First things first: Merry Christmas.
If you celebrate the festive season I hope you enjoyed it. The level of craziness around this time of year is unparalleled. Not even Black Friday this year lived up to the show of spending. Listening to people talk about how busy it was in certain stores I’m glad I couldn’t go. But I worked through it so I know full well what level of busy it can get to.
Let’s return to the normal programming. Photography.
I have taken more photos in the last two months than the previous ten combined. In an attempt to create a project which can help me to explore photography and my motivation for doing it I have spent more time with my two “real” cameras. The Canon 1300D and the XE-2 from Fujifilm. You probably guessed it but for the remainder of this article we will focus on the XE-2.
I love my Canon. It’s was my first DSLR camera. I bought around 2015 and it was my workhorse. I have three lenses for it and when I need to go back to the initial feeling of ‘why’ I started to photos I use it. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
The XE-2 is different.
Looking at it on my desk its build is different. The silver body. The dials looking a bit more stylish than what is on my Canon. Canon to me says practical while the Fuji makes a different statement. But enough with the fanboy talk. This evening I captured a few images with the Fuji. They aren’t super sharp – no tripod this evening and the shutter speed was 1/15. Plenty of time to pick up that little bit of pressure on the shutter button. But those blurry soft images aren’t bad. Even with the softness, the images feel different. Canon feels like point A to point B. No detours, no exploration.
The XE-2 is going off the beaten path, stopping over for a day or two and then arriving at point B worn out but happy.
The final image (at the very end) is something I’m trying to do with my photos lately.
Intentional blur. I focus on something really close – holding my hand up or letting the camera focus on the kettle. When the focus is “locked in place” I point at what I want to photograph and these lights appear out of focus. I haven’t tried this with my Canon yet but I have it on my to do list in the next week or so. I bought a K&FConcept adapter for EF lenses to X mount but due to some bullshittery it doesn’t work as I thought it would. The f/1.8 50mm on my Fuji does look really cool (will share photos) but it needs to be manually focused. I’ll write about the combination of that lens & body in the next post.
tl;dr
Shoot with multiple cameras if you can. It opens your eyes to new ideas and techniques. All images from the XE-2 and barring the first photo all of them are SOOC except for the crop.
Thanks for reading : )