A Handful of Musings

 
X-T1, XC 16-50 OIS II

 
Got out for a bit of real photography on my way home from work yesterday. It was refreshing to be looking at the world from the perspective of a lens again and considering how things would look as a picture. Got some good stuff, and I'm finding that CaptureOne 12 is doing a very good job of getting things right, pretty much straight from the camera.

Today's experiment was alternate workflows. I've got the Fujifilm Camera Remote app, which will connect with the X-T1 via WiFi. That functions as a remote release (why I installed the app), but it can also pull JPEG's from the camera in a couple ways (but not RAW files). It really is a lousy app, clunky, takes forever to connect to the camera, requires a mix of inputs on the camera and phone, et al. But it does let me take an arbitrary JPEG, suck it into the phone then post directly to Instagram/Facebook/anything else that can take a picture from Gallery (or Photos on iOS). I've got a couple posts on Instagram already from that, and plan on keeping using it.

On the gear front, Fuji is expected to announce a pair of lenses and a body on Thursday. I've no interest in the body right now (it's the X-T30,  the mid-range SLR-like body) however both lenses are interesting.

The first is a 16-80/4, which is quite compact at 16mm. This weather-sealed, OIS equipped zoom would be ideal as a do-everything lens in my future. It's the right size, the right range and the right aperture. Could totally see replacing the current 16-50 kit lens with this at some point in the future.

The second lens is a 16/2.8 WR prime, similar in form to the Fujicron line of f2 primes (23, 35, 50). It makes an ideal extension of that lineup on the wide end (and frankly, I'd like to own all 4 of those plus the 18/2 and 14/2.8). My preference is for mid-speed compact primes and the Fujicron's are exactly what I like. In a lot of ways Fuji could be listening to my brain (add a 70/2.4 and 135/2.8 and I'd be set).

Getting back to workflows, I'd like to work out a proper mobile workflow, between grabbing a JPEG straight off the camera and shoving it through Instagram and heavy lifting on my desktop. Ideally that would be on the iPad Pro (as I have one on long-term loan right now) and not involving any Adobe software. Will have to think about it, it's really a software question as I have the SD Card to Lightning adapter which is considered to be the best all-round way to get photos onto the iPad. I also need to start looking at what my next-generation desktop workflow will look like, my current desktop is 10 years old and starting to show it's age (it is pretty amazing that it's managed to work well for that long with only the addition of a new GPU and some disk)