First shots with the Fujifilm X100S

Try to get close! That's what I thought when I left home yesterday evening for the last 5 minutes of daylight. I already had a look for possible nearby photo locations to take a few test-shots with this gorgeous camera a few hours earlier but I didn't want to take a shot in bright sunlight, instead I had the plan to wait until sunset to catch this dreamy, creamy and warm light right before the sun disappears behind the French mountains.

I almost forgot to get up and leave home for a couple of minutes but a tweet of a friend reminded me of testing the camera for the first time, the first couple of shots.

So my initial experience? The menu is huge with lots of settings but after owning a Fuji X10 two times before, I felt quite familiar. To start with I've set the imagequality to the highest level as JPG and storing the RAW-Files simultaneously, that I'm able to keep the negatives if I don't like the jpeg processing.

Shooting with a 35mm equivalent is different to my beloved 50mm but you need to decide to either include more of the environment into your shot or walk a step more into your frame for physical cropping using your feet and the ability to walk.

Focus speed is pretty good, I have to check out what metering method I prefer but thanks to the exposure compensation-wheel it wasn't that difficult to react very fast to underexposed metering, as I was facing the camera into the sunlight. I've set the aperture to F2.0 to test out depth of field and out of focus rendering and I'm impressed by these creamy backgrounds. Wonderful!

Using the makro-mode, which I'm quite used to having a Canon G1X with its strange minimal focus distance in standard mode, it's incredibly easy to get extremely close and come on, look at the sharpness. Amazing!

Overall, for the first test I think I've made the right decision to buy this wonderful machine to support my photographic goals with always having a small but powerful camera with me. Looking at the image of the dusty road and the clump of grass only one thing comes to my mind: I think, I'm on the right way!

Getting started

I've been working hard over the last few weeks to find a pleasing way for connecting my tumblr with this blog for being able to let tumblr be a photo-only publishing website with links to this blog for those who want to read a few insights, too. Here are the stories, my thoughts and many more to come. Some insights for equipment, stories, photo-editing and I'm planing to present a few of my most inspirational photographers at the moment as well as some very interesting blogs and websites I have inside my bookmarks.

To start with here is the first shot of a large series of travel-photography I did this year. It's probably the first real travel shot of any photostory as you are finally sitting inside the plane, waiting for take-off and thinking about the wonderful things you are going to discover within the time of your journey or travel adventure.

I will be mixing this up with some photos I took recently while carrying my camera with me. If you have any questions regarding editing, gear or getting featured, feel free to contact me by writing either a comment or sending me a short message via twitter. Make sure you're using one of the few following options below or via tumblr and twitter to get the latest updates as soon as they arrive here.

I'm featured at Rebecca Lily Presets

I'm featured at Rebecca Lily Presets! Rebecca and her husband Johnny Patience are both very inspiring photographers. Their blogsposts feature some wonderful pictures from beautiful Ireland and very interesting thoughts on how to imitate the film-look for digital photography.

I was using her presets out of the Rebecca Lily Pro Set for Lightroom to work on a couple of photos from my last trip and I liked them very much. They offer some different looks compared to the VSCO Film Presets which I like, too. I see them as a great addition to those classical film looks.

Check out the feature: http://www.rebeccalily.com/project/martin-lux/  and their blogs, too!

Rebecca: http://www.rebeccalily.com/blog/

Johnny: http://www.johnnypatience.com/blog/