We all experience it every day, how our skills & creativity are castrated by the terrific limits of the X-gear we use. Taking good picutres without back-illuminted Full Frame sensor and IBIS is sheer impossible.

However, for some strange reason, it sometimes happens that images taken with Fuji X-series cameras make the cover of the TIME magazine (story here), win the World Photography Arts&Culture Award 2015 (story here), are good enough for God’s work (story here), capture America’s most hated man (story here), win the Wold Press Photo Award 2016 Category Stories (story here) and much more!

This time it’s X-shooter J. David Ake (instagram), who managed to snap the cover of imporant US newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal) with his old and crappy Fuji X-Pro1 + XF50-140mmF2.8.

“By day I’m AP Washington’s photo chief. Most of my time is spent wrangling other photographers pixels, but every once in awhile I get to capture one or two of my own. Monday was such a day. I stopped on my way into work to make the flags at the Washington Monument at half-staff honoring the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia.

I carry the Fujis as my personal walk about gear, and I shot this image with an X Pro-1 w/ a XF50-140mm f2.8 zoom lens. Exposure was 1/250 @ f8 rated at 320 iso. The old rule about f8 and be there still lives!

I just thought you too, might enjoy seeing the little camera that could, get it done.”

I really wonder why X-gear is used by worldwide famous photographers like Annie Leibovitz (here), Ara Güler (here) and plenty of other Artists, Musicians, Photographers, Scientists, Sportsmen, Princes, Directors (see also the famous X-shooter thread)… and how can Kevin Mullins and many others out there earn their bread & butter with it?

Ok, I’ll now go out and take some crappy shots with my X-gear… maybe it will make the cover of the local monthly magazine of my small village ;)

enjoy your weekend
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Both, the Fuji X-Pro1 and the XF50-140 are part of the huge USA Fuji X Instant Rebate Program of these days.

Fujifilm X-Pro2
USA: BHphoto / AmazonUS / Adorama / CANADA: AmazonCA / EUROPE: AmazonDE / AmazonUK / WexUK / PCHstore / AmazonITA / AmazonFR / AmazonESP / AUSTRALIA: CameraPro

I’ve been informed by some readers, that the shipping embargo for the X-Pro2 in USA will be March 3… and indeed, checking the BHphoto site, they now mark it as available on March 3 :)

The Iridient Developer 3.0.8 update was released today!

This update support for the X-Pro2 (currently uncompressed format only), X-E2S and X70 models. This release also fixes a couple Fujifilm specific bugs including an incorrect baseline exposure for intermediate (non whole stop) ISO settings above 3200 and a bug with the EXIF 35mm focal length equivalent value in exported images for some of the fixed lens models (X100S, X100T, X100 and probably a few other compacts). Plus with this update Brian has refined the default camera profile for all X-Trans (and some of the X Bayer sensors too). Of course all prior Fujfilm preset packs for the various camera film styles (Astia, Provia, Velvia, …) are still applicable and seem to work reasonably well with the new sensor in the X-Pro2 as well. Brian will likely be refining the film presets some in the future specifically for the X-Pro2 and adding the new style(s) added with the X-Pro2 as well.

Iridient Developer 3.0.8 can now be downloaded here:
http://iridientdigital.com/products/iridientdeveloper_download.html

and the full set of release notes is available here:
http://iridientdigital.com/products/rawdeveloper_history.html

The latest Fujifilm film style presets for X-Trans can be downloaded here for APS-C:
http://iridientdigital.com/downloads/Iridient_FujiX_APSC_Presets5.zip

and for the X-Trans compacts:
http://iridientdigital.com/downloads/Iridient_FujiX_Compact_Presets1.zip