Christmas Lights and the Fuji X100

Regent Street

Whilst in London earlier this month mooching around the main shopping areas of Oxford Street and Regent Street, it was impossible not to notice the many bright and cheerful Christmas decorations hanging above my head. They were lovely to see and combined with the general street lights and low cloud, produced a lovely warm and colourful glow in the sky. Wandering further afield, Fuji X100 in hand, I came across yet more lovely colour in both Chinatown and the West End. I knew that the relatively dark conditions would push the Fuji to the max and I would have to bump the ISO up accordingly if I were to capture the night lights accurately. Maintaining a fast enough shutter speed and reasonable depth of field meant that I was quite often shooting with the X100 set at 3200 ISO. This didn't prove a problem at all for the little chap which took it all within its stride. I simply had to nail the exposure in camera to avoid any major post processing afterwards in Photoshop. A combination of Aperture priority coupled with exposure compensation or switching to full manual mode allowed me to achieve just that. As I shoot in raw the only thing that was necessary to adjust once I had the files downloaded and on the computer was to add a bit of clarity and a touch of saturation.  

The West End 

The lovely Carnaby Street

Carnaby Street is one of my favourite areas of London. I love the little side streets and the fantastic independent shops.

One of the many restaurants in Chinatown 

One of the many boutique shopping arcades

Trafalgar Square

This was the first time that I had visited Trafalgar Square. Somehow not as big as I thought it would be but still very impressive, particularly the ever changing colour of the fountain.

I know I keep banging on about how good the Fuji X100 is, ( and now of course its replacement, the X100s ) but it really is such good fun to shoot with. What makes this camera so special is that despite its reasonably small size, it just keeps on churning out superb quality images, some of which I sell as limited edition 16'' x 12'' prints. It's really solidly made and has a lovely tactile feel and because the lens and camera were made from the ground up it produces pin sharp files every time. The fact that it has a really useful ISO range as well as a fast F2.0 lens means I can use it at weddings alongside my big Nikon bodies without ever worrying that it won't deliver the results. And bearing in mind that I shoot with a Nikon D4 and D3s, that's testament indeed.