My fall shooting came late this year — early November. I shot with a Fujifilm mirrorless system comprised of the Fujifilm X-T10 and a trio of lenses:
- Fujinon 18-55mm f2.8-4;
- Fujinon 10-24mm f4;
- and Fujinon 55-200mm f3.5-4.8.
The 18-55 was used most frequently while the 10-24mm and 55-200mm were used for equal amounts of time.k
This system replaces my Canon 6D and the “f4 triumvirate” (17-40mm, 24-105, and 70-200mm). I still keep the Nikon for sports and inclement weather and the Leica system is one I’ll keep forever. The Fuji compliments both systems well, especially the Leica system as I often mount Leica lenses on the X-T10 using Fuji’s Leica-M adapter.
Ergonomically the feel of the X-T10 is like the Nikon FE and FM2 I used to use.
The handling of all three lenses was very good and the solid feel of the lenses reminded me of the venerable Nikkor AI lenses.
The biggest concern I have with this system, and I think it’s true of all mirrorless EVF systems is the battery life compared to DSLRs. I have managed to reduce battery usage significantly with the following settings.
- EVF only + eye sensor;
- Image stabalization only while shooting;
- Using MF and activating focus with the AF-L button;
- And turning off the camera in-between photos.
The other issue I had was I occasionally found the the size of the camera to be too small. I do like the X-T10’s weight, espeically relative to its build quality, but I sometimes inadvertently pushed some of the directional/function buttons on the selector when holding the camera. I disabled the top and right direction buttons (Fn3 and Fn5). Nonetheless, the size of the camera is more of an asset than a liability. It’s a camera I can take anywhere and get amazing image quality.
The Photos
All of the photos were processed from RAW using Lightroom CC. For most of the pictures I used Adobe’s Velvia/VIVID profile. The black and white image I used a lightly sepia tones preset derived from Lenswork Magazine. Below I comment on a few of the pictures in the gallery.
I was initially attracted by the combination of the low, warm sun emphasizing the texture of the bark and the carpet of fallen leaves. The added element of my son in his wheelchair relative to the nearest tree combined with the low camera angle and wide field of view of the 18mm focal length (24mm FF equivalent) exaggerates the size of the trunk and expansiveness of the carpet. Without him in the picture it is a less interesting photo compositionally. It also makes it much more personal to me.
This is a “bokeh” shot that works well at the modest aperture of f4 as the background was several meters away. The lens was zoomed to 52.7mm, but the separation between the main leaf subject and the background was far enough to create a pleasant background. The Velvia profile adds “pop” to the color saturation, but it conveys the feeling I had when I was in the forest.
The 10-24mm is a beautiful lens. Here it is handling the flare from the rising sun pointing directly into the lens quite well, in my opinion. There is some flare near the centre of the image, but the image is still contrasty. Color balance was tricky as the shadows were a cool blue and the sunlit areas were warm. The Velvia profile preserved the feeling of the colors, but also added more blue to the shadows than I preferred. Using the brush tool and Tint effect warmed up the shadows nicely.
