Equipment:
– Canon FT-b
– Canon FD 50mm 1.4
– Fuji NPH 400
– Hoya 55mm 3-stop ND
– BlackRapid RS-4 Camera Strap
I placed my preorder with my local camera store a few months ago, and due to the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan, my camera didn’t arrive here in Calgary until yesterday afternoon (about a month after it was expected). Thankfully, none of the workers in the Fujifilm factory that was affected by the tsunami were hurt or killed.
I brought up the idea of purchasing this camera with a handful of my twitter pals…and for the most part, they were skeptical of how much use I’d get out of a pricey compact with a fixed 35mm lens. I completely understood their concern, but I really had my heart set on this camera. I’ve always wanted something small that I can carry around with me everywhere without the need to lug around a bag full of gear, and the X100 seemed to fit the bill perfectly (plus, it looks fantastic!). I guess time will tell how much use I end up getting out of it.
I’ve been nursing a serious head cold for the past few days, and yesterday was probably the worst day so far…as a result, I didn’t spend too much time outside testing my new toy. I did get a few shots from the 10 minute walk around my neighbourhood…the first of which is below.
As always, I used onOne PhotoTools (part of the onOne Perfect Photo Suite) to process this photo. If you’ve never used this amazing Photoshop plugin, I’d highly recommend it…almost every shot that hits this blog is touched by at least one onOne Software product. If you’re in the market for something like this, make sure you check out the ridiculous sale they’re having right now. The entire Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 is on sale for $349.95 from May 1 through May 15…that’s a savings of $150! You can’t go wrong.
]]>This past weekend I took the time to watch the HDR presentation Trey Ratcliff gave at Google Headquarters in California. I’m not going to do a full review here, but I will say that it’s well worth checking out if you want to learn a bit about HDR photography and see plenty of pretty pictures. One tip that Trey gave to new HDR photographers is to go through your old photo collection and give a few the HDR treatment for practice. Even though you’d only be working with a single RAW file instead of a number of bracketed exposures, the algorithms in Photomatix can still produce a very good HDR image. I took this to heart and went through a few dozen old photos from a photo walk I took in Cedarbrae/Braeside two years ago. I thought this detail photo of a bus shelter bench turned out kinda cool after the HDR conversion. It’s kinda gritty and dirty and old but I like it!
The details: single exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, color correction, contrast, clarity, sharpening in Lightroom, noise reduction in Noiseware.
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