Fujifilm
but this is an altogether different beast with so many improvements. Most notably battery life, autofocusing, the viewfinder (resolution and refresh rate) and, importantly, some great attention to the details of the controls. I have also invested in quite a few lenses, including zooms and primes. The Fujinon XF10-24mm f/4 R OIS, XF16-55mm f/2.8 R LMWR and XF50-140mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR pretty well match my old DSLR trio of zooms – and the XF14mm f/2.8 R, XF23mm f/1.4 R and XF35mm f/1.4 R primes all produce excellent results. I do also still use the XF18-55mm kit lens (although that term doesn’t do it justice), which is fantastic as a light, compact and versatile but very capable piece of glass. However, I missed having a fast, short telephoto prime, but the superb XF56mm f/1.2 R lens has now filled the ‘85mm full- frame gap’ and is my new favourite lens… I think!
Fujifilm’s film simulations are fun, but I don’t see them as essential to great end results. That is partially down to me not being a JPEG shooter and my workflow is such that everything is processed with Adobe Camera Raw and many then in Photoshop. Having said that, I capture Raw files on one card slot and large fine JPEGs on the second, partly for backup and partly for better, detailed in-camera previews. An exception is monochrome, when excluding colour really does help with visualisation, composition etc. On the desktop, I still find myself actually smiling when I see how much I can exploit the dynamic range of the X-T3 files to recover shadow and highlight details, which has often got me out of jail when shooting scenes with harsh lighting. I enjoy experimenting with lighting and, although I’ve stuck with Fujifilm lenses, I opted for third-party flashes,
RIGHT Bev,WithAttitude, XF16-55 f/2.8 at 37mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/30sec. Shot on location with ambient light plus handheld LED panel
18 Photography News | Issue 78
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