The field of view of the lens/camera combination and distance/point of view to the subject have to match in order to get the photo you want. Most of the time I end up shooting architecture from the ground-level up and a Tilt-Shift lens is most useful in those situations.
But Fuji does not make a Tilt-Shift lens for the XF camera mount so I have to work with what I've got. The XF 18mm and 35mm lenses do make decent architecture lenses on the X-Pro 1, though.
First of all they have a lot of resolving power and the X-Trans sensor delivers a lot of detail and sharpness thanks to the lack of a AA filter.
Secondly, the X-Pro 1 corrects the distortion for the lenses. THis way you get straight lines from your "out of camera" jpg image. This helps a lot in making the image look good even if you have to apply a bit of perspective correction in post processin.
Here are a few architecture shots I have taken with the X-Pro 1 recently:
No surprized that I start with an "in camera Pano" from the X-Pro 1 with XF 18mm lens - This Fuji X-Camera function has served me very well in Paris, too :)
Quite an eye puzzler due to the perspective and reflection of the XF 35mm shot - no HDR!
Left or right? X-Pro 1 with XF 18mm lens
Plenty of negative space in this X-Pro 1 "in camera 180° panorama" taken with the XF 35mm lens
X-Pro 1 with XF 35mm lens and pretty much no distortion!
I did not apply perspective correction to this XF 18mm photo - I liked it this way
View Point - Taken with X-Pro 1 and XF 35mm lens
Visualization of the word "Disconnect" - Fuji X-Pro 1 with XF 35mm lens
Urban Oasis taken with the XF 18mm lens
Down & Up - Fuji X-Pro 1 with XF 18mm lens
25% stone vs. 75% air - Fuji X-Pro 1 with XF 18mm lens
For me the X-Pro 1 with the XF 18mm and XF 35mm work well for the kind of architecture photography that I mostly do. And the build in Panorama mode allows for some extra cool images. What are your experiences?
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wow beautiful photos!
ReplyDeleteFabulous - thanks for posting ;-)
ReplyDeleteStunning!
ReplyDeleteI own a lot of analog cameras and have owned a lot of digital camera's but sold them all except from the my very compact and reasonably good olympus epl2. The main reason why I sold the digital slrs was that the image quality was just not convincing me in terms of how it dealt with how light falls on objects and is presented in an image. It rendered shadows much worse than slide film and gained much less dynamic range than negative film meaning that every time I feld deeply disspointed in the technical possibilities of digital imaging.
ReplyDeleteThat all seems to have changed since the coming of the x-pro1. Its mainly the sharpness of the images that the camera system produces in combination with trustable contrast curves that make this camera very amusing to shoot with. Whats also very pleasing is the grain the camera produces at iso 6400 and higher. it doesnt look like a gridded grain that we know from bayer filtered camera sensors. Also after almost 20 years finally some company found the recipe for convenient camera controls with dials and buttons. On my mamiya 7 I was really satisfied with a exposure and aperature dial and fuji seemed to have understanded those essentials and succesfully transformed it into a digital analogy. I almost forgot to mention that the numerous amount of adapters lets you mount olympus nikon and canon's shift lenses without any problem.