Chris is a Nottinghamshire based, award winning, photographer specialising in Travel and Landscape photography.
He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, has received awards in national photographic competitions and twice been commissioned to photograph in Thailand on behalf of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Chris is also proud to be a Fujifilm X series photographer.
If you would like to see more of Chris’ work, please click here.
In June last year I did a blog on the pulling power of the then current line up of Fujinon XF lenses from 10mm up to 200mm.
Since then Fujifilm have added a 1.4x converter and the XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 to the line up. With just four zooms and a 1.4x converter the pulling power of the Fujinon line up is now 10mm to 560mm or 15mm to 840mm in full frame terms, which is more than enough for most photographers needs.
The 1.4x converter fits on the two longest lenses taking them to 70-196mm and 140-560mm respectively but with the loss of one stop on each – f4 across the full range of the 50-140mm and f8 at 560mm.
It is difficult to visualise in your head the zoom range so I fitted each lens in turn to the X-T1, which was fitted to a Manfrotto tripod, and shot the same scene, the lighthouse at Barns Ness near Dunbar.
Here are the shots starting at 10mm and ending with 560mm.
These images were used in the #5YearsofXSeries event on the 15th of Jan 2016, to see the video, click HERE
As you can see the quality of the XF lenses is the same throughout the zoom range and the reach of the Fujinon lenses available for the X-Series now has been extended so you stand further away and still fill the frame with your subject.
The new XF100-400mm is perfect for sport and wildlife and is also useful for landscapes. You can read my review of the new Fujinon superzoom HERE.
Olympic gold medallist & enthusiast photographer Pete Reed explains why he has moved from a D-SLR to a Fujifilm mirrorless system to capture his important memories, and more recently he has been using the FUJIFILM X70 camera – find out what he thinks about it in this video..
X-Photographer Pete Bridgwood talks about the new X-Pro2 and how it has helped him translate the emotional experience of a landscape into his finished prints.
Pete Bridgwood is a fine-art landscape photographer and writer from Nottingham in the UK. He started making photographs back in 1978 with black and white film and manual cameras, using wet-process in a traditional darkroom. This time spent in his youth, learning about the traditional process proved invaluable to Pete, but his workflow is now completely digital and he now uses X-Series cameras exclusively. “They facilitate communication for me in a way that’s impossible with any other type of camera and they rediscover this nostalgic feel for photography that was lost in the early digital years. Perhaps the greatest challenge in creative landscape photography comes from encapsulating the soul or spirit of the location and communicating that captured perception to the viewer of the final print. Fuji X-Series allow me to accomplish this emotive translation in a seamless way, and the X-Pro2 is the ultimate evolution of these amazing cameras”
If you would like to see more of Pete’s work, please click here.
The Interval Timer feature built into some of our X series* cameras can be an excellent tool to express your creativity.
It can be used to capture multiple images one after the other with the knowledge that you will simply pick your favourite image later on. Or the most likely the reason you would use this feature is to create a time-lapse movie like this little Lego guy doing a dance (rather badly I might add!), or perhaps a flower bud opening up, or even the sun setting behind the horizon – the possibilities are truly endless.
Example of time-lapse movie – The Robot Dance
In this tutorial I want to give you a basic idea of how to use the Interval Timer function to create timelapse movies. For in-depth advice on timelapse movie creation and some of the more detailed do’s and don’t’s I would strongly recommend searching ‘How do I get great timelapse results from my camera?‘ as there are so many good tutorials already out there.
The option for timelapse is found in the main menu of the X series cameras under the title ‘INTERVAL TIMER SHOOTING‘, choose this option with the menu/ok button.
From this, select the interval (the time between each shot) using the navigation buttons (up, down, left and right). Once you are happy with the intervals, you will need to choose how many shots you want in total – this is found under the title ‘NUMBER OF TIMES‘. To help with how many shots you want see the tip below:
TIP!In Europe and Canada we normally use 25fps (frames per second) also known as PAL for our movies. Below you can see examples of how many photographs you would need to take to achieve the required length of movie.
Examples for 25fps:
1 second of footage = 25 photographs
2 seconds of footage = 50 photographs
10 seconds of footage = 250 photographs
1 minute of footage = 1500 photographs
Another way to think of this is Video length = Number of pictures ÷ Frame rate
The last step is to choose when the camera actually starts taking pictures, this could be immediately, in which case you would select 0h 00m or for example 20 minutes time (0h 20m). When you are ready to shoot simply press the menu/ok button and this will start the timer.
At the end of the sequence of shots you will then need to put them into a movie making program such as Adobe Premiere Pro or similar to create the timelapse itself – for that part I’d recommend looking up a software specific tutorial, so if you use Premiere Pro try a search like ‘Create a timelapse video in Premiere Pro‘ in your favourite search engine.
TIP! I normally use YouTube for this part to see exactly what buttons the teacher is clicking / using to create the timelapse video – that should stop you getting lost along the way!
TIPS, TIPS, TIPS!
Use a tripod for best results
Here are some bonus tips to think about when creating a timelapse video:
Use a tripod –Otherwise your timelapse video will look like an earthquake is taking place!
Set the camera to 16:9 ratio – This will be the correct image ratio for a 1080p Full HD movie file, so you will not need to crop hundreds of images!
Plan ahead – If you are shooting a sunrise or sunset, know exactly where the sun is going to end up. Apps like The Photographer’s Ephemeris can really help you achieve this.
Think very carefully about composition – This kind of goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway.. 😉 Take your time framing the shot, after all you are going to take hundreds of pictures of your landscape and it would be a real shame to get 300 images of the horizon all wonky!
Shoot Raw & Jpeg – Although Jpegs are preferable for many users, if the lighting changes dramatically whilst shooting you will find editing & correcting a RAW file much more flexible as it retains all the detail from an image rather than a compressed version.
Shoot manually – To ensure consistently good results always shoot fully manual – set the shutter speed, the aperture, ISO and focus yourself rather than allowing the camera to do this for you.
Below is an example of a timelapse movie shot on the X-T1 and played back at 25FPS. The movie consists of 150 shots.
White Balance is a term that may seem foreign to most photographers. Especially as a setting that you could adjust that would make a drastic impact on your photos.
If you ever have taken a photo inside with fluorescent lights as your main source of lighting, you may notice a slight “bluish” look to your photos.
Why did this happen? All light sources have different colour tones based on a temperature reading scale ranging from red (warm) to blue (cold) known as Kelvin (K).
Your choice of lighting will impact the overall look of your image and the actual colours shown in your photo. A photo mainly lit with a candle will give off a slightly deep orange colour tone. Likewise a photo mainly lit by fluorescent lights will give off a light bluish colour tone. Usually undetectable by the naked eye, we only really notice the difference when we look and compare photos side by side.
The term ‘White balance’ (WB) is the process of removing unnatural colour tones in photos. All FUJIFILM Digital cameras have ‘White Balance’ controls to help change or correct these colour tones.
Why would a photographer need to change the camera’s white balance setting? Depending on the subject and lighting source used, a photographer can adjust the camera’s white balance setting to properly show colours as the naked eye sees them or to change the “mood” of a particular photo.
So why experiment with white balance?
You may find that the Auto White Balance setting corrects colour tones when you don’t want it to. This can happen with sunsets or landscapes, where the colour of the light is an integral part of the picture. By using one of the preset settings, you can better control the colour tone of your photos based on the light source used. In addition to one of these “preset” settings, most FUJIFILM cameras offer the ability to pick a custom white balance setting also known as colour temperature (measured in Kelvin).
Here are some of the most commonly found and used white balance settings in Fujifilm cameras:
Auto – this is where the camera takes continuous readings of the light sources and makes adjustments automatically to the colour tone of the photo.
Daylight/Sunny/Fine – not all cameras have this setting because it sets things as fairly ‘normal’ white balance settings.
Tungsten/Incandescent– this mode is usually symbolized with a little bulb and is for shooting indoors when traditional incandescent lighting is used. It generally cools down the colors in photos.
Fluorescent – this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
Shade – the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.
Colour Temperature – This option allows you to select the colour temperature using the measurement known as Kelvin, this gives you even more creative control. And without getting too technical here’s our handy hint: If your photos are coming out yellow/orange turn the temperature down (lower number value, for example 2500K) and if they are a bluish colour tone, turn the temperature up (higher number value, for example 8300K). You will soon pick up what lighting environments are around which value of Kelvin.
The other option you have is to shoot in RAW, select Auto White Balance and adjust later in post processing. This does give you more flexibility after the shoot but will add more time to your processing, plus a bit more technical know-how to get best results.
Cold colour tone
Chosen colour tone
Warm colour tone
As you can see above the white balance chosen for a shot can make a huge difference to the feel of an image and in some cases what season the image was taken in.
We hope you have found this tutorial helpful and that it will get you out and about experimenting with white balance.
And as an added bonus, check out FujiGuy Billy as he shows you how to get your White Balance settings up and running in camera here.
Chris is a Nottinghamshire based, award winning, photographer specialising in Travel and Landscape photography.
In June last year I did a 
Pete Bridgwood is a fine-art landscape photographer and writer from Nottingham in the UK. He started making photographs back in 1978 with black and white film and manual cameras, using wet-process in a traditional darkroom. This time spent in his youth, learning about the traditional process proved invaluable to Pete, but his workflow is now completely digital and he now uses X-Series cameras exclusively. “They facilitate communication for me in a way that’s impossible with any other type of camera and they rediscover this nostalgic feel for photography that was lost in the early digital years. Perhaps the greatest challenge in creative landscape photography comes from encapsulating the soul or spirit of the location and communicating that captured perception to the viewer of the final print. Fuji X-Series allow me to accomplish this emotive translation in a seamless way, and the X-Pro2 is the ultimate evolution of these amazing cameras”
