Allergy Season

It's not hay fever. It's just an itch that keeps on itching. And it's not going to stop till I scratch it. I stopped into the Leica Store on West Broadway to look at the different options that are available full frame. The M Monochrome looks really yummie. So, either Saturday or later in the week I'm going to bring my Leica 35mm f2 lens with me and take the camera out for a test run. Then I can take the SD card home, plug it into my software, and be either over or under-awed. In either case my itch will be assuaged, and I'll either plan to purchase the camera or forget about it, done, for eternity (maybe).

Now that the weather has become so spectacular in New York, I plan to be out shooting often. So I need to get caught up on my cataloguing and processing. I've already got several weeks of shooting to catch up on, and it's only going to get worse. So here's a set of random shots from the past week.

Women, expressive hand gestures, wild hair, cigar smoke, the city is jumpin' with stuff:

Shooting With my two X's

If it were my two exes, the title might have been 'Shooting my two exes. But the title refers to my two Fuji X cameras - the X-Pro1 and the X-T1. The weather on Monday was perfect for shooting. The light was soft and there was a breeze to help things look more dynamic. I took a long walk from Penn Station up and around and back down to Penn Station - about 5 miles.

It's been said so many times before, but bears saying again. The camera is just a tool. It's a box made of plastic or metal with some sophisticated mechanics and electronics. I need to say that for myself because to be honest, when I read on the Fuji Rumors site about a whisper that the X-Pro2 could be a full frame camera (for which the current x-mount lenses will not fit) my brain and guts started to churn - OMG what to do? Then I got out to shoot for a couple of days. The two cameras I have now feel great in my hands, they and the lenses I have work well for the type of shooting I do, and the image quality is really fine. I'm good with that.

But .... there's a tug of war about which body to pick up. I love the rangefinder feel of the X-Pro1, and the optical viewfinder works great on the street. I love the compactness of the X-T1 and the electronic viewfinder doesn't give me what the OVF does, but it has its own merits. And the X-T1 responds much faster. As I've worked the cameras in tandem, their strengths and weakness become clearer and I've refined my expectations of the tasks that each performs.

The first three shots were taken with the X-Pro1 and the 14mm lens. The fourth image was with the X-T1 and the 10-24mm zoom lens. When I had my Nikon D700 I used a full frame 14-24mm zoom, but hardly ever shot at the super wide angle focal lengths. With the 10-24mm zoom on the X-T1 those focal lengths just seem so much ore natural. The lens has no barrel or pincushion distortion, but shooting super wide naturally elongates elements of the image near the edges, which can be mitigated only slightly. But the lens is a killer! There will be more to come.

The LOOK (1):

The LOOK (2):

The LOOK (3):

Lock Step: