Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A Few Hours In Bryant Park

This past Monday, April 16th, was the first day of summer in New York. The temperature, as promised, rose to 90˚F and Bryant Park at lunchtime was filled with people playing chess, ping pong, and bocci ball. People were lounging in the sun and enjoying books from the Bryant Park book stalls. It was a festive atmosphere, and prime pickings for a surreptitious streettog (that would be me). It was a great chance for me to work on my XP1 skills.

The new accessory grip really helped a lot. My hand was steadier and more comfortable and working with the auto focus was much more successful. I still have yet to figure out how to smoothly and comfortably manipulate the camera into a vertical position for 'portrait' orientation shots. But as before, when I got home and loaded the shots onto my computer I was blown away by the amount of detail the camera can capture. The first of these two images is a case in point. 



In the second image, I was intrigued by this gentleman wearing a jacket and an ascot while everyone else was perspiring. As he approached, he looked up just when I pressed the shutter. Serendipity!


5 comments:

  1. nicely done, with summer is almost here NY is alive with interesting people

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  2. Great shots on your blog! What kind of setting do you use for your autofocus?

    regards,
    Bas

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    1. Bas, The focus is still a a bit of a mystery to me. But I'm getting there. Which setting I use depends upon what I'm shooting. If I am walking and grabbing shots of people moving about me I set the cam on continuous - that means the lens is constantly adjusting to what it perceives as the subject, depending on the contrast until I depress the shutter half way which then locks the focus. If I'm shooting a static subject I use single. BUT sometimes I shoot single while I'm walking around too. These shots were on continuous. I will have to explore the manual focus option when Fuji comes out with an M mount adapter and I can use my Leica lenses. Right now I could get a third party adapter for the X mount, but I've heard mixed reactions to the hardware, so I think I'll wait.

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  3. Great shots and great mood in Bryant Park. Puhh 90 fahrenheit - Here in Denmark is today about 53 fahrenheit/12 celcius

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