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guest post by Michael Dees – WILDNESS & ARTifice + @medees on Instagram

This continues an earlier post where I recounted how well my Fuji X-T2 served me in my diverse photographic pursuits.  Those being, landscape and street photography.  Most recently, the X-T2 worked out quite well for me in Iceland where the environment there put its weather-sealing to the test…it passed with flying colors.  But now we move on to the Continent, where my Fuji and I had to switch gears from wildness to artifice, from garden to city.  As you may suspect, with this migration comes a ton of changes in the settings.  To name a few: from low ISO to Auto, from stopping down to opening wide, and often, from auto focus to manual. Luckily these changes were not overlooked often, but they escaped my attention once, early in the first city, but it was minor and smooth sailing from there.  And so let us turn our attention from the large volcanic island, to the polished and cultured cities of Europe.

Mainland Europe

The rest of the trip consisted of seven cities in France, Italy, and Switzerland.  I know…so lucky!  As mentioned here’s where I kicked into street mode.  The primes came out, even the barely used 16mm, along with my sweet leather messenger camera bag, and some cigars.  Locked and loaded!  I think it worth mentioning a few aspects of my settings and how the Fuji X-T2 served me so well.  There are several main kinds of street shooting that I do and when I’m in a thick crowd, shoulder to shoulder, the shutter has got to be blazing fast.  This is because when people are so close, they cross the field of vision so quickly.  So I had three Auto-ISO settings that I alternated between, all having a max ISO of 6400 and default ISO of 200:

• Min shutter = 1/60^th
• Min shutter = 1/250^th
• Min shutter = 1/500^th

Catch that?  6400 baby…now that’s cookin’!  That coupled with an f/1.4 lens and you have some serious low light love going.

Paris

The City of Lights.  Paris was good to us, and yet it was at a breakneck pace.  Fortunately we had been before, so it was not so much about seeing sites, but rather enjoying people watching and eating around the Latin Quarter…and there was lots of both!  About as much as one can squeeze in to two days.

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Icelandic Horses

guest post by Michael Dees – WILDNESS & ARTifice + @medees on Instagram

Hi there my Fuji brethren!  Oh, and visitors too.  This article is, in a way, part two to an article I wrote a while back for Fuji Rumors.  At the time I didn’t plan on a part two, a sort of “I told you so!”  But then, that was before my wife got a hankerin’ for Iceland and Continental Europe, and we took a trip to four countries.  I encourage you to read the earlier post, but the gist of it was the reason why I left my old system for Fuji, namely, I wanted one system to handle my diverse photographic interests.  Specifically, I love landscape and also street photography, which are about as opposite as they come.  My old beast of a Nikon did great for me in landscapes, but it was a monstrosity, aesthetically speaking, and did not inspire me while on the streets.  And my Fuji X-E1 was great for the streets, but it was inadequate for wind, weather, and telephoto lenses.  Thus, the Fuji X-T1 was the perfect match for this photographer with varied interests.

So then comes Europe.  My wife loves travel, and with round trip tickets to Europe, including a week-long layover in Iceland, being priced unusually low, it was on like Donkey Kong!  But I thought to myself that I may never make it back to this magical place and wanted a little more fire power, pixel-wise, than the X-T1 had.  I actually considered picking up a used Nikon D800E, which is truly a landscape wonder if used well.  But the thought of using that weighty, massive, ugly hunk of technological wonder on the dimly-lit, wet cobblestone streets of Lyon…I think not!  Well, it was just about that time that the Fuji X-T2 was being shipped and so I pre-ordered one, I got it about a week and half before our departure, and tried adjusting to the few differences so I was ready to hit the ground running.  Plus, my wife let me snag the 16mm f/1.4 for northern light images.  But much to my dismay, the cloud cover was mercilessly overbearing most of the trip.  But enough of that and on with the show!  What follows is primarily a visual tale of my recent photographic journey and a further confirmation that, for me, Fuji is the bomb and can meet my needs in the wilderness and the city.

Just one quick note before proceeding: what about the gear I brought? I had rather severe luggage and carry-on concerns given the bargain airline that we flew, so I tried to be as conservative as possible for such a wide array of shooting.  I won’t bore you with the less consequential odds and ends that I brought, so here’s the essence of the Fuji stuff: