48 Hours with the x100s - Part 1

            On my way to the farewell party of a friend of mine I stopped by an antique bookshop, where they have piles and piles of books, but its dead quiet, and incredibly tight. I didn't want for the owner of the shop to know that I am taking a picture, and the x100s was there to help me. I would never have taken my DSLR there, and the loud "CLICK" in that bookshop would have sounded like an explosion.

1/100s  f/2.8 at ISO400

It was already 8pm outside so there were a lot of people going through the underpass, and that was another opportunity to try out some low speed handheld shots of the crowds.

1/4s  f/8 at ISO800

There was another "guy" who was looking at the passing people with interest, but he was probably hoping for some food or a good scratch behind the ears.

1/15s  f/2.8 at ISO800

At the party I heard that there going to be fireworks, and I started thinking about the tripod that was sitting at home. But hey, maybe the Fuji is going to surprise me again and deliver some decent shots, after all...why not? It's handheld capabilities have been something that I was quite impressed with so far...

1/15s  f/2.8 at ISO1000

The next day I met with some friends at the Mall. They had their little daughter with them, and as all other kids she loves going to the rides, and since we were there anyway I decided to take some shots (handheld again). This one was my favourite.

1.3s  f/16 at ISO250

to be continued....

The seeds of doubt

       You dont go from using your favourite full frame DSLR with all of your nice lenses to something completely different out of the blue, so this is how it happened for me...

Picture: NikonRumours.com

       Through the years I've done a lot of wedding, fashion, commercial photography, but my true love has always been travel photography (landscapes & architecture). And this is where I've been feeling the strain of carrying a 12 kg backpack and a 4 kg tripod on long trips around Europe and the rest of the World.
       This year my travels took me to Switzerland and after the first few days I found myself in the strange situation of having a Nikon D700 with my trusty Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 VR; 24-70mm f/2.8; 80-200mm f/2.8 lenses in my backpack and actually reaching for my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 smartphone when i saw something interesting that caught my eye. I always thought of it as the neccessary evil, if you want nice zoom lenses and a good camera you have to carry the weight, thats it..end of story! And for the last two years I never went to a camera store or looked for the newest gear online, why would I? I thought I had all the gear that I will ever need. Something was not quite right though, for the mere thought of taking pictures with my smartphone instead of my camera to occur, and after the next day of long walks in the heat with all my gear I decided to look online and see what's going on with the camera world....

Picture: by the Author