At the end of last year I entered my image Blue Keeled Skimmer into the Wonders of Wildlife Photography Competition run by the Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers and was awarded a Highly Commended
Recent Competition
At the end of February 2017 I entered my image Broad-Bodied Chaser into the Living World Photography Competition run by the Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers and was awarded a Highly Commended.
Fuji 100-400 lens
I have recently purchased the latest Fuji lens and their first long telephoto. Being a 100-400 on a crop sensor, this is the equivalent to 150-600 in 35mm.
I’ve not really had much opportunity to try it properly but the handheld image of a Robin in tree at 400mm shows how sharp the lens is.
Panorama
One feature of the X-T1 I’ve not used as much as I should is the panorama mode.
I find the ability to stitch the images in camera so cleanly very impressive. In the past I used my DSLR on a tripod and used various programs to stitch the images together afterwards but none have been as successful this.
There are various modes to allow the images to be either landscape or portrait, swung left to right, or right to left.
Neutral Density Filter
I’ve recently been experimenting with a Hoya 10 ND400 10 stop neutral density filter to smooth water with my X100.
This view is across the river towards Truro Cathedral – 12 seconds at f11
Evening Light
Finally had a good sunset to coincide with the tide being in at Truro to get a shot of the Cathedral:-
Taken on the X-T1 with the 55-200 lens. 1/4 second at f11 on a tripod.
Fuji 18-135 Lens
Finally had a chance last night to try my new 18-135 lens on our “Up the Creek” boat trip.
This is a fantastic trip organised by Ann and Alan Cox for local charities where they charter one of the river ferries to take a group out on the very high tides to parts of the rivers you can’t usually access.
I’ve not tested it back to back with my 18-55 and 55-200 but initial impressions are that it’s not quite so sharp. Here are a few of the sample images taken from a moving boat:-
New Fuji X-T1 firmware 4.0
I have just updated my X-T1 with the latest firmware, which confirms one of my reasons to use Fuji due to their continued support of their products. Well done Fuji.
I’ve not tried all the features yet but ‘feel’ the autofocus is slightly better than it was. This was it’s biggest weakness over my old Canon 50D, which despite being several years old had a very snappy autofocus.
Yesterday I quickly tried the new focus tracking facility on a passing helicopter circling over the beach at Falmouth, which overall worked very well:-
New lens
I’ve today bought a new Fuji 18-135 weather sealed lens.
Out walking this evening I managed to get this quick image of a fox, which would have been just a speck with my 18-55:-
Focus Stacking
Recently I have been experimenting with focus stacking and combining the images in Photoshop. I have put some of the flower images in the Flower gallery.