Sunday, December 2, 2012

X-E1: A Beautiful Sunday in November



A gallery, shot a week ago with the Fujifilm X-E1: A Beautiful Sunday in November
Posted by Mike Mander at 2:09 PM
Category: , ,

6 comments:

Eric Hodges said...

Any ideas about using a ND/GND filter system on X-E1?

December 5, 2012 at 12:36 PM
Mike Mander said...

Hi Eric: I've never been one to use filters much. Personally I would use regular threaded filters if I needed a polarizer or ND. As far as a graduated ND, I personally wouldn't bother as I find them too limited with their simple linear gradient. If the dynamic range is really challenging, I'd bracket then stack the processed raws and manually blend, or use some sort of HDR software. I don't see why you couldn't use Lee / Cokin / Formatt-Hitech holders with rectangular drop-in filters if you really wanted to, but that's not my cup of tea. The X-E1 is a small camera that begs simplicity and putting a big filter system on it would sort of defeat its purpose, if you know what I mean...

December 5, 2012 at 9:22 PM
Eric Hodges said...

Thanks Mike, that's what I was thinking. Seems like the dynamic range of X-E1 may be big enough anyway. I've also just shot 2 pics of the same scene and used the sky/light parts from one and the darks from the other, which has worked well.

December 6, 2012 at 8:16 AM
Eric Hodges said...

Mike, when you were doing the night shots to test the dynamic range did you use some setting on the camera to enhance the dynamic range?

I'm having trouble finding info on this.

Thanks!

December 7, 2012 at 2:09 PM
Mike Mander said...

Hi Eric: Since all the shots I've posted were converted from raw, strictly speaking, none of the in-camera settings really make any difference. I was shooting at DR 100% for the vast majority of what I've posted since for the moment, Adobe is not handling the higher dynamic range raws properly. The higher DR settings only influence how the camera meters and exposes, as far as I know, and any dynamic range compression (expansion?) is done in post, not in-camera on the raw capture. SilkyPix handles the higher DR modes properly I believe, but not so Adobe for now.

Now that I know how much shadow detail I can recover, I am fairly adept at exposing for the highlights and recovering the shadows from the raw in post myself, although shooting at DR 100%, the rear LCD can look quite contrasty and dark when I expose for the highlights when I shoot a high-contrast scene. I do have highlight rolloff set to soft and the shadows set to Medium-soft in the camera, but again, that doesn't affect the raw when processed through Adobe software, rather only the way the raw is displayed when played back in camera.

December 8, 2012 at 3:55 PM
Eric Hodges said...

Mike, excellent explanation, many thanks!

December 9, 2012 at 9:08 AM

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