It focuses quickly, has great in-camera stabilisation, delivers quality images even at higher ISOs and has a wide selection of lenses. I’ve happily used it on a couple of paid shoots (in conjunction with my Canon DSLR gear), and it works very well for me as walkaround camera.

I got it with the 14-42 kit lens (on the basis that I’ll likely not be using it very much), and mainly use the Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 and the lovely Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f/1.8 .

Other folks have said lots of nice and useful things about the camera, including Chase Jarvis’ staffer Erik, and Scott Bourne, so if you’re thinking about getting one, there’s lots of good information out there to help – and you can rent one from Borrowlenses.com if you want to try it out.

I hope you enjoy the review below, and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Sometimes it’s best if you just keep it simple. When I got a call from friends and previous clients Laura and Rick, asking if I could do a quick family portrait session for their holiday card, I of course said yes.

They were only looking for two or three shots, and were up against a deadline to get the cards made – through the great service Pinhole Press (as I recommended). So I invited them over to my house, knowing there’s some open space on an unbuilt lot next to us.

A picturesque setting can be nice, but it’s not always necessary. With a bit of creative thinking, and a knowledge of how your gear works and the look you’re after, you can make great images in the most unimpressive surroundings.

I was looking for some green piñon tree background in an area where the family would be in shade, but looking out towards a lighter area, to get some catchlights in their eyes without using a reflector or lights.

And I chose a time late in the afternoon, where we could also use some full golden light from the setting sun as an option.

One prime lens (the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 ) on the Canon 5D Mark II , and we were set. I also brought along the Olympus OM-D E-M5 mainly as a test to see how it performed with the Olympus M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 as a direct comparison to the 85mm on the Canon.

One of the images below was taken with the Oly, but with shrunken web jpgs it’d be extremely hard to tell which it is. In fact, even full size it’s hard to tell.

We got some of the more organized images and the Merrick and Milana started running around, leading to the more impromptu shots I also love.

Thirty minutes and we were all done, leaving them plenty of images to choose from for their card.

> You can find the Yelp listing here

With luck it will help more people find me and hire me for their children and family photography if I do the sort of work they’re looking for.

Thanks.

Wrestling with whether to keep one expensive camera or buy a different one doesn’t rate on the scale of real problems, but I’ve been torn recently about whether or not to keep my Fuji X-Pro1. I’ve finally decided to sell it, and here’s why

The bottom line is that I just don’t like using it very much. The autofocus is frustratingly unpredictable, even with the latest firmware updates, and to me the camera feels unresponsive and a bit of a struggle. It’s a testament to the quality of the Fuji X-Pro1 that it’s been a hard choice, and it’s a testament to its quirks and frustrations that it had to go.

The image quality it delivers when everything clicks is undeniable, but if you don’t enjoy using the camera and feel you’re missing shots, then even capturing great ones some of the time doesn’t help much in the end.

I appreciate its retro design, the simplicity of its layout and the lack of extra bells and whistles, but I draw the line at dodgy focusing and an all-round laggy feeling.

It came to a head in a well-lit cafe in Taos with my daughter. She was sitting across the table from me and had her back to a window about ten feet behind her. I lifted the camera to photograph her, and I got the red box of uncertainty as I tried to focus. I moved focus slightly, got it again, and then I tried an area of greater contrast, and then the lens went back and forth a couple of times, before it finally focussed for me. But by that time, whatever fleeting expression I’d wanted to capture had gone, and I didn’t want to take the photograph any more. I wanted to throw the camera on the floor.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. If you find yourself talking to your camera with a slightly incredulous “Oh, come on. Really?” tone to your voice, then things aren’t going well.

Feature lists aren’t real life

Online you can compare specs and sample files till the cows come home, but it’s very hard to get a sense of how a particular camera handles for you. Even people who shoot similar subjects to you might do so in a slightly different way, or be more proficient at certain techniques, or not even notice some things that will annoy you immensely.

I rented the X-Pro1 before I bought it, and its clear strengths are beguiling. To the point where I enthusiastically overlooked some of its weaknesses. Just walking around taking photographs of things, this camera performs brilliantly, and looks great doing it.

But walking around taking photos is only a small part of what I need a camera to be good at. When I photograph events, editorial projects, or children, I need the autofocus to be fast and reliable. I knew this, and hoped the X-Pro1 would work like that for me. It doesn’t – at least, it doesn’t do that enough of the time for me. At a couple of the events I’ve shot where I used it in addition to my DSLR, there were several times when the folks I’d asked to photograph had to stand there for an extra long time as their natural smiles turned forced while I waited for the X-Pro1 to sort itself out.

Which isn’t to say that others can’t and won’t do great work with this camera – Kevin Mulllins is doing excellent documentary wedding work with it, for example.

But if it’s not working for me in those circumstances,  and I can’t trust it to deliver if people are paying me, then it had better be a fun walk around camera for the amount it costs.

Which again, for me, it wasn’t, because of the way that I like to walk around. When I shoot casually at home – family shots of whatever we’re up to – I’m after  passing moments when my daughter’s looking a particular way, or reacting to something’s that’s just been said (I’m not going to pose her and ask her to hold still).

Some of the time I can be deliberate and patient: set things up and wait for the moment – which works with this camera – but some of the time I can’t, and I’ve missed that shot forever. (It’s worth pointing out of course, that you can be deliberate and patient with a faster camera if you want to, but you can’t be fast with a slower camera.)

Keeping the DSLR

My expectations of what was acceptable performance for me have been shaped by my experience with a bunch of DSLRs, and I was considering the X-series cameras as a replacement system for my DSLR. I’d imagined an X-Pro1 an X-E1, a couple of  fast primes and a good zoom, and I’d be set.

There are weight and obtrusiveness benefits to this, but only if the Fujis can deliver a comparable level of performance and good handling in the areas I need them to. Right now, I don’t feel they can.  Maybe the forthcoming lenses are faster, and it’s true that getting in at the beginning of a new system is always a risk.

If you’re slower and more methodical in your work, or excellent at manually focussing, or maybe all around a better technical photographer than me, then the X-Pro1 might be perfect for you.

Turns out I want all the help I can get. All the reviews that said that it doesn’t behave like a small DSLR were completely right – it just took me quite a while to figure out what that actually meant. Now I realise that I love a lot of things about DSLRs that I’d grown to take for granted – crucially, focus speed and responsiveness that let me photograph the moments I want to capture (and I currently use a Canon 5D Mk II – not known for its blazing performance compared to other DSLRs).

It’s not you, it’s me (OK, it’s partly you)

I can see why lots of people love the X-Pro1. It’s a good camera, but it’s not right for me. The best image quality in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t get the image in the first place. And great specs are worthless if you don’t actually enjoy using the camera.

So I’ve sold it, and bought an Olympus O-MD EM5 as a small walk around camera that doesn’t upset me and is more enjoyable for me to use (not to mention having a cheaper and broader range of lenses for what is decidedly my second camera system). And I’m looking at my DSLR gear more fondly now.

In this guest post for Seshu’s Tiffinbox blog, I describe the problem of gear acquisition syndrome, and then outline some steps to cure it.

> Read the full post over here.

Music: “Evening Seaside” by Inspector 22

Do you have regular dates you make for your family photographs? Let me know in the comments below.

Cute girl? Check. Blurred background? Check. Canon 5D II, EF 85mm f/1.8 at f2/.8.

The portrait photographer’s go-to look often has the subject in sharp focus, but the background out of focus. This draws the eye towards the face of the subject, and tidies up distracting elements in the background, leaving behind that gentle blurred patterning known as ‘bokeh’.

A combination of factors is creating a narrow depth of field – in other words a small plane of the depth of the image is acceptably sharp, and the rest blurred out. Most of the time the sharp area is to the front, and the area behind is out of focus, but technically everything in front of the sharp area will be out of focus too (but it’s normally thin air so you don’t see the blur), but sometimes you’ll see a shot that’s layered to go from blurred to sharp to blurred again.

I often get asked how you can get this background blur, so here’s an overview of the the five factors at play in achieving that creamy bokeh.

 1) Lens with a fast aperture

A lens that can open wide to admit a lot of light will also have a narrow depth of field. This large opening – a wide aperture – is somewhat confusingly indicated with a low f-number. So a lens at f/1.8 for example lets in much more light than a lens at f/8, and will produce a much narrower depth of field.

A 50mm lens at f/1.8 focussing on a subject 10′ away gives a depth of field of 15.5 inches. The same lens and distance at f5.6 has a depth of field of 4′ 3 ” – nearly four times as wide.

The plane that’s in focus will fall about one third in front of what you’re focussing on, and two-thirds behind it. So taking the f/1.8 example above, everything from 9′ 7″ away from the camera to 10′ 10.5″ will be in focus.

Of course, the other main benefit of these fast lenses is that they by letting in a lot of light, they allow you to use a faster shutter speed to freeze movement in low light. But this creates problems when you want narrow depth of field in bright light. Your camera might have not have a shutter speed that’s fast enough – in full sun at f/1.8 and ISO 100 you might need 1/8000th of a second or faster (many cameras only go to 1/4000th). You can use neutral density filters to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor, allowing you to use a slower shutter speed to get the same exposure.

This ability to produce a narrow depth of field is one of the key strengths of prime lenses. Kit lenses (the zooms you see bundled with camera bodies) can often only reach f/4 or higher, and even the most expensive zoom lenses tend to stop at f/2.8, while affordable primes can reach f/1.8 or f/1.4. That might not sound like much difference, but when I’m shooting portraits, I live under f/3.2.

 2) Focal length of the lens

The second factor influencing bokeh production is the length of your lens – the longer the lens the narrower the depth of field you’ll get when all other things are equal. So a 135mm lens at f2 when the subject is 15′ away gives a depth of field of only 5 inches, while if you’re using a 35mm at f/2 at the same distance subject the depth of field is a sturdy 7 feet.

Wide lens, wide depth of field. Even though this was shot at f/2, it was taken with an 18mm lens, so the depth of field encompasses pretty much the whole frame. Fuji X-Pro1, XF 18mm f/2.0 at f/2.0.

So to repeat, f/2 will give widely differing depths of field depending on the focal length of the lens. This is true across different focal lengths of the same zoom lens. If you’re photographing a group where some people are standing in front of others, f/2.8 might be fine to have all the faces in focus while you’re at the 24mm end, but it might well be too shallow if you’re at 70mm end. Speaking from experience, I can confirm that it’s so easy to rack the zoom in for a more detailed shot and forget about what you’ve just done to the depth of field unless you adjust your aperture too.

3) The distance from the camera to the subject

In all the above examples of depth of field, I’ve been careful to give the distance from the camera to the subject because the closer the subject to the camera, the narrower the depth of field. If you’re focusing on a tree across the other side of a field, then the difference between f2.8 and f8 wont make much difference if any. But if you’re photographing a flower close-up the depth of field will be so shallow you’ll have to be careful parts of your subject aren’t out of focus inadvertently.

At 3′, a 50mm lens at f/1.8 gives a depth of field of 1 1/3 inches, where as we saw above if the distance is 10ft the depth of field is 15 inches. If the distance is 100′, everything from 25.5′ back to infinity will be in focus – this is because we’ve reached beyond what’s known as the hyperfocal distance for that lens at those settings (the hyperfocal distance is that distance beyond which everything in an image is in focus).

4) The distance from the subject to the background

The closer the subject is to the background the harder it will be to blur it. If someone’s standing right in front of a brick wall, you’ll need a narrower depth of field to get their face in focus, but the wall blurred behind them. But if they’re standing 10′ in front of the wall, you can use a wider depth of field and still be sure the wall is blurred.

The background is way back behind the subject here, so it’s rendered as a blurry smudge. I didn’t need to be at f/2.8 here with my 85mm lens to blur this background. 

Balancing your factors

Bearing in mind these four factors will let you control how much background blur you can get. Sometimes it can be a trade-off between the different factors. Say you’re using a kit zoom for a portrait, and you’d like to blur the background. You know that you should get closer to your subject, and make sure the background is far away.

Getting closer means you’ll probably have to use a shorter focal length lens to get a wide enough field of view to fit the whole of the subject in; but a shorter focal length (a wider angle lens) means a larger depth of field. So maybe you’d be better standing further away, but using the longer end of the zoom – say 70mm not 24mm.

Ah, but your kit lens goes to f/4 at the wide end (24mm), and only f/6.3 at the longer end (70mm). So the same shot could be taken at f/4 and 24mm at 4′ or f/6.4 and 70mm at 12′. Which will give the narrower depth of field? Experienced photographers might have an instinctive feel for the answer to these type of questions, but if in doubt, use a depth of field calculator (I use an iPhone app called DOFMaster which hasn’t been updated recently, but since the maths doesn’t change, it’s not that crucial. There’s also a good online calculator here).

Running the numbers, I get that the 24mm options gives a depth of field of 1.15ft, and the 70mm option gives a depth of field of 3.41ft. So in this case, getting in close with the 24mm gives the narrower depth of field, but the 70mm will work too, so long as the background is more than 2 ft behind the subject (2/3rds of the depth of field). Since the 70mm end will compress the face of the subject slightly in a flattering way (because you’ll be further away), while the 24mm will expand the face and distort some angles, I’d probably go with the 70mm end of the zoom (trust me on the face compression thing – the compression effect of long lenses is a whole other topic I’ll deal with another time, but here’s a primer on it).

A note on the crop factor of sensors

You might be wondering what effect using different size sensors has on these calculations – for example the sensors in ‘full-frame’ cameras such as the Canon 5D series are much larger than those in point and shoot cameras. The big difference is that crop factor changes your field of view for the same lens.

A 35mm on a full frame camera will have a wider field of view than the same lens put on a body with an APS-C sensor, where it will give a field of view more like that of a 50mm lens (the crop factor on Canon DSLRs with APS-C sensors is 1:1.6, on Nikons it’s 1:1.5). So it will appear when you look at the finished photograph that the 35mm lens is more zoomed in on a crop sensor body, because the sensor only captures the center of the image, not the edges.

To get exactly the same composition with crop and full -frame bodies, you’d need to either move your position (getting further away with the crop body – which increases depth of field), or stay in the same place and swap to a wider lens on the crop body (which also increases depth of field).

So crop bodies use wider lenses to replicate the same apparent fields of view of a full frame camera. An 18-55mm zoom on a crop body behaves much like a 24-70mm lens on a full frame.

In some cases you can replicate the same composition and  narrow depth of field between a crop and full frame, but especially with wide angle lenses, it’s hard for the crop body to give as narrow a depth of field as a full-frame. If you’re a landscape shooter, that’s probably not an issue, but if you do portraits it is.

For example to reproduce the same depth of field and angle of view as a shot taken with a 35mm f/1.4 on a full frame camera with a APS-C sized sensor would need a 22mm f/0.9 lens – and good luck finding one of those. (To play with these options, here’s a nice calculator.)

The small sensor size in most point and shoot cameras explains why it’s almost impossible to get a blurred background with these cameras (or camera phones) – the lenses are optically just too wide to deliver a narrow depth of field without an impossibly fast aperture.

Questions, comments?

This can be a tricky concept to get your head around, and I’m always aware when writing more technical posts that I’ll get two simultaneous reactions from different groups. People who know more about the technicalities of the topic (often way more than I do) will point out my mistakes in painstaking detail, and other people will get a blank look when I first start mentioning f-numbers. But as a working photographer, my understanding of things as I’ve laid it out here has seen me through most situations, and for beginners to this topic, I feel it’s important to have a handle on the basics so you have more chance to getting the type of images you want.

This week, I take to video to discuss the announcement of the Fuji X-E1 and what it means for people like me who bought the X-Pro1.

Basically, unless you completely love the optical viewfinder of the X-Pro1, the X-E1 looks fantastic: lighter, smaller, cheaper, with a better EVF, stereo mic in and a small pop-up flash. With the same great sensor and processor.

Take a lovely summer morning, two handsome boys and an amazing backyard, and you’ve the making of a really good kids’ portrait session. Throw in some chickens, and good becomes great.

 I’d never met Shai and Adi before, but when I arrived at the house they led me straight to the backyard and showed me the luxe chicken coop their industrious father had built for the chucks. And then it was off for a tour of the hammocks, swings, jungle gym, rope bridges, climbing wall, fort and bocce court (also constructed by the boys’ father) – all in the shade of lovely trees next to an arroyo.

If I were a five-year-old kid, I wouldn’t want to leave, so it was no surprise the brothers had spent much of the summer perfecting their moves, and were keen to show me. Which was perfect for the type of documentary-style photography work I do. I could no more have got them to strike poses for me than I could have got the chickens (who spend chunks of the day wandering around the whole yard) to start singing opera.

So I chased them around (the boys and the chickens), mixing wider shots of them in their great environment with tighter shots of the brothers’ faces as they took a momentary pause, or embarked on their next adventure.

It was a sweet shoot to do, and when I was leaving their mum handed me a bag of fresh eggs from the chickens. Lovely stuff.

How does Fuji’s interchangeable-lens rangefinder-style camera do on holiday?

There’s travel photography, and then there’s vacation photography. In the first you’re traveling to shoot, and your time and gear is chosen carefully to deliver great images. In the second, you’re just on holiday and like everyone else, you want to bring a camera along.

This is specifically a review of using the camera on a family vacation –  I wasn’t sent to England and France on assignment, nor did I spend lots of time there specifically going out to shoot. But I did want to bring a camera that wasn’t going to annoy me.

Those of you who have been following along for a while will remember that it was a vacation trip to California last year that pushed me into looking for a smaller but high-performing camera. The willing but somewhat limited Olympus EPL2 has now been and gone, and it was the Fuji X-Pro1 (and 18mm F/2.0 and 35mm f/1.4 lenses) that made the trip with us across the Atlantic.

Lighten the load

If you’re used to lugging full-frame DSLRs and a couple of lenses around, the ease of transport with the Fuji is a great relief. Turns out my the whole kit (plus spare battery, a couple of filters and a spare card) fits in the small but perfectly formed Think Tank Slim Changer, which dropped into the long-suffering Timbuk2 Medium Classic Messenger I tend to travel with. This left a ton of room for books, iPad, laptop, chargers, inflatable neck pillow and other travel necessities.

Once we arrived, the lightness and ease of transport continued and on our long sightseeing days in London, I brought the camera (and often whichever lens wasn’t on the body) everywhere, and never felt weighed down or very obtrusive.

I could take photos of afternoon tea in a very posh Picadilly hotel without feeling everyone looking at me because I’d pulled out a 5D Mark II with a 24-70mm attached.

The setup is understated enough that I felt safer with it in crowded places, too – it doesn’t scream expensive pro-grade camera.

But ease of use doesn’t go too far if it takes dodgy photos. At first when I was reviewing photos from the trip I was disappointed. Most looked a lot like holiday snaps. But then I remembered they were almost all holiday snaps – I wasn’t putting a lot of time or thought into the images, I was just documenting what we got up to. The camera had exposed things nicely and the images were crisp. They just weren’t very good .

I looked back at last year’s holiday photos (taken with a 5D II) and they looked just as humdrum, (from a photographer’s perspective rather than a father and husband’s). Once I remembered that the camera (and myself) are capable of a lot more under different circumstances, I felt better.

For the standard holiday shots, the camera performed really well most of the time. Since this wasn’t carefully considered shooting, a medium zoom (already announced by Fuji) would have made some things a bit more convenient, but between them the 18mm and 35mm did well.

Mac and SD Card niggle

One issue was the slow start-up speed after you’ve put the SD cards into a Mac – apparently Macs write some data to the card which trips up the Fuji on start-up, making it a lot slower that it should be.

I didn’t want to wipe the cards after the images were on the computer as backup until we got home, and  once I forgot to lock the card before inserting into the Mac. I missed a few off-the-cuff shots I wanted while waiting for my camera to switch on. Annoying, and hopefully there’s soon a firmware update for that problem that hasn’t affected any of the other cameras I’ve used with my Mac.

Worth the Cost?

These glitches aside, as a light but powerful everyday shooter the X-Pro1 does well, but there are much cheaper cameras that can do a similar job (including a lot of Micro-Four-Thirds cameras, such as the one I’ve just got rid of). So is it worth the large amount of extra money?

When I looked through the holiday images again, I saw there were a handful of more considered images that really shone. And these are where the camera shows its true worth. It’s small enough that you don’t mind carrying it around all day, and it doesn’t draw attention to itself. But when you want it to, it can produce great images.

The low-light performance seems stronger to me than my Canon 5D Mk II – I’m not afraid to push the ISO to 3200. The evening shots in the French town we stayed in were clean and sharp, even though some were hand-held when they really shouldn’t have been. And the shallow depth of field available with the 35mm f/1.4 (which is more or less a 50mm equivalent on a full-frame camera) is a lovely option to have.

Auto ISO – nearly useful

And when I was moving from inside to our a lot – such as in the Tower of London – I tried using the Auto ISO. I’d love to just be able to set it to Auto ISO with the option to set a maximum ISO and a minimum shutter speed. Then all I’d need to worry about is setting the aperture for the type of shot I wanted.

But the Fuji doesn’t let you set the minimum shutter speed, and by default chooses one that can be too slow. So I set the shutter speed manually – basically using 2000/sec or above outside in bright sun, and 125/ or 250/sec inside, knowing that the camera would use its wide range of ISO to get the right exposure. The downside of setting the shutter speed manually is that you then can’t use the exposure compensation dial. So the quicker Fuji let you set minimum shutter speed in Auto ISO mode the better.

Conclusion

The Fuji X-Pro1 is a great camera for a keen photographer to bring on holiday. I think the reason I wasn’t so blown away with the first impressions was that I’m used to lugging my DSLR with me on vacation. So for me, I had the same image quality and range of manual control as I’d always had.  But then I had to remember that I was getting this in a much lighter, more nondescript package that didn’t get in my way or wear me out carrying it all day.

So when looked at in comparison with a good DSLR, it’s a different way to get to the same place – high quality digital images. A DSLR is a cheaper and more flexible way to get there, but the X-Pro1 has its own more subtle strengths (and its own niggles and annoyances if you’re expecting it to behave exactly like a DSLR). Whether those strengths (smaller size and weight, discretion, low-light performance, retro looks) are worth it to you is something you’ll have to decide.

But for me as a pro shooter going on vacation, it was a great choice.

And on the much-commented auto-focus performance, I have mixed feelings about it. When I’m using the X-Pro1 I feel less confident that I’m nailing the focus than on my 5D II – and I’ve taken to using the electronic viewfinder more than I thought I would to try and make sure I get this right. But when I review the images, I don’t think I’ve missed more than my fair share. In fact, I shot a kids’ shoot the other day with my Fuji on one shoulder (with the 18mm lens) and my 5D II on the other (with the fast-focusing EF 85mm f/1.8 on the other). I missed more shots with the Canon.