Larry Bolch

Arrive early to get the best shooting location. It helps to have a clear view from the front row. An early arrival means you can do test shots, tuning the camera to the environment prior to the start of the ceremony. With the camera optimised ahead of time, you don't need to concentrate on camera operation, freeing you to concentrate on capturing the best content. Realise that there is no one correct approach. Given two veteran shooters, the approaches might be very different but both will produce optimum content and image quality. I will give my suggestions and the reason behind them in some detail. Once I was settled in the best seat in the house, even though shooting RAW, I would do a manual white balance. RAW allows you to do major corrections in software, but with a manual white balance, judging and tagging the images you want is easier if they all look equally good. In software, you need only do a bit of fine tuning, not major corrections. Auto white balance works best with daylight which has a continuous spectrum. Fluorescent lights are highly unpredictable due to their discontinuous spectrum. A custom white balance generally gets pretty close to ideal. With zone focusing, you do not need the camera to lock onto the subject. Both lenses are at their best when stopped down a couple of stops, which also provides depth of field and creates the zone. As long as the subjects are in the zone, they will be sharp. (This is a skill well worth mastering. Those who say that the camera is too slow focusing to capture their ballistic toddlers have not learned the technique. As long as the kid is in the zone, they will be sharp. No need to actually focus on the kid. Just move so you keep the kid within the zone.) There is no reason to mutter "bokeh, bokeh" while shooting. If the background is fairly sharp, it gives a sense of location. Once you have the zone set, you will never have to wait for the lens to focus, giving near instant response when you press the shutter button. When you see where the presentation is taking place, focus on the presenter and then ignore further focusing unless the people move out of the zone. Subject and camera movement are not much of a challenge in such a ceremony. A shutter speed of 1/125th should handle both adequately. Choose an ISO that will provide at least that speed. If it is really dim, I will take a noisy but sharp and detailed image over a smooth silky blur any time. Auto ISO is great as long as you have it set to deliver the shutter speed. If your hands are not steady enough, a monopod is an excellent solution. Tripods are not great in a crowd since people seem to be drawn in to trip over them. If he is not the first in the program, you have a chance to do test shots on those who precede him. Check your results and fine-tune to improve them if necessary. The joy of digital shooting is that you get instant feedback. No matter what or where you are shooting, test shots are your best friend.

Of course, the X-cameras are the same format and size as film half-frame cameras. You may well be the only person on earth who would buy a Fujifilm half-frame film camera. There are good reasons why Fujifilm may not respond to your desire. Over the decades, film has improved very slowly. In the past two decades, there has been little incentive to improve it at all. My gorgeous art deco Olympus FT was the epitome of half-frame, but even with the superb lenses, the print quality was appalling, even compared to ordinary 35mm. Back then, size REALLY mattered. On the other hand, sensor quality has made jumps in orders of magnitude. According to the great photographer and printmaker Ctien, m4/3 caught up to 6×9 film about six years ago. This could be nit-picked, but the fact is that digital lusts for nothing that film gives. Film has a cost, processing has a cost and printing has a cost. Only if your time has no value, time too has a cost. http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2016/03/when-will-micro-43-equal-medium-format-film-we-have-the-definitive-answer.html Then there is the obvious. No matter the format, the total cost of ownership goes up with each exposure when shooting film. Film has its cost, processing has its cost, printing has its cost, and then there is time. Processing colour film yourself requires precise timing and temperature. Negative film is a bit forgiving, but slides—the equivalent of shooting JPEGs—is not. Temperatures regulated to ±¼° and disaster if you fumble. Kodachrome offered no processing options. Successful printing in the fume-room means years of practice and vast quantities of materials—and time. With Photoshop and an Epson photo printer, a day in the fume-room is reduced to 15 minutes or less with the result assuming maximum skills, approaching colour separation/dye transfer printing more than direct colour. Again it can be argued, but an APS-C or full frame image is now well past what medium format offered back in the film era and approaching large format. It may be well worth mentioning that large format lenses showed appalling numbers when tested upon standard laboratory standards. With an 8×10 contact print, it simply did not matter. With a photomural, it also did not matter, since it was viewed at a distance. Our Fujinon lenses can match or beat the lenses that were sold during the film era. Compared to the best of that time, our lenses are bargains. If you want decent image quality, forget the smaller formats. Medium-format may equal or exceed m4/3. Our APS-C and full frame are in the limbo between medium and large format. Decades back, shooting the breeze with my working colleagues, I recall wanting a 35mm sized camera that shoots 8×10 quality images. I am old, but I may well shoot with one in my lifetime.

Given the same exposure settings, aperture, shutter speed and ISO, there should be no difference in noise no matter the lens. Long exposures can generate noise, but I doubt that is the problem. Seeing a comparison should make the problem obvious, but that is not possible here, so I can only guess. My guess is that the camera is on AutoISO, and the Nikon lenses are stopped down to tiny apertures, causing the ISO to rise. Check the EXIF data and compare ISO values with the Nikon lenses and the Fujifilm lenses.

At the moment, 512GB is the largest I know of. Last I read, the 2000× Lexar is the quickest.

Film Leicas had a shutter that was necessarily closed between exposures. Therefore, if they ever pointed at the sun for more than a moment, into the shop since there was now a hole in the curtain. Amazingly common problem.

Unless you really want to do portraits with only one eye in focus, consider the 60mm as well. Very high-quality lens, able to focus close and much less cost than the 56mm. Since it has such a great range from very close to infinity, it can take a few moments longer to focus. A half-press of the shutter will lock it onto your subject, making the response instantaneous when you press the shutter the rest of the way. Pre-focus is a good habit with any lens.

I discovered that I have an extreme wide angle lens I did not recognise. It might be useful to know for anyone who has this lens. I have the Samyang 8mm fisheye. A few days back, I noticed that Adobe Camera RAW has a profile for it on an X-camera. Clicked to see what would happen and it was rendered as rectilinear. It pretty much retains the short side, but crops a bit on the long side. No idea what focal length is the equivalent, but clearly all the problems of shooting super-wide are there. If the camera is tilted, the foreshortening is dramatic. With the camera straight with the world, lines are straight and perspective is profound.

There really is no limit, though it largely depends upon viewing distance. For many years, Kodak had an 18'×60' photomural high above the concourse in New York City's Grand Central Station. Many were shot with 35mm cameras. Close up, the dye clouds were about the size of tennis balls, but from the floor, the pictures looked very crisp. Early in the digital era, I shot a portrait of a macaw with my Coolpix 990—3.34MP. A friend insisted upon a 24"×36" print. I tried to discourage him, but he would not budge. When I saw the print, I was most impressed. Big living room, and from any point it looked great. Close up, there was no pixelation and it looked quite detailed. With the 36" side being only 2048 pixels, it was 56.9 pixels per inch. Certainly a 16MP original would be sharper and more detailed when viewed side by side. However, a step or two back, and the differences would vanish.

8MM 11% (Samyang) 14MM 16% 18MM 15% 35MM 34% 60MM 24% Plus a smattering of legacy lenses with adapters.

If you need only one eye to be in focus, the 56mm f/1.2 is essential. However, the fad for paper thin depth of field is approaching cliché status and hardly appropriate for most documentary work. The 60mm f/2.4 is a brilliant lens with powerful close focusing ability. It is a lens I use a great deal with my X-Pro1. I don't see how the experience would differ significantly with the X-T10 specifically. It is essential in my kit. The X100 is a nice compliment, specially in troublesome light, where its fill-flash capability can be vital.

A tip or two. If a dSLR is having a problem focusing, one can pick an edge and it will often solve the problem. With the Fuji sensor, that may well make it focus on the background. When shooting a face for example, size and place the rectangle where only the face is included and preferably containing a feature such as an eye. It is looking primarily for contrast. A half-press will force the camera to focus, so you can judge. Hold the half-press and the focus is locked so you can recompose if necessary. The half-press does require a moment more anticipation but is pretty much fool-proof. Anticipation is good. When tracking action, set to continuous focus and don't use a half press. Mash the shutter button down and the camera will trip the shutter the moment it is in focus.

Actually, no one bought it, which was enough to kill it. As I recall, they kept showing up at trade shows with prototypes but were never able to actually bring the product to market. It had a number of dramatic flaws. A tiny sensor that cropped the widest lenses into telephoto fields of view. No EVF so you had to guess what is in the image area. A resolution of 1280×1024—about one megapixel—when three to five megapixels were mainstream. No menus. No controls. No memory card. No monitor. Highly vulnerable to dust. An asking price of $1,000 which would buy a nice 5MP bridge camera. Above all, no ability to complete the product and bring it to market. Too little for too much and too late to be viable.

Sorry. My favorite settings are whatever the subject matter and shooting environment dictate to give me the best possible results. The whole reason for buying a fully adjustable camera. Using someone else's settings can produce highly unpredictable results unless you know the circumstances and goal of the shooting situation. At the most basic, I usually shoot aperture priority and auto-ISO in order to have the highest practical shutter speed under the circumstances. On a bright, sunny day, I will probably use f/5.6-f/8.0 for maximum resolution vs depth of field. In a living room at night, I will be shooting f/1.4-f/2.0 at ISO6400 in order to just get usable exposures. Even when shooting RAW, I generally do a manual white balance which makes for just fine tuning in Photoshop, not large corrections. For more advanced settings, realize that for JPEGs all settings can be applied AFTER the exposure with the built-in RAW converter. You will get exactly the same results as if you applied them during the exposure. This means you can explore things like Highlight Tone or Shadow Tone and learn what each setting does under various circumstances. The original RAW exposure is not altered, and can be converted and compared as much as it pleases you. These settings in no way alter the RAW file. Once you fully understand the function of each setting, you can assess your shooting environment, make an educated guess, do a test shot or two to nail the image you are seeking. Test shots are always your friend, and feedback is immediate—the glory of digital photography. There never has been a more immediate and direct way to understand the whole photographic process. As an alternative to custom settings, you can shoot RAW and apply fine-tuning with far greater sensitivity in processing. Even if JPEGs are the goal initially, it would be wise to shoot RAW+JPEG, so you will always have the richer originals to go back to as your skills progress. Either way, you have the advantage of being able to tune the exposure to the circumstances with the result of the image matching your vision of it.

Japanese camera makers are oriental trading companies first and camera manufacturers second. The important thing is the warranty, not the location of final assembly. It states that the company is putting its reputation for quality behind the product. Fuji, for example, uses Sunpak to make their flash units, but the Fuji warranty is on them. Thailand is a major manufacturing centre for Nikon as well. In 2011, floods had a disastrous impact upon Nikon inventory for many months. Camera makers also make equipment for each other. Cosina makes the bulk of Zeiss "German" lenses. They also make the Nikon FM10 film camera that was at various times also Canon T60, Carena CX-300, Olympus OM-2000, Nikon FE10, Petri GX-1, Petri GX-2, Revue AC2, Revue SC3, Ricoh KR-5 SUPER II. The Leica CLE was made by Minolta. My "German" Plaubel Makina 67 was made either by Copal or Mamiya and has a Nikon lens. All early Canon lenses were Nikons. Now, Hasselblad lenses are Fujinons, and the original design of the current H series of cameras is based upon a Fuji/Hasselblad collaboration. It is not clear how deeply Fujifilm is still involved in Hasselblad manufacture. Fuji also made the Hasselblad X-Pan which it sold in Japan as the Fujifilm X-T1 (not X-T1). Sony Semiconductor make sensors for many brands, including Sony Camera, of course. However, some Nikon sensors are made by Aptina, reputedly in China. As long as it has Fujifilm guarantying its quality, that is what matters.

Shoot as if you were shooting a rangefinder camera—both eyes open, watching for "decisive moments". OVFs have never been precise—that is why SLRs gradually took over from RF cameras last century. Slide film left no possibility for cropping after the exposure. Colour film ended the era of the enthusiast darkroom since it was vastly more technically demanding than B&W. Capture the subject and environment and fine tune the composition in processing. With an SLR, you are watching the action on a little projection screen, much as with an EVF. With an OVF, you are actually looking through the camera at the scene itself. Float the frame lines over the subject and trip the shutter whenever it gets interesting. The hybrid finder gives you the best of both worlds.

Not really slow. Consider that it has a much wider range of focus in order to get down to .5×, and focus speed is pretty normal. A small trade-off for much greater versatility. Nine bladed aperture for smooth out-of-focus backgrounds. Half-a-second added anticipation will handle the greater range of focus. A truly fine lens.

Pretty much parallel requirements, plus a lot of people photography indoors. I shoot zooms with dSLR equipment but decided to keep the X-Pro1 much like the rangefinder cameras I shot with film. All primes. Fuji nailed the initial three lenses as the classic photojournalist's kit—18mm, 35mm and 60mm. These were and still are, my basic kit. I loved my 21mm SuperAngulon, so the 14mm was my next addition. Gorgeous lens. All will work well on an X-Pro2. I do have other cameras when zooms or long lenses are needed. I feel no need for anything beyond the 60mm which I greatly appreciate. Outside the basic kit, I sprung for the Samyang/Bower/Rokinon 8mm fisheye and am very glad I did. I avoid the fisheye clichés of bending buildings, and instead use it as a super wide or panorama lens, keeping the camera level as possible. People who buy it for the fisheye look quickly find it boring. Used as a super wide, it finds constant use.

Lenses designed for film may work fine or be a disaster. My f/1.8 105mm Nikkor is great with just an adapter or with the Speed Booster. My 90mm f/2.0 Serenar produces results that are "artistic" if you like soft focus lenses. It has a flat rear element that obviously sets up a feedback loop of reflections. A mass of flare, aberrations, and whatnot. No amount of skill and technique is going to change it. Same results with a 50mm Serenar as well. No bad experiences with other Nikon lenses, however without autofocus and aperture, and with the superb quality and match of Fujinons, I rarely make use of them.

Your soul will not be imperiled if you add a superzoom bridge camera of another brand. There is no hardware relationship at all with my X-Pro1. It is a specialized piece of photographic equipment that opens whole new realms of exploration. Having noticed that a 2000mm f/11Nikon mirror lens sold for $95,000 and B&H has a 1250mm f/5.6 for sale used at $180,000, the idea of a Coolpix P900 with an 83× zoom with a 35mm FOV of 24-2000mm made me whip out my plastic. Low expectations were greatly exceeded. Awesome image stabilization allows hand-holding at the maximum magnification. Necessarily a tiny sensor but one can clearly see bird's feathers at 2kmm. For traveling, every image is geotagged. The GPS is quick in locating enough birds for a positive location. (Should be installed in every camera.) Fully WIFi enabled as well. Fun to use. It extends my range of capabilities without infringing even slightly on my X-cameras.

Lenses designed for APS-C sensors hit the peak of sharpness between f/4.0 and f/8.0. While corner detail may be sharper at f/8.0, centre sharpness is usually best at f/5.6. One tends to place the most significant content in the centre of the image so f/5.6 is usually a safe choice. Fall-off at f/4.0 or gain at f/8.0 is just not that significant. The X-Pro1 can take horrible images in the hands of the pretentious but inexperienced owner. As a true "pro" camera, it does what the photographer tells it to do—assuming the photographer has taken the time to completely understand the camera. The forums are full of "the camera is incapable of _____." Translated "I haven't a clue. Aren't camera supposed to think for me?" There is no reason in the world why the X-Pro1 would not be able to produce equivalent results to your reference. Read and absorb the page. Not only is the shoot very well covered but there is good general information there too. Gearheads need stuff to flame-war over, but in fact, the level of digital cameras are at an amazing level. Way more important than megapixels or the latest way of reading a sensor is the way a camera feels in your hands. In absolute terms, there is a spread, but what counts is in relative terms to the way you do photography. To specifics—the 18mm and 35mm can produce superb landscapes. The 55-200mm can also do so, but not so obviously. It has the advantage of compressing distance. A distant derelict house with a tree far beyond. Everything else out of focus. Not easily seen by a beginner. The compression can also be very effective when shooting panoramas. If this is of interest, start practising now. The X-Pro1 has a panoramic mode that can be useful. However, it does take a combination of skill and luck to use with success. I appreciate it for a nominal panorama, but one I really want for a print, I will do with individual exposures to be later stitched. Fuji has an interesting way of reading its sensor that makes ISO800 not a whole lot different from ISO200. In bright daylight, with the aperture set to f/5.6 and the 35mm lens mounted, you should do fine with a shutter speed of 1/60th-1/125th. As the light drops, Fuji gave us back the threaded shutter release. Every cable release over the past half-century works perfectly! As an alternate, using a shutter delay also works fine. On very long exposures such as 30 seconds during a lightning storm, the time it takes for the camera to settle down is too short to register in the exposure. A tripod is always your friend. Everything else taken care of, dynamic range can still be an issue. My main landscape body is a Nikon D700 that allows a ±4.0EV bracketing range. I choose the exposure with full detail in the clouds, full detail in the forest and whatever is in between and merge in Adobe Camera RAW. The result is a .dng file that looks perfectly natural, but with no blown highlights or large areas of black. The X-Pro1 only offers a ±1.0 bracket, but it can make a significant improvement.

As a working photographer, filters were solutions to very specific photographic problems, and to be used as the last resort. For protection, every lens came with a lens cap and many with a hood as well. That is what we all used. Camera sales 101. Always use guilt to push a "protective" filter with every lens. "We buy them by the case-load and mark them up incredibly. Negotiate the price of the lens and make it back by sticking them with a filter." If you love your camera store, buy a filter from them as a love offering. Chuck it in the trash as you leave the store. See real world testing: https://youtu.be/P0CLPTd6Bds

A speed booster in reverse is called a teleconverter or tele-extender, which Fuji already manufactures. With long focal length lenses, a 2× converter might work on a medium format sensor. Short and normal lenses would probably have a drastic fall-off in sharpness toward the edges. A 2× converter costs two stops loss in aperture, so an f/2.8 would functionally become an f/5.6. Not a good idea, since Fuji currently is making some of the best medium format lenses in existence.

It has been stated with some frequency that the X-mount precludes full frame. It would require a whole new line of lenses.

At this point, it does not.

Make sure you are in shooting mode when you press the menu button. The camera is aware of the mode, and saves you the extra step.