Far eastern escapade
In late 2013, I swapped my old Fuji X100 for the updated version – the X100s. Shortly thereafter, my old mate Gordon had the good fortune (via his hard work at Gazelle Travel) to be given two Business Class tickets to anywhere in the world by Emirates Airlines. We decided to embark on a weekend trip, just like we used to when I was carefree, rich, and socially mobile (i.e. without children). The world was our oyster, so we began the process of deciding upon a suitable destination – somewhere warm, accessible, somewhere we could just land & go. The shortlist included New York City, Tokyo, Sydney, South Africa, and Hong Kong. After much deliberation, we decided upon the latter, due to its decent travel time, familiarity, climate, and compact nature. We’d both been before, so there would be no time wasted trying to get orientated. New York came a close second, but travelling 7 hours east, then west again, seemed a bit of a nightmare given our limited time.
The trip was brilliant, and involved daylight hours of walking around, interspersed with refreshment stops here and there. After dark was spent in various enclaves of iniquity along with the British banking expat contingent (who are probably the most annoying people on earth). My new carry-everywhere camera was strapped to my wrist – capturing street images and the like for my Alamy stock collection.
After an early-evening 3 mile run around the Happy Valley racetrack (had to get that fact in), I was eager to get out and sample the dusk landscapes in the business district, but my travelling companion was feeling the pace of the days activities, and decided to have a kip before we headed out later that night. I took the opportunity to grab my Fuji, and jumped on the MTA (the Hong Kong tube), and headed down to Admiralty station, where the major architecture of the Island is situated. The vista is one of the greatest sights in the world as far as I’m concerned – up there with the Manhattan skyline. It was time to exercise the X-Trans sensor of my little friend with some architectural photography.
The light had gone completely, but the city illuminates the sky perfectly, and the office lights are a subject in themselves. I shot a few single frames at 1/30th sec, f4, at iso 1600. The sensor noise was pretty much unnoticeable, and easily remedied by the noise reduction feature in Lightroom CC. Panoramics were next on the agenda. I would normally use a tilt/shift lens and a tripod to shoot three frames for stitching, but I only had my arms and the Fuji, so I shot the frames as steadily as I could, revolving the camera around the approximate nodal point to make things easy to stitch & correct later on. The results were spot-on, and the stitched files passed the rigorous Alamy quality control without any problems.
The colours from the Fuji X100s are just wonderful. I’ve shot loads of stock with it, and it’s in my Barbour jacket pocket with me everywhere nowadays. The updated version – the X100T, is an improved version with wifi, and a better electronic viewfinder. I can’t justify upgrading again, so in the meantime, I have the ideal “carry-everywhere” pro camera. in my company at all times.
