Gone Medium Format
The crossing from KLCC towards Avenue K
I had been waiting for a while now and I finally took the leap. I have gone medium format.
I have toying around with a few models in the past. I laid my hands on the Pentax 645Z, The Hasselblad X1D and the Fuji GFX-50S. But they were either bulky, too expansive or slow lens combinations. Then came the announcement of the Fuji GFX-50R. There was no turning back.
The top plate of the camera captured using the Ricoh GR II
From the front
Medan Pasar - GF 45 mm f2.8
Across Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman
With the bundled standard zoom, it felt bulky at the beginning but that was soon forgotten once you see the results of the captures. They were insane! And all in a practical combo.
I have yet to really test the limit of the camera and from my various routine walks, I found myself snapping more frames than I would otherwise had, filling up my memory card doubly quick. And each RAW files was around 125 Mb in size. On average, I could snap around 200 pics on my 32 Gb card. Luckily they right at average 300 Mb/s which made the time between snaps short.
Benteng. Near Masjid Jamek.
The colourful street bazaar at Masjid India
The slit of sunlight at the Bukit Bintang MRT entrance
Monorel station near Lot 10
Pavilion entrance in the rain
Being a veteran of the original X-Pro1, I am familiar with the focusing speed and quirks of the camera. Once the focus point was nailed, focussing happened pretty fast. Coming from a manual focus setup, I have no complains on the focussing speed.
One practical issue I had was the RAW file not being compatible with Aperture - my main go to post-processing software. I had to modify my workflow and has since made my peace with Lightroom. I now use the Lightroom CC and do most of my adjustments on my iPad. For snaps I planned to upload onto social media, I saved them right on the iPad and synced them on all my iDevices. As for Flickr, I tended to use my desktop to produce high resolution jpgs.
Peace. The murals of Jalan Alor.
There are always constructions in town …
CNY at Pavilion
That famous fountain
The streets of Bukit Bintang
The results thus far had been astonishing and better than I thought. I had also acquired a prime lens, equivalent 35 mm on full frame - my favourite length. I plan next to get hold of the wide-angle prime as well as a telephoto portrait lenses. This system would definitely go far. With the new workflow, I felt that the output was superior to the Leica M although portability-wise, M is streets ahead. More to come as I get more familiar with the system ...