Braeside
New member
I have recently returned from a 2 week cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean. This coincided with a bad back problem that I seem to have acquired this year. As a result I was not able to carry as much gear with me as I might have wished and I am really glad that I didn't have to take the heavy DSLR gear of recent years. Frankly I struggled carrying what I did take as carry on and that only weighed about 8Kg including the MacBook Pro.
If my back had been better I would have also taken my Olympus OMD gear as I have some excellent longer zoom lenses that may have been handy if we saw any wildlife, as it happened we saw nothing that I couldn't get with a 55mm. Having only one camera (though my wife did have a reasonable Panasonic FZ with here) did actually make things less of a worry, fewer decisions on what to take out on a trip, and more familiarity with the one camera. It is easy I find to get confused if using 2 different systems at the same time.
The reason I took the Fuji X-Pro 1 with me over the Olympus OMD was that I just prefer the simplicity of the Fuji and the IQ from the wonderful X lenses. Now that Aperture supports the Fuji RAW files was the icing on the cake for me.
The OVF was great in the bright sunshine, even when wearing sunglasses. EVF was used for some indoor macro stuff, or where I needed exact framing, but the OVF was used perhaps 80% of the time.
The camera as always was in the Gariz half case. I didn't use the Fuji lenshood on the zoom, preferring a screw on rangefinder type vented hood. No filters, just a lens cap when putting in a bag.
I did take a small shoulder bag with a Billingham insert, but most days I just took the camera with 18-55mm fitted and the 14mm either in a pocket of a small belt pouch. On this type of holiday there is not a lot of chances to change lenses, so a zoom was essential. I did take the 35mm and the 60mm Macro, but used them very infrequently. 80% were taken with the 18-55mm zoom which has the benefit of OIS. The rest were on the 14mm.
I took a total of 5 batteries, 1 Fuji, and 2 pairs of Third Party batteries. One of those pairs performed less well, and shut down without warning. Lesson learned there. I never used up more than 1.5 batteries on any day.
I had 2 16GB cards, and a MacBook Pro to back up to. I'd take more cards next time and maybe a smaller PC like a ChromeBook, as I only want to back up to a USB drive.
I shot RAW + JPG as I always do.
The best move I made was to use GPS4CAM on my iPhone. This allowed me to geotag all of my Fuji camera files before import into Aperture. Even capturing GPS positions every 5 minutes did not run my iPhone battery down during a day's shooting. It is a brilliant piece of software, allowing you to forget about accurately syncing the time on the iPhone and the Camera.
The thing that most impressed me with the Fuji was the 18-55mm lens. I have never used as nice a zoom on other systems, including the Sony and Olympus m43. Mechanically excellent and optically outstanding. Definitely not my idea of a 'kit lens'. I don't have to worry about soft corners, field curvature, CA, it just works. Sure the 14mm is a tad sharper at 100%, but so it should be! They both match up very nicely in contrast and colour.
I didn't have a tripod, and never needed one, including inside dark churches and a night time transit of the Corinth Canal. Auto ISO 6400 covered that.
I did take a few short movie clips, though I found Manual focus worked best otherwise the focus hunted. Some sweep panos worked out well too.
I'll hopefully get round to posting some shots soon.
Cheers
David
If my back had been better I would have also taken my Olympus OMD gear as I have some excellent longer zoom lenses that may have been handy if we saw any wildlife, as it happened we saw nothing that I couldn't get with a 55mm. Having only one camera (though my wife did have a reasonable Panasonic FZ with here) did actually make things less of a worry, fewer decisions on what to take out on a trip, and more familiarity with the one camera. It is easy I find to get confused if using 2 different systems at the same time.
The reason I took the Fuji X-Pro 1 with me over the Olympus OMD was that I just prefer the simplicity of the Fuji and the IQ from the wonderful X lenses. Now that Aperture supports the Fuji RAW files was the icing on the cake for me.
The OVF was great in the bright sunshine, even when wearing sunglasses. EVF was used for some indoor macro stuff, or where I needed exact framing, but the OVF was used perhaps 80% of the time.
The camera as always was in the Gariz half case. I didn't use the Fuji lenshood on the zoom, preferring a screw on rangefinder type vented hood. No filters, just a lens cap when putting in a bag.
I did take a small shoulder bag with a Billingham insert, but most days I just took the camera with 18-55mm fitted and the 14mm either in a pocket of a small belt pouch. On this type of holiday there is not a lot of chances to change lenses, so a zoom was essential. I did take the 35mm and the 60mm Macro, but used them very infrequently. 80% were taken with the 18-55mm zoom which has the benefit of OIS. The rest were on the 14mm.
I took a total of 5 batteries, 1 Fuji, and 2 pairs of Third Party batteries. One of those pairs performed less well, and shut down without warning. Lesson learned there. I never used up more than 1.5 batteries on any day.
I had 2 16GB cards, and a MacBook Pro to back up to. I'd take more cards next time and maybe a smaller PC like a ChromeBook, as I only want to back up to a USB drive.
I shot RAW + JPG as I always do.
The best move I made was to use GPS4CAM on my iPhone. This allowed me to geotag all of my Fuji camera files before import into Aperture. Even capturing GPS positions every 5 minutes did not run my iPhone battery down during a day's shooting. It is a brilliant piece of software, allowing you to forget about accurately syncing the time on the iPhone and the Camera.
The thing that most impressed me with the Fuji was the 18-55mm lens. I have never used as nice a zoom on other systems, including the Sony and Olympus m43. Mechanically excellent and optically outstanding. Definitely not my idea of a 'kit lens'. I don't have to worry about soft corners, field curvature, CA, it just works. Sure the 14mm is a tad sharper at 100%, but so it should be! They both match up very nicely in contrast and colour.
I didn't have a tripod, and never needed one, including inside dark churches and a night time transit of the Corinth Canal. Auto ISO 6400 covered that.
I did take a few short movie clips, though I found Manual focus worked best otherwise the focus hunted. Some sweep panos worked out well too.
I'll hopefully get round to posting some shots soon.
Cheers
David