!!!!!!! Like, what’s not to love?! 😀
Here’s the results (JPEGs shot in Astia simulation mode)
