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Learn from Fujifilm X-Photographers live at SWPP

Join official X-Photographers Damien Lovegrove, Kevin Mullins and Trevor & Faye Yerbury at The Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) 2016 Convention in London between the 20th and 24th January 2016.

Damien Lovegrove

An official Fujifilm X-Photographer, Damien Lovegrove has become one of the foremost trainers of portrait photography in our industry. A published writer and regular columnist, Damien has traveled the globe sharing his knowledge and expertise.

Damien left his role as a cameraman and lighting director at the BBC back in 1998 after 14 successful years to create the renowned Lovegrove Weddings partnership with his wife Julie. Together they shot over 400 top weddings for discerning clients worldwide.

In 2008 Damien turned his hand to shooting beauty & portraiture and has since amassed a dedicated following for his distinctive art.

Superclass: “Master Location Lighting” 10:00 – 16:00 Wednesday 20th Jan

On this 6 hour photography workshop at a unique London Location, you will learn a variety of trade-secret interior portrait lighting techniques. You will use the beauty of natural light as well as use continuous spotlights to add a sense of drama to your shots.

This is a styled, fashion orientated shoot that will give you the knowledge and skills to recreate a repertoire of lighting setups – changing the way you see the world around you. Throughout the session Damien will provide you with hands-on instruction and an excellent grounding in how you and your camera can achieve amazing results.

Limited to just 15 delegates. Click here for more information and to book now

Masterclass: “Top tips to create Striking Portraits” 16:00 – 18:00 Thursday 21st Jan

Damien will discuss the 7 top techniques that he uses to create and capture those key moments in portraits. He will explain in detail a number of important elements that you can combine to produce great images. Having a strategy and a vision is fundamental in creating portraits that wow and this is your chance to learn from a contemporary master at first hand.

Click here for more information and to book your place

Kevin Mullins

Kevin is a wedding photographer by trade with a passion for people watching. He wants his wedding photographs to be snapshots of real, uncontrived but tender moments in time.

He wants his clients to be taken right back to that moment in time when the image was exposed and see it from their guests eye view. For Kevin it is imperative that his clients don’t remember their wedding day as a fashion shoot with the photographer. He would rather they forget entirely about him, but in 50 years’ time when they are showing their grandchildren the pictures of their wedding they can point to real moments, real people, real photographs.

Location seminar: “West End Street Photography” 10:00 – 16:00 Thursday 21st Jan

Join Kevin on this six-hour sojourn around the streets of the West End of London.

The session will start with a briefing where we will discuss the core elements of good street photography and we will finish off with a beer and de-brief.

Kevin’s Street Photography workshops sell out each time and this is a great opportunity to dip your toes into the fascinating world of candid street shooting, or, for the more experienced, understand how Kevin works in more detail when shooting on the streets.

Limited to just 15 delegates. Click here for more information and to book your place

Masterclass: “Pure Wedding Photojournalism from the Heart” 9:00 – 11:00 Friday 22nd Jan

The session will explore what’s needed to be a successful wedding photojournalist, from both an artistic point of view and from the business elements.

There will be a frank and open discussion about client management, expectation and the mechanisms of building a business based on candid wedding photography. You will spend time analysing images, see full weddings, and dissect the factors of this genre that are so appealing to clients. Kevin will also talk about his migration from DSLR to a fully mirrorless configuration.

Most wedding photographers shoot at least some candid photography and this Masterclass is aimed at anyone who wants to either improve that element of their photography, or, who want to move their business more in the direction of wedding photojournalism.

This is part of the Masterclass multi day event. Click here for more information and to book your place

Superclass: “SEO is Changing” 14:00 – 18:00 Saturday 23rd Jan

In this session Kevin will discuss everything you need to know to get up to date with the changing world of Search. Be prepared to take lots of notes and take away with you the knowledge that will get you onside with Google.

We will talk about the huge power of Social Media, Graph Search and the Network so… If you think SEO is about Keywords, think again!

Limited to just 20 delegates. Click here for more information and to book your place

Trevor and Faye Yerbury

As true educators with a wealth of experience behind them you could do no better than attend one of Trevor and Faye Yerbury’s workshops where you will learn how they light their portraits in the studio and on location or how they designed one of the most successful boudoir marketing promotions.

Trevor Yerbury comes from a long and historic family of professional photographers. Trevor’s Great Grandfather established the company in 1864 and Trevor is the 4th generation to carry out the family tradition.

Faye joined Trevor full time in 1996 and has earned an enviable reputation for her work. On 3 occasions she has won the title of “Kodak UK Child Photographer of the Year”. She also holds a Kodak Gold Award and, like Trevor, is a Master of the Society of Wedding & Portrait Photographers.

They are both Fellows of the SWPP, MPA and are invited Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society a rare honour. In 2014 they both were awarded Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Seminar: “Fine Art Nude Location Class” 10:00 – 16:00 Friday 22nd Jan

Trevor and Faye Yerbury have been photographing the Fine Art Nude for over 30 years and are represented by galleries in Amsterdam and New York. Collectors worldwide seek out their work, which are printed on the finest art paper using the platinum/palladium process. Their work has appeared in countless books and magazines. The Glasshouse Hotel commissioned over 240 of the art nude images from their archives for wall artwork to grace the hotels bedrooms and suites. They have also had exhibitions in Edinburgh – London – Madrid – Malta – Paris and Vancouver.

This unique Location Shoot provides a unique opportunity to spend a day with Trevor and Faye exploring their world of fine art photography of the female figure.

SEMINAR SOLD OUT. Click here for more information

Masterclass: “Lighting Portraiture” 14:00 – 16:00 Sunday 24th Jan

Trevor and Faye will take you through their history in portrait photography with examples from 4 generations of the Yerbury dynasty including original portraits of Andrew Carnegie, J M Barrie, King George 1V and many others.

This will be a very inclusive seminar as they take you through a series of their classic and contemporary portraits and talk about the session, how they approached it and how the subject reacted. They will also demonstrate how they approach a portrait session and what equipment they use.

Click here for more information and to book your place

The Photography Show 2015

What an exciting week that was. We were at The Photography Show 2015 at the NEC from Saturday 21st to Tuesday 24th and it was a ROARING success. This is my first opportunity to sit down and write up a review of the show from our perspective. I hope it helps you get a feel for the show if you didn’t attend yourself, or brings back warm memories if you did.

The Fujifilm stand

…or “booth” if you’re from that side of the Atlantic. We had a big stand this year – about twice the size as last year – and even still we found it packed to the rafters most of the time.

Touch and Try

Everyone wants to get their hands on the latest cameras and lenses and the Touch and Try camera bar allowed people to do just that. Our staff worked extremely hard to answers all the questions thrown at them from the show visitors.

Visitors getting their hands on Fujifilm cameras

Something to point your camera at... — Something to point your camera at…

Camera loans

We know that there’s nothing quite like using a camera to get a real feel for it so we wanted to offer people the chance to test-drive Fujifilm X-T1 cameras plus various lenses for the whole day. Our free loan service allowed people to do just that and went down a storm.

Quick Maintenance Service

And it’s not only the new customers we were helping out. We were also running a free Quick Maintenance Service which allowed people to drop off their Fujifilm cameras and lenses for a sensor clean, quick MOT and to also have the latest firmware installed.

X-Photographer Gallery

All around our stand we were showing some amazing images taken by professional photographers that use Fujifilm equipment. Take a look at the gallery below:

Fujifilm Photowalk

On Saturday evening we took to the streets of Birmingham for a Street Photowalk with Matt Hart leading the way. We met up in Victoria Square and Matt shared a few of the tips he mentioned in his talk earlier that day before setting off to try to put some of the techniques into action. It was a great experience and was fantastic to meet so many people to talk to along the way.

You can see some other blog posts about the event here:

Matt Hart’s #FujiTPSWalk blog
Mirrorlessons #FujiTPSWalk blog
Dave Young’s blog

Talks

To me, the talks are one of the parts of the show that really make it a great place for visitors. Lots of different photographers from lots of different backgrounds, all under one roof and sharing their own experiences, tips, hints and advice about the widest variety of photographic subjects. We were able to invite a few of our ambassadors to come to the show and pass on their thoughts to visitors.

Here is a bit about each of the Fujifilm X-Photographers. We also recorded the talks and will publish them soon.

Matt Hart – Street Photography

Matt was on the Streetscape stage on Saturday and Sunday. He has been a professional photographer for many years and still likes to shoot film. He runs workshops and hosts talks and training to help people become better reportage-street photographers. In his presentation, Matt gave lots of helpful advice and techniques for shooting street photography. He talked about the distinction between “Street photography” and “Street portraiture” and believes that true street photography involves images captured without the subject being aware.

Matt’s talk can be found here.

Matt describing the gear he uses for his street photography

Lots of people turned up to listen to Matt's talk — Lots of people turned up to listen to Matt’s talk

Visit Matt Hart’s website here

Bert Stephani – commercial portrait photography

Bert is a commercial portrait photographer from Belgium. He believes that photographers need to limit the barrier between them and their subjects and part of doing this is to have smaller gear. Bert gave a brief talk about his own style of photography, what he used to be like and what he tries to be like now, before then doing a live portrait shoot on stage. On Monday he was shooting the lovely Hannah from Fuji and on Tuesday the equally lovely Jeannie (also from Fuji).

Bert Stephani talking on The Live Stage to a huge audience

Bert Stephani live demo shooting the lovely Hannah from Fujifilm UK

Hannah from Fujifilm UK, shot by Bert live on stage

Bert likes to use whatever (and whoever) he can to block out disturbing coloured lights.
From left to right, Kevin Mullins, Hannah from Fuji and me

Visit Bert Stephani’s website here

Kevin Mullins – reportage wedding photography

Kevin is a professional wedding photography from Wiltshere. His style is very much reportage. He wants to provide his clients a “guest’s eye view” of their happy day capturing images that shows the real human events that take place at every wedding. In Kevin’s talk he focused on the importance of identifying potential moments and ensuring he can be in the right place to capture them without disturbing them.

Packed house. Lots of people wanted to hear what Kevin had to say

Visit Kevin Mullin’s website here

Paul Sanders – landscape photography

Paul Sanders is a professional landscape photographer from Kent. His talk is about the way he used landscape photography as a form of therapy to help deal with his own personal emotional issues. It was very deep, personal and inspirational and it’s hard for me to give it any justice here in form of a brief text description. Check back for the video which we will upload soon.

As my camera was being used to shoot the video footage, here ars some lovely images by Anthony Upton who was also at the talk.

Visit Paul Sanders’ website here

Don’t forget to follow this blog as we’ll use it to let you know when the videos of all of the talks will be online.

Until next year?

It really was a great few days and the best part is always getting the opportunity to meet so many photographers from keen enthusiasts right through to full-time working professionals. The Photography Show organisers have confirmed next year’s dates already – 19th-22nd March 2016. We hope to see you there!

Fujifilm at Photokina 2014!

Last week we were at photokina, the world’s largest imaging fair, from Tuesday 16th to Sunday 21st September. It’s been a complete blast and this post will hopefully highlight the bits you missed if you couldn’t make it to Cologne this year.

Our booth was big. It was made up with lots of different sections covering many different areas of our business, all with the same common goal – helping people with photography.

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The X-Photographers Gallery

We had images from many different photographers displayed how they were always meant to be seen – printed.

X-Photographers Gallery

Print of a shot by Ken Kaminesky

Paul Schlemmer asking “what do I do with my hands?” in front of his print

Some were printed on FUJIFLEX Crystal Archive Printing Material and others on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Paper but they were all amazingly good to look at. We’ve combined our X series cameras with many years’ experience of printing and finally the creativity of real users of our cameras to create a truly awe inspiring array of beautiful prints. Many visitors to the stand told us that they thought these were the best prints on display at the show.

X-Photographers Gallery

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The X-Photographers Stage

For me the stage was the real star of the show.

Bert Stephani Studio Demo

We had 23 photographers from all over the world talking about a wide range of subjects. Some were very inspirational, other educational, but all were very interesting. We will post another blog post shortly with more detail on each of the photographers and what their talk was like. Sign up at the top-right of the page to receive notifications when it is published.

Large crowds came to listen to what our photographers had to say

Martin Hülle from Germany talking about some of his images

Zack Arias on stage

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“Touch and Try” section

On the stand we had the new X100T and X30 cameras and the new XF50-140mm F2.8 and XF56mm APD lenses available in our “Touch and Try” section for people to use. We also made sure there was something beautiful to shoot in the way of a BMW i8 and some lovely models so everyone had something to shoot.

One of our lovely models and our lovely car

Staff on hand to explain how the cameras work

Visitor testing out the X-T1

Putting on the big lens

The X100T is an evolution from the X100 and X100S with the main upgrades being a 1/32000th electronic shutter, digital rangefinder and new Classic Chrome film simulation.

Shot by Kevin Mullins at f/2 and 1/32000th in bright sunlight using Classic Chrome film simulation — Image by Kevin Mullins using the X100T at f/2 and 1/32000th using Classic Chrome film simulation

The X30 takes the popular X20 and gives it a new high-resolution Electronic Viewfinder, tilting LCD, new control ring, lots of new customisable Function buttons and the same awesome Classic Chrome Film Simulation as sported by the X100T.

Image by Alex Lambrechts using the X30 with new Classic Chrome film simulation

The XF50-140mm is our first weather resistant constant aperture lens. It boasts f/2.8 throughout its focal length range and contains a lot of amazing technology to make sure the results are comparable to prime lens quality

The XF56mm APD is a fast, sharp prime lens that contains an Apodisation filter that helps produce an even smoother bokeh affect than the standard XF56mm.

The final new product people could get their hands on was the new X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition pictured below.

The XF50-140mm lens on an X-T1 Graphite Silver

The XF56mm APD on an X-T1 Graphite Silver

The full X line-up

Additionally, behind a glass cabinet we had the entire range lined up (click the image below for a larger display)

Notable products were:

FUJINON XF16mmF1.4

FUJINON XF16-55mmF2.8 zoom lens

FUJINON XF90mmF2

FUJINON XF140-400mm (actual focal length and aperture still TBC)

The XF16mmF1.4 has the same focus ring as the XF14 and XF23 with focus distance and depth of field guide on the barrel itself.

The XF16-55mmF2.8 appears to have OIS dropped from its name suggesting that the final lens will not have OIS, but instead aim for absolute optimal image quality. This is still to be confirmed though.

The XF90mmF2 looks like it’s going to be a big bit of glass. Similar in length to the XF56mm but a bit thicker.

Finally, previously known as the Super Tele-Photo Zoom Lens on the roadmap, a lens with no label underneath. However, it had an inscription bearing the specifications “XF 140-400mmF4-5.6 R LM OIS WR”. I’d like to point out that these are not 100% final specifications. They just needed to put something on the front of the mock-up lens to give a better idea of what the final lens would look like. Either way this gives us a guide as to what sort of spec the final lens is likely to be, and also how big it will be.

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Free maintenance and camera loan service

We offered a FREE maintenance service and a FREE camera loan service for the six days of photokina, In total we were able to service 510 cameras and loaned 433 cameras and lenses combined.

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Technologies

We showcased a few of our technologies – some current and some in development

Film simulation

Film is our heritage and therefore we spend a lot of time developing (pun not intended) our film simulation modes for our digital cameras. The latest film simulation mode we have released is Classic Chrome and it is available on the new X100T, X30 and will be made available via a firmware update for the X-T1 later this year.

Electronic rangefinder

Here’s what the Hybrid Viewfinder in the X100T looks like. Learn more about the X100T Electronic Rangefinder here.

Lens coating demo
Although it’s pretty hard to see in this photo, here we demonstrate the lens coating on the new XF50-140. It has a special coating applied to reduce the amount of light that is reflected away.
Learn more about the technology that goes into the XF50-140mm lens, including Nano GI technology, here.

Remote “Multi-shooting” application
Here’s a new app we’re currently working on that allows you to wirelessly control and shoot up to three cameras at one time using the same tablet computer.

Applications for this could be for recording video, creating 3D imagery or shooting event photography.

Since the launch of the X-T1 we have seen some amazingly creative uses people have found for the existing remote shooting app so we hope that this will allow people to be even more creative with their photography.

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The Cologne photokina Photowalk

On Saturday night we held a photowalk with X-Photographers Elia Locardi and Ken Kaminesky. 213 people showed up, despite the threat for heavy rain beforehand. Most people brought their own equipment to shoot with and Fujifilm X-T1s and lenses were available for people to borrow if they wished.

We met at the Dom and then walked as a very large group around the cathedral and then across the river to watch the sunset from the East bank. It was a great event and we’re sure everyone enjoyed themselves and made a few new friends that share their love of photography.

These guys even won some prizes by having their names drawn at random:

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Fabiano Dallmeyer , Richard Powazynski, Jens Fricke, Ken Kaminesky, Carl Nasman, Patrick Mayon, Elia Locardi, Florin Lucian Patras and Michael Magner

Participants soohting the padlocks on the bridge (image by Naomi Locardi) — Participants shooting padlocks on the bridge (image by Naomi Locardi)

An after-dark image by Naomi Locardi — After-dark (image by Naomi Locardi)

Me, being mocked by Justin from Fujifilm USA... (image also by Naomi Locardi) — And finally me, being unwittingly mocked by Justin from Fujifilm USA… (image also by Naomi Locardi)

Many more photos from participants of the event have uploaded and will continue to be added to the Google Plus public event here: https://plus.google.com/events/chu5ri84smk6smt9ags8inu36l4

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Fujifilm X Live

For more photos from the whole photokina event, and to keep up to date in real time with future events like this, please check out our Social Media accounts:

– http://www.facebook.com/FujifilmXLive
– http://twitter.com/FujifilmXLive
– http://instagram.com/FujifilmXLive