A wander around Lincoln to test Fuji X-Pro 1 settings

I went for a wander around Lincoln on Monday with the Fuji X-Pro 1 and one lens – the 18mm f2. This a scary lens for street photography for me because it means you sometimes have to get in seriously close – something I’m not totally comfortable with. When you look at some the great photographers and their work documenting daily life, it all looks so easy. It’s not!

For the first time ever with a digital camera, I shot everything in black & white – usually I’d photograph in colour and then convert. It all felt a bit strange at first, something not quite right, but I loved looking at the back of the screen and seeing the composition in black & white.

I had the settings at Monochrome+R for the whole day, and sharpness set to +1

I love the optical viewfinder, so am pushing myself to master this – it’s perfect for the general day-to-day, wandering around kind of photography that gives me that photo buzz. Again, strange using it at first, because nothing changes in the viewfinder when you focus – I’m so used to my Canon DSLR’s now, and seeing everything snap into focus. But, I just loved using the OVF, it feels right to me and somehow gives me more feeling when taking the shots.

Guess what – they’re OK! They’re in focus, with a high hit rate. I did do a fair bit of reading up beforehand about using the OVF. I now have the ‘Corrected AF Frame’ setting on which really makes a difference, as it helps me with confusion with parallax view which I am definitely not used to, coming from the full frame DSLR world.

I shot everything fine jpeg, and just loved what was coming out of camera – a bit flat, so I had to boost the contrast in Photoshop. I need to review my settings to get a contrast look in camera that suits me.