Recently I went to our local woods for an hour or so, to shoot in the middle of the day but under the canopy of trees in full leaf. I wanted to shoot wide-angle so I took along the wonderful Fuji 16mm f2.8 attached to my X-T3. I shoot both Nikon and Fuji and am equally comfortable with both, but the day was hot and I certainly didn’t want to be carrying the more weighty Nikon gear.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy using the DSLR and I know the mechanics of the gear inside-out, but the X-T3 is just one of those rare cameras that you just love to shoot with. The placement of the dials, the feel of the body combined with the lack of weight, the quality of the lens and the images, makes the X-T3 just a joy to shoot with. Add to that the sheer excellence of the Fuji film emulations and this has quickly become my favourite camera. The Nikon D500 is a superb camera but I love my X-T3 dearly!
These images were shot at 16mm (24mm ff equivalent), ISO 160, with the camera on a tripod and with a 2-second delay to get maximum stability. Once I got them home and looked at them, the obvious crop (to me) was a 16×9 which gives a wonderful cinematic feel and reproduces the wide-angle field of view beautifully. The normal 8×10 seemed to compress the images too much, taking away from the width of the view and suppressing the lines which led away from the camera and further into the woods. I applied the Velvia simulation to take the shots but then I used the Raw images in post and reapplied Velvia through Adobe Camera Raw. I also used Thomas Heaton’s version of the Orton effect to add just a little glow to the images in post. Enjoy them!
Chris McPhee - Photographer 