I’ve decided that as of next week, starting Monday the 16th November, I’m going to initiate a 365 day plan. It will involve taking a stock art photo every day and putting it up on my Alamy site. The purpose obviously is to get that stock up on that site to start complementing my Shards of Arcadia site. If I follow this plan, that will mean I’ll have close to 400 stock photos up on Alamy within a year. Giving me a much better chance of generating income there.
Using the Camranger
I have to say that I looked at this device a while ago when I realised that Nikon just wasn’t going to put wireless on a lot of it’s cameras for a while yet. It also offered way more possibilities than the Eye-Fi devices did, even though they were handy. I still use them on occasion, for a quick transmission of photos to show someone. The Nikon Wifi units such as the WU-1B or WU-1A themselves seem of little use to me in their current incarnations, and better units cost significantly more but with no better functionality until you reach the $1000 price range.
The best feature for me is of course the iPad application. It allows me to stop cramping myself into some ridiculously tight spots.
Using the Stackshot
This has been a boon to my Macro Shooting. It allows for absolutely startling Focus Stacking. Given that manual focus is the best option for macro shooting most of the time and even if it wasn’t necessarily the best way to go, I’d rather not use the auto focus with my Nikon 200mm F4 Micro. My one criticism of the lens is that the toggle for the manual / autofocus is fragile and the only real plastic on the lens. Others have commented that over time this is a potential failure point. I’d prefer to not use this particular component of the lens at all. I like to leave it set on Manual and not change it at all. There’s really no need given that the Lens was bought specifically because it’s the best Macro Lens Nikon offer at this stage short of Microscopic Technology.
Using the Fujifilm X-T1
General
After having the X-T1 for a few weeks now I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’m still trying to work out one peculiarity of the way it operates when it comes to the shutter speed, but outside of that I’m very happy with it for a *pick up and run, take anywhere* camera.
One of the many features that I appreciate about the X-T1 is the viewfinder. That said, I’m taking a little bit of time to get used to the appearance inside the viewfinder. Being Electronic, it’s got that *digital* appearance that a DSLR viewfinder doesn’t. Sort of like that difference between film vs digital when watching a movie with regard to the original recording medium.
I love the *feel* too. Weighty, comfortable, some dial controls so you can see what’s going on without having to look through the view finder.
Quirks
I suppose it takes a bit of getting used to after getting caught up with the digital camera what are you doing things. But going back to the control dials on the top yet still having control wheels on the front and rear would lead you to think that in manual you can just keep increasing or decreasing the settings at will. This however seems not to be the case.
The more I think about this the more since it makes. Clearly if you were expecting to be setting the shutter speed by the control dial on the top, you don’t really want the control wheel at the front or rear excessively adjusting it after you set it. Hence, the ability to only change the shutter speed by thirds of a stop. So you can increase the shutter speed for one third of a stop, or reduce shutter speed by up to 2/3 of a stop.
Software Compatibility
Interestingly there seems to be some difficulties with Major Software such as Lightroom & DXO.
Lightroom
Lightroom doens’t have profiles for the Lenses as such, apparently they use a built in profile that’s picked up by Lightroom and adjusts accordingly. So apparently it registers a built in profile. ++need to chase up why and how this works asap++ It seems to do it’s job. Whether this will change down the track remains to be seen.
DXO Suite
DXO currently doesn’t have any inbuilt support for these Fujifilm cameras. They cite technical reasons, that at this stage won’t be dealt with by DXO. Their slant seems to be that Fujifilm needs to come up with some solution in partnership with them.