Gallery: Fall, and more XF 90mm f/2 tests...

Gallery (50 images): Fall and more XF 90mm f/2 tests...

Fall is coming, the leaves are changing and I spent another day with Fujifilm's 90mm f/2 firmly attached to the front of my X-E2. When I get a new lens, shoot with it, and then scarcely want to take it off the camera... well that's a sign that I really like that lens. My previous lens purchase, the XF 16mm f/1.4, was the same: on my trip to California earlier this year, about half of my 3300 photos were taken with that 16mm. Even though longer focal lengths are not something I use all that often, the 90mm has given me such wonderful results, that I've been using it a lot more than I thought I would.

There seems to be something almost "magical" in how it renders highlights, be it reflections on water, or reflections off metal or chrome.  Look at the large version of photo 43 in the gallery for example, and maybe you'll see what I mean? The 90mm is so sharp that I want to seek out textures too: old crumbling brick walls, rusting metal or decaying, yet colourful leaves. An added bonus is that it focuses very closely, considering it is not a macro. In fact, it offers roughly 1/4 life-size reproduction at its closest focus. Some portrait lenses have a tough time getting you a tight headshot, but with this 90mm, you can frame a face tightly enough to capture just the eyes.

Lastly, I wanted to mention how perfect the aperture ring feels on this lens, despite it being a WR design. Detents are firm and crisp, with full stop detents being distinctly stronger than its 1/3 stop detents, attention to detail which is commendable in my view. This is not the only Fujifilm lens to offer this full-stop/third-stop difference in feel, but it is one of the most obvious that I have felt. This little bit of "tactile perfection" is something that just makes the lens even nicer to use in practice. Not all Fujifilm lenses have felt so good, with the 18-135mm kit lens having a particularly mushy and vague aperture ring for example, but the aperture ring on this lens feels, at least to me, just about perfect. I am stating this as a distinct point of praise for Fujifilm's lens engineers, with the hopes that they take this to heart and not only continue to design future lenses that are superb optically, but make ones that also feel equally superb mechanically...

Gallery: Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 Tests

Gallery (30 images): Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 Tests

These are my first tests of Fujifilm's excellent new Fujinon XF 90mm f/2R LM WR portrait prime lens. It has a linear-motor (LM) mechanism for fast, quiet focusing and the WR designation means it has a water and dust resistant design. In short, it is a truly superb new addition to Fujifilm's extensive lineup of impressive prime lenses. More comments on its optical quality are in the notes at the top of the gallery. I have provided large, 4000 pixel wide images so you can closely examine its image quality, since smaller ones hardly do justice to the sharpness and clean rendering of this lens.

I was fortunate enough to have some interesting fog over the city during sunset too, although with handheld shots at slower shutter speeds, not enough sleep and too much coffee that day, I fear some of those won't be quite up to my usual sharpness standards. Not to mention the contrast sucking nature of the fog will make things look softer in general too. However, the first set of images done earlier in the day with better light (1-18), those should show what the lens is capable of. Seeing as how I called it a "portrait lens," yes there are a couple of portraits (thanks Nicole!), shot wide open at f/2 as well.

It's likely that this lens might replace the 50-230mm in my general "hike around" kit since for landscape work, when I did use that zoom, I often found myself shooting around 90mm with it anyway, give or take. It has been rare that I ever framed a pure landscape (or even cityscape) shot at much more than 100mm, so the 90mm should work perfectly in a great many instances. Of course, if birds or wildlife are my intended subject, then the 50-230mm will come along as well, or eventually, the upcoming 100-400mm zoom.

The 90mm brings me one step closer to having an ideal prime lens kit. I am now waiting for the new XF 35mm f/2 to arrive (scheduled to ship in November I believe), which will then likely replace the 18-55mm zoom in my kit, which I am now using more or less as a 35mm stand-in. At that point, my primes will be 16mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 35mm f/2, 60mm f/2.4 macro and 90mm f/2. I do also have the 14mm f/2.8 but I often want wider, so the 10-24mm f/4 will be the standard ultra-wide in my lens kit. Since it is extremely good too, especially in its mid range (around 14mm), the 14mm prime will seem a bit redundant to be honest and I likely won't take it with me on a regular basis. The 16mm is quite close to the 14mm as far as focal length and is so incredibly good, that I wouldn't miss the 14mm all that much I think. The last prime lens I will be wishing for, is something in the 9mm to 11mm range but unfortunately, I have not seen even the slightest hint of anything like that coming...

As much as I like primes lenses, I also have the ability to travel light with a three zoom kit if size and weight are a concern: the 10-24mm, 18-55mm and 50-230mm, all image stabilized and surprisingly good optically, especially the 10-24mm!

Gallery: Grouse Mountain

Gallery (65 images): Grouse Mountain

The first day with my cousin and his wife was spent up on Grouse Mountain. The weather was overcast and grey when we first got there, and even the grizzlies seemed dejected. It was still overcast for the lumberjack show but for the "Birds in Motion" raptor show, the skies started to clear. The raptors were definitely the highlight of the day...

Gallery: Burnaby Mtn, Belcarra Park and Pitt Lake...

Gallery (25 images): Burnaby Mtn, Belcarra Park & Pitt Lake

Another few days of sightseeing with my cousin and his wife. First off, some views down onto Vancouver and up Indian Arm from Burnaby Mtn, then at Belcarra Park for sunset. After seeing some of my photos near Pitt Lake, the next day my cousin decided that he'd also like to go there and thankfully, the weather cooperated with some fairly dramatic skies too.

Gallery: Victoria, BC

Gallery (60 images): Victoria, BC

I've taken some time off from working on my previous trip images since my cousin Marco and his wife had come for a visit from Germany. Our main excursion, while they were visiting Vancouver, was to take the ferry over to Victoria and spend the day sightseeing. The gallery above contains some of my images from that outing...

Gallery: Death Valley, CA - Days 1 & 2...

Gallery (60 images): Death Valley, CA - Days 1 & 2

This gallery contains images from my first two days at Death Valley National Park. After my drive up from Joshua Tree National Park, I was amazed at how few people were camping at Furnace Creek, despite the fact that it was the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend. Since it was already fairly hot and already considered the off-season in Death Valley, the campground had relatively few people and a big part of it was already closed of entirely. After finding a reasonably shaded spot for the tent, I set up camp and then headed over to Zabriskie Point and photographed sunset there.

On the second day, I drove the Titus Canyon Road in from Nevada, stopping the photograph the ghost town of Leadfield and many other scenic spots along the way. Later that evening I spent time on the sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells, the Mesquite Dunes, where I thankfully managed to hike out to an area devoid of human footprints. There was some amazing light and after the skies started looking ominous, I decided to make time back to the vehicle. Indeed, when I got back to the car, it was very windy and there was a huge wall of sand and dust headed my way! I started doing a time-lapse of the approaching sand but that was cut short when it hit fairly quickly. The winds then were so strong, that it send my tripod skittering and skidding across the road! Luckily I had just taken my camera off and I chased it down...

I drove back out of the sandstorm at low speeds with my hazards flashing, which is what other cars were doing as well and once I cleared the cloud of sand, I booted it back to my campsite to the south at Furnace Creek. Luckily I beat the sandstorm there by about 10 minutes and managed to get all my vents inside zipped shut to keep out the blowing sand and dust. Unfortunately it was a hot and muggy night with all the vents shut and the temperature in the tent never dropped below 35º C, at least not until about 2:00am when the storm abated and I could open up some of the vents again. Still, it really didn't cool off much that night, maybe a few degrees lower only. With all the fiercely blowing sand and dust, thunder, lightning and some intervals of pelting rain too, my tent was a blotchy, muddy mess the next morning.

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Gallery: Death Valley, CA - Day 3...

Gallery (60 images): Death Valley, CA - Day 3...

On day three in Death Valley, I visited numerous diverse locations. On the way to Aguereberry Point, I stopped off at the Eureka Mine ruins and also at the Aguereberry Camp ghost "town", although with only a few buildings, I suppose it is too small to really be called a town. What surprised me, is that even though the buildings are visible from the main road leading to Aguereberry Point, and it is only a short drive on a dirt road and 2 minute walk from the parking area, there is actually very little graffiti. One building had one room with its walls filled with graffiti (photo 18 in the gallery), but that is pretty much it. The old house pictured above, actually has virtually none at all, neither on the inside nor the outside. This is really a nice change since I much prefer photographing "pristine" ruins that have not been defaced in more recent times with spray-paint and graffiti!

After photographing the ruins, I headed up to Aguereberry Point and was rewarded with some wonderful cloud shadows and quite clear vistas. The wide panorama in the gallery was a stitch of four shots. Strangely enough, despite the fact that I was up there during the Memorial Day weekend, there was nobody else at the viewpoint! In fact overall, Death Valley was quiet on what I presumed would be a very busy weekend where tourists generally flock to the national parks. I suppose it was late enough in the year already that the heat was keeping people away. Indeed, despite the big thunderstorm the night before with rain and high winds, the nighttime temperatures in Furnace Creek didn't drop below about 35º Celsius.

After enjoying the views at Aguereberry Point, I headed over to the mill ruins at the ghost town of Skidoo (more great clouds there) and then finished off the day at the Stovepipe Wells sand dunes. It seemingly was a very busy day for tourists on the dunes though, since there were tracks and footprints everywhere, despite the fact that previous night's storm had likely erased all the tracks on the dunes from before. The ridges along the highest dunes were flattened down from all the people walking there, which you can easily see in some of the photos...

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Gallery: Mono Lake, CA

Gallery (40 images): Mono Lake, CA

Originally I was scheduled to head down to Oregon for a week, but due to the lingering smoke and haze from the many fires burning in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, I decided to stay home and work on images from some previous trips. So, continuing on with the "reverse" postings from my May road-trip to southern California...

After camping for three days in the sweltering heat of Furnace Creek in Death Valley, I headed north to photograph the ghost town of Bodie. On the way north, I decided to stay at a hotel in Lee Vining that evening, and this not only gave me an opportunity to visit Mono Lake's South Tufa area, but also to have a much needed shower!

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Gallery: Bodie & Yosemite, CA

Gallery (75 images): Bodie & Yosemite, CA

The ghost town of Bodie, a little ways northeast of Mono Lake in California, must be one of the largest, well preserved ghost towns around. The state park service has been carefully keeping Bodie in a state of "arrested decay" (their words), with some patching up of buildings having been done in such a way as to look as original as possible, using aged lumber etc., at least that is what I was told during my last visit back in 2003. I must say, I did notice during this time that some of the newer repairs do not look that authentic, with much fresher looking boards being used etc. Nonetheless, generally speaking, the town is pretty amazing and well worth exploring!

I spent many hours wandering through Bodie and took many shots of interiors, mostly from the outside, looking in through dusty, hazy, blotchy windows. Above is a screenshot from Lightroom's map view, showing the location of the 64 photos in my gallery that were taken in Bodie. The large mill complex you see near the right edge is fenced in and off limits to the public due to dangerous conditions, although I believe one can arrange to go on a tour. The black-flies were nasty when I was there and managed to make it through my vented Outback hat. At the end of the day, I had dozens of itchy bites on my scalp! However I was fully in "photo mode" and because I was concentrating on shooting, I somehow managed to mostly ignore that irritation.

Many interior photos that I had taken through glass were lacking in contrast and saturation, due to the hazy dust coating the windows. Lightroom and PhotoNinja allowed me to make quick work of restoring the shots to a proper level of contrast, despite the fact that I am not using the latest version with the "De-Haze" filter. In a few cases, I selectively adjusted bright, out of focus blobs that came from particularly large white specks on the windows that were reflecting outside sunlight. Generally I held my camera with my right hand, and used my left hand, sometimes holding my hat, to try and minimize window reflections from ruining the shot. I also often removed the lens hoods from my lenses and went as close as possible to the window panes to try and minimize outside reflections as well. I wore a black jacket too so it wouldn't add to the reflections. All in all, I am actually very pleased at how many of those difficult shots turned out quite well!

During my last visit to Bodie in 2003, I was shooting film with a Pentax 67II and a Fujifilm 6x17 panoramic camera. None of the interior shots I tried doing with that Pentax, from the outside looking in, worked out at all. I was likely shooting either Fuji Velvia (ISO 50) or Provia (ISO 100) at the time and needed to use a tripod for any shots with slower shutter speeds. With the tripod I had back then, I couldn't get the camera close enough to any windows to avoid reflections, and there is no way that I would have had any chance at all of handholding the 67II and getting sharp interior photos either, with those slow film speeds and a lot of shutter and mirror vibration. Plus, the minimal dynamic range of slide film would not have allowed me, in many cases, to capture the brightness range needed in a single frame, where window light was the sole illumination for deep interiors. Shooting with a lightweight digital camera (my Fujifilm X-E2) which has minimal vibration, very good dynamic range and quite clean high ISOs, as well as using lenses that are sharp at wider f-stops, allowed me to get shots I never could have back in my film days!

However, luckily some shots this time were actually taken from the inside (no glass in the way) and those were much easier to do, for example, like the image at the top of the this post. The description at the start of the gallery specifies which shots were taken from inside a few of the buildings or where there was no glass. Enjoy!

Link: All galleries from this trip...

Beau Photo Supplies - Fuji Photo Walk

Gallery (45 images): Beau Photo Supplies - Fuji Photo Walk

I helped host the first Beau Photo Supplies sponsored Fujifilm Photo Walk on Granville Island with one of the "Fuji Guys", Gord Webster and a local Fujifilm sales rep, Ramin Shahidian. Also from Beau Photo, Jason Kazuta (rentals) and Ken Shymka (pro sales) also helped out, answering questions and experimenting with Fujifilm gear. The gallery linked to above has shots that I took during the pleasant two hour outing, where lots of enthusiastic Fujiiflm "X-shooters" came to hang out, ask questions and borrow Fujifilm lenses and cameras to try out for the evening. A few people shooting with Canon and Nikon systems were there too, wondering if the Fujifilm system might be right for them perhaps…

Gord Webster set up a camera and triggered it remotely via WiFi for his "X-shooter" portrait of the participants above. A big "thank you" to Gord, Ramin and Fujifilm Canada for helping to organize this  event and for providing the huge number of loaner bodies and lenses that people eagerly shot with!

For the first hour or so of the walk, the skies were largely a hazy overcast, but when the sun broke through later, close to sunset, the light was quite nice…