Thursday 23 May 2013

The Fujifilm X100 - camera porn included!

Back in 2010 when Fujifilm presented the X100 at photokina I knew this was the camera I wanted. I have always wanted a true digital rangefinder but I am not impressed by what Leica has done in terms of digital cameras, and with no competition out there Leica is the only road for those who want a true digital rangefinder. Well I knew this road wasn’t for me and when Fujifilm announced the X100, even if it wasn’t a true rangefinder it was a modern take on the rangefinder concept adding autofocus and a unique new feature. This new revolutionizing feature was the hybrid viewfinder, combining an optical viewfinder with an electronic one. The fact that the optical viewfinder had an electronic overlay with frame lines and all other needed information was also something new and futuristic. Fuji had with the release of the X100 placed Leica on the second row in digital photography. Fuji was suddenly the new Leica and the X100 image quality was surpassing the Leica M9 in many ways including ISO performance, colour depth and dynamic range. The X100 was a bit pricy at first but still just a fraction (about 25%) of a Leica M9 body alone.

When the X100 black came out I knew that it was time to go camera shopping. This was a limited edition (10000 cameras made), and I have got No 6365. I have now had the camera for more than 8 months and it is still growing on me. There are some things you have to work around with the X100 including the menu system, auto focus, manual focus and some buttons that could be more user friendly.




The great thing with all those short comings is that Fujifilm fixed all these “problems” in the newly released X100S. I rarely have any issues though, it depends how you use the camera and for what purpose. I use it as a tool for doing the majority of my street photography, and for that it’s good enough, of course I would like the autofocus to be faster and I would like the 16 MPixel files without an anti-aliasing filter for extra sharpness that the X100S gives you. But again, the way I use the camera for most of my shots it’s not a big deal, my default settings when doing street photography is the following.

Focus: manual
Aperture: 8  (using f/2-5,6 mostly with autofocus)
Shutter speed: 1/500  (1/60-1/1000 depending on the light and movement of the subject)
ISO: auto (200-3200)

I use different metering modes depending on the situation, and sometimes I use exposure compensation if needed. Otherwise it’s a simple structure; I control everything manually except the ISO, which will alter between 200-3200. This is what I have found works best for my style of street photography. In some situations I use the camera in autofocus mode, usually if the situation gives me time or if the subject is still.



I can highly recommend the X100 for shooting street photography. It’s a great tool for the job, and now there is even a better one out namely the X100S but it’s also more expensive. There are still some black editions on sale at least here in Sweden at a great price. I like the black edition because it's not as eye catching as the black/silver one. Well you can always use Gaffer tape to cover the silver parts, but no need to do that on the black limited edition...






Pentax Q on top of the X100


The cameras I use at the moment.
Back row from the left: Canon 600D+40/2.8 STM, Canon 40D+85/1.8, Canon 30D+Sigma 150/2.8 macro.
Middle row: Pentax K-5+40/2.8 Limited.
Front row: Canon PS S100, Pentax Q+01 standard prime, Fujifilm X100 (Black limited ed)


Thursday 16 May 2013

Who is the Fuji street shooter? Part 2.

When I began to develop my interest for photography back in the eighties and early nineties I used fully manual cameras without any auto focus capabilities. I inherited all my cameras from my father and I never bought any pocket camera with auto focus that many of my friends carried around. For me it was always about the manual work in the camera. I learned early to set exposure, to choose the right aperture and shutter speed. Back in the days I was shooting negative film and mostly ISO 100 and 200 film speed. ISO 400 and above was a bit grainy for my taste, and I find myself still today being a bit picky about “grain” now in form of digital noise.  I started out my photography journey with some manual Konica and Minolta cameras, where the Minolta was a true rangefinder. I really enjoyed shooting with a rangefinder camera and I preferred black and white film. We also had a darkroom in the basement of our house.  I didn’t shoot a ton of film back in the days, mostly because it was expensive for a teenager to finance the cost of film and processing and I had many other interests that poked for my attention financially. In 1999 I bought my first SLR, a Canon EOS 300, it was a cheap plastic camera but produced decent enough photos to keep my interest alive. Canon was a natural choice for me because my father had some Canon gear, so that meant I could borrow lenses from him. In 2004 I got my first digital camera (of my wife at my 30 years birthday), a Sony Cybershot P-92, a 5 megapixel camera with a 1.5 inch screen. It was now I really got “snappy happy” and I took a loads of images during 2004-2006 with this camera and my SLR was retired and so was my analog photography. I haven’t shot a single role of film since 2004.

My father has always been a friend of nature and a serious bird watcher and in my late teens I adopted his passion for nature and especially birds. Later this interest led me to combine photography with bird watching, and nowadays when I am out looking for birds, I prefer to use a telephoto lens instead of a binocular or telescope.  In 2006 I bought my first DSLR, a Canon 30D and the year after I picked up the 40D. My 40D have now started to fail on me; it got the famous shutter button disease, where the shutter just won’t fire, so I use the 40D only with the vertical grip as a portrait camera, because it still works fine in all other aspects. This year I picked up the Canon 600D as a more modern complement to my 30D and 40D. I also got into the Pentax system with the K-5 and a few Pentax lenses. I see the two systems as complementing each other, Canon have some stellar killer lenses but doesn’t come close to the dynamic range and low light performance of the Pentax K-5. It’s a mixed bag literary but I have got used to using both systems by now.

Street photography
So where does street photography come into the picture? Well I have sporadically been shooting some street photography during the years but nothing at all serious and in very small amounts.  It was first with the announcement of the Fujifilm X100 that I got around to start thinking about broaden my horizon and once again pick up street photography but in a more modern and focused manner. The digital photography era lets you try different styles and techniques without costing you a fortune, that’s why I love the development of digital photography so much, it really gave me a reboot for my interest in photography.  

My digital street photography journey started at the 27th of march 2007 in Rome (Vatican city) Italy. I was visiting Italy for a biochemistry course in Maratea and I had some time off in Rome with my colleagues. We were visiting the Vatican when my street photo “The shot” was unfolding in front of me. A tourist taking a photograph and bending his knees to reach down and a classy Italian lady walks into the frame from the left. Some pigeons having a feeding frenzy in front of the man and the subject of the man’s photograph were outside the frame. All these unrelated components suddenly got a meaning inside the frame and got connected, and the fact that the lady that walks right towards me is looking across the frame where the subject of the man’s photo is appearing is just giving the photo some extra punch. 

The shot

Monday 13 May 2013

Who is the Fuji street shooter?

Well, I guess it’s about time I do a proper presentation now when the blog has been up and running for more than 2 months and I put up more than 80 photos on the blog.

My name is Hans G Bäckman and I am 39 years old. I live in Stockholm Sweden with my wife and two boys aged 2 and 4. I am a guy with many interests and I have been working with allot of different things and ran allot of different projects the last 25 years. I have been self-employed for most of my working life and for the last 15 years or so I have been working as a stock market trader. Between 1993 and 1999 I lived in Gothenburg and worked as a sailmaker.  After I met my wife I moved to Stockholm in 1999.

I took my first photograph when I was three years old and I remember it very well, it was a family portrait of the rest of my family and it turned out pretty well. After my first photo I did some shooting with an Agfamatic 2000 pocket sensor shooting 110 film cartridges. This was in the late 70s and early 80s and I was 5-10 years old. After this period I had a long “break” from photography and it wasn’t until the end of the 80s I started to find my way back to photography.

When the family were on holiday or when I went on trips with school, many other children would pack a camera to bring home some memories but I didn’t care (or have enough interest) to use a camera back in those days. In 1988 I started to borrow my father’s Konika FT-1 motor, a fixed 40mm lens and only manual controls and no autofocus. This was a great learning tool as I learned to understand the basics of photography and how to get correct exposure. I used this camera along with a Minolta rangefinder for almost 10 years, until I bought my very first SLR. But more about this in a later post…


Over there!


Shades #2

[untitled]

Friday 10 May 2013

Photos from last week

Here are some of the photos that I have taken the last week in Stockholm. Hope you enjoy!

Candid Street Portrait #1
I was walking in the old town of Stockholm when I came across this girl, she looked my way and I pressed the shutter. Candid street portraits is one of those things I find particularly difficult because there are so many factors that should be right for it to fully work. For starters it's always nice to have a neutral and calm background that doesn't disturb the image, second timing is everything. One important thing is to stay hidden until that final moment when the subject looks your way, too really catch that candid natural look of the subject. It's hard, it takes a whole lot of luck and training. But it's fun and awarding when everything falls into place. It's a bit addicting as all kind of street photography. Street portraits are preferable done with a 40-85 mm lens, but it can of course be done with a wide angel or longer lenses (85-300 mm) but I prefer the 85 mm for working distance and the best perspective. This was a "training" shot taken with my X100 (that is a fixed 23 mm lens). I named it as CSP #1 for further inspiration for my candid street portrait series. I have 40 mm pancake lenses for both my Pentax and Canon systems and I will try these out for some more candid street portraits. 


A helping hand
This photograph was also made in the old town of Stockholm. I saw them (a family?) coming down the street and that the girl (on the boys back in the window reflection) had some trouble going down the stony road. I sat down on the other site of the road and just waited for the rest of the subjects to come into the frame. When the boy with the girl on his back was reflected in the window and the rest of the family was in position I just had to press the shutter. It is not often one has this amount of time, I would say it's very rare, so rare that it almost becomes frustrating because it starts to get difficult to decide when to press the shutter because you have options. Most of the time you only have fractions of a second and after that the shot is gone, even if you have found your situation unfold for several seconds and you have figured out how to approach the situation. So if I divide my street shots into fractions of time, finding and figuring out the the situation makes up more than 90% of the time (in many cases 95-99%). The framing, focusing and finally pressing the shutter is just something that is done in a quick sequence of motion, when I lift the camera and put the viewfinder to my eye, the photograph is practically already made. This is something that I want to change and I will practice hard this year, to actually allow me to slow down and take more time for the final steps (framing, focusing and pressing the shutter). 


Phone compandy #8

iReligion (street view) 

 Attitude

Alone

Smoke, talk and walk 

Ice in the sun

 Shades

Between friends #5 (ice cream version)

Street reading

Lunch in the sun

Black & white

Banana and zebras

Dagens lunch

Walking the streets

Street life

A street reflection

 Green lunch

Colour girl

The stars and stripes & King's Colours

A reflection of Farsta

Smoking energy

No 68

Off duty

Phone company #7

Between friends #4

The whale

Lunch 65 kr

Crowns & flowers

Smoke

Friday 3 May 2013

Street session - thursday & friday

Finally I had a some time in Stockholm city to go shooting the streets. I am still learning stuff about the Fujifilm X100 every time I shoot. I now had the camera for about 9 months and it's a tricky one. The X100 is not for everyone, that is for sure. The auto focus tends to miss and acts a bit nervous, and it is in my opinion a bit on the slow side for fast action street shooting. Therefore I have been practicing shooting in manual focus mode and using zone focusing. This works quite well out in the day light (using smaller apertures 5,6-11), but becomes quite hard to use when shooting in the subway, because of the low light conditions in this underground dungeon. In the subway I mostly use aperture values between 2-4 which result in a shallow depth of field and zone focusing is not really an option. Even though I use the X100 every day it feels like it will take years to fully master this little brick of a camera, and I have a feeling that I will unfold some of the secrets how to fully use this black magic of a camera (I have the Black Limited edition). Enough camera talk, here are some new photos from the streets and Stockholm subway. 

Time for coffee

Street walk

The writing on the wall

Time for coffee and reflection

Numbers

 Waiting for the train

Between friends (modern version)

on/off (please leave some room)

When I close my eyes, the world disappears

Phone company #5

Lady in red