milandro

very true, I have shot some cyclists and motorcyclists just for kicks and then returned to what I do more often than not which is sigle shot, no auto-track autofocus if not completely manual focus. This whole business of the improved AF, in reality, only ever improved the performance of the 60mm autofocus for me. But of course it was marketed as the panacea for everything for months and so, when it arrived was rather more anticlimactic than most would have liked.

I have used my 50-230 with focus tracking only when the new software was introduced and there was no problem whatsoever in tracking moving objects, they were people on bikes and motor bikes, all the pictures were in focus and there was no hunting to speak of. From previous threads showing dissatisfaction about the AF tracking functions, some people seem to be happy about this and some aren’t, one thing is for sure what appears to fuji to be quite easy to understand in operating this function, doesn’t seem to come across the same way to everybody. I am afraid that the introduction of yet another firmware update will complicate things even more. There was a PDF with all the new functions of the manual to integrate the manual which came with the X-T1 but now we will obviously need another integration. This is the manual. ( version 1) http://www.fujifilm....1_manual_en.pdf this is the new features guide ( extension 2) http://www.fujifilm....n_es_ru_zhs.pdf soon I suppose there will be a version 3.... Confusing? Yes! I would like and integrated manual. Not a third party book ( too large and clumsy for me), but a spartan manual in booklet form (even in pdf for each of us to print) straight from Fuji to take with me at all times, as I do with any equipment that requires functions that I don’t always use and therefore forget how to use. THIS is the sort of fuji love that I expect, Ideally you wil find this at shops where you bring the old manual and get the new one, they may make this into a Fuji day where all Fuji customers get to know each other and the new models and lenses. They do it with my KIA car why not with my camera? Kia organizes each year a free check up. They always give me some present, fix minor things in the car, warn me about things which need attention and try to sell me a new car every year. That’s really good marketing.

Exactly because you intend to use the customer’ s image for commercial purposes and not informational or artistic purposes, I am afraid that things are way more complicated than tapping them on the shoulder and ask anyone to pose, the commercial intended purpose of your assignment certainly requires them to sign a model release form. If you don’t do this you might live to regret it if someone, even much later than the event, decides to take you to court. It is way better to also include some form of compensation ( e.g. drinks voucher mentioned in the release form) because in this way you can actually say that there has been an agreement to compensate the model. Read about these things before doing anything that can take you to court. http://www.pcblawfirm.com/articles/legal-issues-photographing-people/ http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/releases/when/ http://www.pdnonline.com/features/What-Photographers-N-10515.shtml As for the technical side of things. In my opinion, using one flash will not render an image that is anywhere close to the atmosphere in the bar. A dimly lit bar has to stay dimly lit. If you want to convince yourself of this, again, I strongly advise you to go to the place when nobody is there, ask the manager to switch on the normal lights and take some shots with the flash. These pictures might be of some use anyway ( see examples on google images mentioned later on ...) Depending on the circumstances you might be able to blend the strobe light with the artificial and or natural light but my guess, since you described this as a dim lit bar, is that you will be disappointed by the use of strobes. Again, in my opinion this is not the camera that I would use for this purpose and I don’t understand your : “ ... I do believe that this camera could be perfect for nightclubs and bars because I will be getting in close to people...” . What does the X100T “ close to people” that other cameras don’t do equally or better I don’t know. But the “ problem " is that the angle featured by the lens on this camera (35mm equivalent), even with the adapter (28mm equivalent), will be too narrow to render the space properly. It will be fine to photograph people but I understood that the bar was the subject and the people were only there as “ extras” . If this is the purpose, you will need an aperture greater than f2 to have enough depth of field. Nothing else than a visit, prior to the real shooting, will tell you what you need to know about shooting this place and how it shows in the pictuures and what is the aperture required for the proper sharp representation of the important details in the foreground and background. In other words, you might use an open aperture to shoot a detail of a drinks on the bar but f2 won’t be enough to have properly sharp pictures of the whole room. I have told you how I would do this, but you seem to know different and have a mind set on something that I don’t see. That’s alright, there are many ways to skin a cat and I don’t know this particular cat of yours after all. I am just picturing it based on my experience of bars and shooting them,, something which I’ve done, also professionally although many years ago, but I doubt that bars have changed that much ever since. I obviously don’t agree with your technical approach, that’s alright, there are again, many ways to do the same thing, but I most firmly urge you to seriously read the links that I gave you above on legal matters concerning shooting images of people which will be consequently used for commercial purposes, failing to do so might cost you very dearly. I suggest also that you google “ bar dimly lit” and then go to images, you will see thousands of pictures, none of which appears, to me, as shot with strobes, some show people too, many are shot with a wideagle wider than the 28mm equivalent that you would get with the adapter on the XT100 Good luck.

silent rumors

Unless you are using a number of strobes all over the place (a difficult technique involving the use of many slave flashes positioned in various key points but not immediately recognizable as such creating the appearance of the place being lit with the customary artificial light) I wouldn’t even consider adding any artificial light to shots like these in a night club and I would rely on the excellent performance of the X cameras with high ISO settings. Of course you will need to shoot with the camera on a tripod. There is a very good chance that even with the ISO set to the maximum value which still gives you a decent image without tons of noise, you will have people showing as motion blurred images, but, as Parkerstone suggests, this might actually add something to the image and even take care of the fact that nobody can just take pictures of people and use them for commercial purposes without their express permission ( news events are a different thing, you are talking of shooting for a catalogue or an ad, different situation) and so the skin tones would be the last of your concerns. Should the scene be sufficiently lit, then chances are that the skin tones will be softened by noise and if you are shooting jpeg Fuji has been criticized exactly for “ waxing” skin at high ISO settings! But I have to say that the last camera that I would ever consider using for a “ job” like this would be a camera with a fixed lens and only limited capability to be adapted to a wide-angle by means of an added optical device. In my opinion you need a camera with interchangeable lenses and you need a lens like the excellent 16mm to deal with the situation. Go to the place when there is nobody, maybe in the morning, and take some shots to see what the situation will be like. My hunch is that you will realize that the amount of light is really not a lot to not have motion blurred people and that the lens on your camera is not wide enough. Good luck!

5 days and we will know for sure

Are you talking of the new or second hand X-E2 prices? I know that for some mysterious reasons Fuji UK is always putting out better offers, better cash-backs ( although I hate the cash-back system, often made and designed to exhaust people who will be entangled in the mazes of the system and not get the money back), mysteriously reserved only to people living in the UK. But for the rest of the Europeans this is not the case. New X-E2 bodies are now priced at the exact same price of the X-T10. There are very few X-E2 secondhand ones around in shops (and they are expensive and very very few are offered on the classified market, even here on FR where I haven’t seen any advertised ). So if prices are still ( even for Xmas) the same between the older and newer camera ( one with more advanced features than the other) and not yet knowing what the X-E2 future firmware upgrade will be (it was promised many months ago following a serious movement of disappointment among X-E2 owners but it has been never been more than a vague promise which took forever before it was even remotely ascribable to official Fuji head office ) how could anyone buy NOW a NEW X-E2 when the X-T10 is giving you a lot more and for sure? You would have to find a good secondhand one. That has proven, in my neck of the woods, easier said than done. Only a couple of X-E2 bodies became available in recent times in the most popular Dutch classified ad site. One sold few hours after it was offered at €275, the other one was pulled from his owner because he was getting offers in the same range and he wanted more ( and nobody would meet his expectations) so he decided to keep the camera.

perhaps they think, as I do, that if you need that much more bracketing you better shoot and process raws

we live in hope

at present the X-T10 has a clear advantage over the present X-E2 and not only about focussing but several other things. Fuji has made repeated promises to produce some updates to the firmware but even then, the X-T10 will always have some things that the X-E2 ( or even the X-T1 as for example the 58 advanced preset modes). So, my advise is to wait and see. A couple of months at most will tell you what to do. It is my feeling that the X-E2 will receive some update but still the X-T10 will have more. At the moment and since the X-T10 has come on the market, the price of the two cameras has been identical and people in shops are telling me that since then they practically stopped selling X-E2’s. I am pretty much waiting to see if they are going to discount the X-E2 or offer it in some kit form with the new 35mm.

Someone else’s dream shattered

This one of the manual lenses for mirrorless cameras has to be one of the largest bandwagon to jump onto these days! I suppose they will sell some to some particularly finicky buyers. I’ve just spent my morning trying to find a name for a new turntable costing in excess of $100,000, so, I am aware that there is a market int the high-end segment for anything. So, there will be buyers out there, whether the amount of these buyers will be able to support a company which produces for a niche of buyers, specialized and more expensive lenses than the Fuji lens panoply to mirrorless camera buyers, remains to be seen.

Another one of these lenses, there seems to be one born every day. This one has at least the merit of being cheaper than most! Looks nice too.

the feelings about the 135mm being too long for portraits were widely shared by the photographers of my generation, things, apparently have changed since then. Despite having embraced new ideas in many fields, I have not changed my mind about this.

There is a very good chance that looks and dimensions won’t be altered all that much. Once a brand creates a recognizable product's image, generally it is better to stay with it rather than chasing the illusion to be able to fulfill everyone wants and whims ( I’ve carefully avoided to use the word needs because for most of us cameras are a fun surplus luxury object, few really “need” any such thing as a new camera) There is simply no way to please every single potential buyer. That’s why they have so many (in my opinion perhaps already too many) models each one of which is attempting to cover that many bases and market segments. Despite that Fuji will always please some and displease some others. It’s the nature of the beast. Just over a month to wait. Relax, what’s done is done.

I understand the rationale of the 120mm macro, although I anticipate that it will be a very large lens and therefore, not of any interest for me. Downsizing ( for me) is the word.

When I was young in the ’70, the first lens that anyone would buy, past the 50mm normal focal lens, would be, in most cases, a 135mm because it was the most affordable, together with the 28mm wideangle , of the lenses. Most people had the holy trinity, the magic triplet of lenses, 28mm, 50mm and 135mm. That’s what I did too. After some time one found out ( I wasn’t the only one at the time to make this discovery and you will find this comments both in the press of the time or still on line now) that the focal length of 135mm was neither fish nor fowl. A little too long to be giving a nice feel with portraits ( an effect that you best got with the 85mm) and a little too short to be bringing things closer that were not close enough ( something that started working from 200mm onwards ). So, you can imagine my surprise a few years after to discover the excitement with which people seem to react to a 90mm which, an a APS-C camera works out to be just a little longer than the 135mm of my youth. Something is not quite computing, for me, but the press is pressing and pushing us to believe that there are new realities about good old fashioned ways. So, they would want us to embrace this focal length now. I am not buying it. Literally! Of course there would be those who will disagree and they are free to spend their money as they please, exactly as I’m free to save as I want. So if you disagree with my stance on this, you are welcome to do so without any hatred, if you can. No hatred was expressed on my side. I am simply explaining my point. I have been toying with this lens in the shop and I found it extremely heavy and cumbersome and found, in that, another reason ( for me, not for you 90mm lovers!) to stick to my (other) guns.

I suppose that , by now, it has been a few months, you have cleaned the camera and If the camera works why are you selling it? I I’d keep it if I were you.

Looks great but I don’t think this could ever be a Fujifilm camera. At least not one which would have anything to do with the crowd of people buying the Fujifilm with their retro look, and buttons and dials. The philosophy of the Fuji cameras is not ( for now) one of a futuristic look, in fact part of their success is due to the fact that they are quite the opposite! However , who knows, maybe in 25 years things will be different.

you can say that again, wait a minute, you did!

I am afraid that the 1:1 reproduction ratio being needed for a lens to qualify as a macro lens is a myth. This urban legend that the fuji 60mm is not a proper macro lens is repeated throughout the internet by people with seemingly short memories. Since I have been around a while, I can still remember plenty of lenses, all defined and marketed as macro and, dare I say, micro, sold in the past would only reproduce 1:2 without a ring! The original micro 55mm Nikkor, in fact was also a 1:2 lens and needed a ring to go to 1:1. The same applies to my Pentax 100mm f4 macro! http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkoresources/micronikkor/55mmmicro.htm “...This highly rated lens can reach a maximum magnification ratio of 1:2 (0.5X) with its internal helical focus mechanism. With a matching PK-13 Auto Extension Ring, the ratio can reach 1:1 Life Size (1X)- so does when it is used in combination with a 2X teleconverter such as Ai-TC-200 or Ai-S TC-201" http://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/Super-Multi-Coated-MACRO-TAKUMAR-100mm-F4-Macro.html “.......The Asahi Super-Multi-Coated Macro-Takumar 1:4/100 is an excellent macro lens. Mechanically and optically the lens does not leave to be desired for anything more - the lens is ergonomic, easy to use and very sharp all over the APS-C frame at any given aperture. The background blur is soft and smooth even taking into account that this is not a fast lens. There are no visible optical aberrations with the APS-C sensor. The maximum magnification ratio of 1:2 is the same as that of most of modern macro lenses with similar focal lengths of 90 mm " Add a ring to the 60mm and you’ll get this magic 1:1 ratio that you so much covet! Anyway. The 60mm is an excellent lens, if you use this lens you will have the complete benefit of all the automatisms and the autofocus. One could argue that autofocus in extreme close up is not all that useful of well executed and that an adapted lens would perform well but personally I’d prefer to use the 60mm with a ring when you need the extreme or even more than that, magnification.

I don’t have any scenarios to play in my imagination. At this point in time it is just plain and simple waiting.

one more month and all will be revealed

just as well that this is a petty topic and gets so animated, can’t imagine how ugly it would get if it were something serious involving creeds or human lives at risk because of war, weather changes and disappearing of islands with all their inhabitants. I am sure that then things might need being taken seriously, but all this over a camera? “Surtout, pas trop de zele” – Above all, not too much zeal Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754-1838)

I don’t like small bags where cameras need to be without a lens and the lenses piled up in layers because given Murphy’s law, the lens you need is always the one that is at the bottom and at some point or other you are always trying to do something which requires a third hand. Because of this I have always had large bags which allow me to carry the stuff I need in a single layer and at least one camera with at least one lens mounted on it. I also like to have some extra space where I can put things if I happen to be traveling by plane because these days, in many countries, you are only allowed one piece of cabin luggage . My present choice is for leather bags. I like the feel and look of them but in the past I always had large canvas bags. The choice among the leather bags is rather large when it comes to the messenger type but the majority wouldn’t fit my requirements for a different design allowing to have the lenses in a single and not double layer. The bag which fits all my requirements was a Jill.E Design Jack Large messenger , they also have a backpack but I don’t like backpacks. In the U.S. this bag has still a very good price ( B&H has it for $199) while in the E.U. its price (being this sold by an American Company although made in China) has gone up since the € lost value against the $. I am glad that I’ve bought this when I did.