GFX Blue Hour

Reading the forums, plenty of people were lamenting the fact that medium format photography exaggerates the flaws in your photography technique.  Plenty suggesting that street photography was a no no! But I went the other way. Since acquiring the GFX 50R, 90% of my shooting had been handheld in the streets.

There were a couple of occasions where the tripod was used - the shoot at KLCC and Masjid Jamek to be exact. But the great majority of the time, I treated the beast just like my other setup, just point and click. 

Of course on occasions the snaps may be soft with movement artefacts from unsteady hands. But in the middle of the day, things were pretty straightforward. As long as I can get shutter speeds fast than 1/125 sec, I am pretty happy with what I had most of the time.

So, I took the GFX on a couple of occasions during blue hour and by taking things slowly, I managed to get decent shots. The relatively small size of the camera helped a lot I was sure. So was bumping up the ISO, accepting some degree of graining and noise. 

The main challenge I have at the moment was sorting out my technique when taking photos indoors. I don’t really fancy using a strobe system - never been good at that. Forums pointed out how good the GFX system were at still life and portrait of course, but doing those tend to take a lot of setup and effort. 

I am going to stick to what I normally do, and slowly expand first into low-light tripod-based photography, snapping landmarks around KL. So, plenty of things to explore in the coming months ...

A Wider Medium

After a few weeks of waiting, I finally got hold of the lens which was the reason why I bought the GFX system in the first place. The GF 23 mm f4. And this beauty translate to 18 mm in full frame speak - identical to the angles I got from the old 18mm f2.8 Zeiss Batis on my Alpha 7R. I have always loved wide angle street photography, and this lens just brought everything together.

As with the other lenses on the Fuji GFX line-up, sharpness was never an issue. But I was taken aback by the resolving power of this one. Rarely do I get to enjoy such sharpness on any wide-angle lens. This lens is exceptional in that department.

A lot of reviews were crying out for a faster aperture. But for me, f4 is a reasonable compromise. As it is, it was already hefty. Imagine the engineering needed should this come with a wider aperture? It might be twice its size and twice as heavy.

I only had a single opportunity to take this lens for a spin. Still learning it limitations while understanding which aspect which will make this lens shine. Stop it down to f11, and I was in dreamland - providing there is enough light ...

More photos to come on this lens in the future. The next couple of weeks would be a busy one but I will definitely be bringing it to Penang in a couple of weeks time when I have a short break planned ...