mezatron

This is my brother Frank. A while back he decided to take the...

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:00:52 -0700

This is my brother Frank. A while back he decided to take the plunge and move to Australia. He leaves today. I want to wish him all the luck in the world on his new chapter in his life. I’m gonna miss this guy.

Photo

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:37:28 -0700

Mike.

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:30:45 -0700

Mike.

With Grandmas like this, who needs enemies? This is Oma’s...

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:09:00 -0700

With Grandmas like this, who needs enemies?

This is Oma’s way of saying goodbye to my brother.

I love this kid.

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:01:31 -0700

I love this kid.

Off the 101 at Alvarado around 3PM, you can catch this homeless...

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:01:28 -0700

Off the 101 at Alvarado around 3PM, you can catch this homeless dude performing at the offramp. Instead of moping around, he was able to train the local pigeons to do tricks. He gets them to land in his beard and eat food and they even come to him as he stand with his arms out like Christ. Here he is pointing at a sign as the pigeon takes off to land on it.

Pretty Rad.

Took a walk at Balboa Island with the girlfriend last weekend....

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:01:40 -0700

Took a walk at Balboa Island with the girlfriend last weekend. I have to admit that she spotted this beautiful juxtaposition while we strolled along.

Later she cooked up some dinner in a kitchen that most chefs would die for. Notice the spacious cutting area near the stove. In all seriousness, I love her little place behind the Orange Curtain. It just feels like home.

I’ve been working on Saturdays for a film project for my...

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:01:18 -0700

I’ve been working on Saturdays for a film project for my work. In order to stage some painting done by the youth workers, the guy in charge had two guys put on spacesuits and pose for me.

Since I’ve gotten the X100s, I’m starting to come...

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:01:37 -0700

Since I’ve gotten the X100s, I’m starting to come out of my shell in photographing strangers while they are looking at me.

@bigblakzack

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:01:25 -0700

@bigblakzack

My girlfriend makes the perfect breakfast in a hurry.

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:02:04 -0700

My girlfriend makes the perfect breakfast in a hurry.

Feeling Thirsty.

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:55:00 -0700

Feeling Thirsty.

First Impressions of the Fujifilm X100s from a guy with very...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:47:33 -0700

First Impressions of the Fujifilm X100s from a guy with very little time to do anything anymore.

This review is not meant to be all inclusive nor will it include any real specs cause after awhile, all that shit doesn’t really matter anyways.

Ok so I’m just going to come clean now. I don’t shoot photos like I used to. I remember being madly consumed with everything photography. I’d lie awake at night thinking about photos I wanted to make, what gear i wanted to buy next and who I could call from my phonebook who’d let me take some portraits of them wearing nothing but a white sheet in the back lot of a CVS. There was an almost ravenous feeling I would get when I thought about photography. I was hungry.

Fast forward a year or so and I’m working a 9-5 that I’m very happy at. I still have my DSLR kit but it just sits. I look back on how much money I spent over the past years to get this far and now it just lays there like that guy on the couch in Half Baked.

I would go to public events and still eyeball every camera that passed by me. Ooh a 5D with an L Lens? He must think he’s soooo cool or some young guy much like myself at that age cruising around with a D3200 or something with a kit lens….amateur. I had become that guy I always hoped I’d never become. The bitter and jaded dude who cared more about pixel peeping, cool bokeh and how much money you plopped down to carry that newest DSLR……..and I hardly even shot anymore! I had become an envious monster.

I knew that if I was going to carry on shooting AND being happy, I needed a change. My problem wasn’t that my images weren’t crisp or I lost my passion for seeing photographs all around me. My problem was that my usual fix of buying some newer/bigger/better lens was exactly the opposite of a cure for my disease. I hate carrying around a bulky DSLR especially with a decent zoom attached. Gotta have that hood for that pesky sun but wait, what should I do when the sun goes down? Use the on camera flash? But what about that dark half circle on the bottom of my photos from the hood? Oh, I know, I’ll just bring my speed light. Oh I should bring some extra AA’s just in case. Next thing I know, I’m at a bar trying to enjoy a beer while my camera is getting snagged on everyone that passes by me. DSLR’s just don’t travel that well especially if you’re trying to be inconspicuous at all.

Enter the Fujifilm X100s.

After reading all the raving reviews of the X100s by guys like David Hobby, Zach Arias and Patrick Laroque; I was all but sold on this new light-capturing magic box. The price is a little steep….ok a lot steep. Hold your breath.

$1299

Thankfully, Uncle Sam had saved up some money for me and decided that this Spring he’d give some back. After a week of deliberation, I pulled the trigger.

At first glance, it’s much smaller than you expect. The UPS package it came in weighed a whopping 2.9 lbs. It’s basically the size of an average point and shoot with a pancake lens attached. It a 23mm which comes out to about a 35mm equivalent on a full frame. Just wide enough for most buildings, landscapes, street scenes but still close enough to take a mean portrait with a nice creamy background.

It definitely has it’s quirks. I’ve read that the X100 had even more. The aperture ring only clicks in whole stops and the shutter dial only does whole stops as well. To change the settings in between them you have to use the control dial or the control wheel on the back.

The hybrid viewfinder takes some getting used to. There’s a switch on the front that allows the viewfinder to switch between an Optical View Finder (Real Life) and an Electronic View Finder (Live Video of what the camera sees through the lens with a slight lag). Although its a little more jenky in terms of parallax error, I definitely prefer the Optical View Finder to the latter. It just feels better. Sure, you may not compose your shot exactly how you envision it but that’s not the point of this camera. The X100s is like that really cute girl who works the counter at ___________ but has the smallest gap in her front teeth. Is she perfect? No. Does it matter? Definitely not.

Setting both the shutter dial and the aperture ring at Auto gives you P mode. Changing one while leaving the other at Auto will give you either Av/A mode or Tv/S modes respectively. Change both to specific settings? You’re in Manual. Easy Peasy.

There a button on the back that says “View Mode” that allows you to change the way the camera shows your composition. The first mode activates the OVF/EVF, the second mode turns on the back screen for iPhone style composing and the third (my favorite) turns on the back screen and says “eye sensor” across the screen. What the hell’s an eye sensor? The crafty engineers at Fuji put a small sensor right next to the viewfinder that can sense when your face is smashed up against the LCD screen, which triggers the OVF/EVF to turn on. Remove your face from the camera and the screen turns back on. Pretty damn cool.

I’m still torn between shooting jpeg and RAW with this guy. I know what you’re thinking, just shoot both. Well, that solution is just to damn easy. There’s got to be some nostalgia fairies packaged inside of every single unit cause the jpegs it spits out give a really nice poignant feeling to the images. The difference between the fine jpegs and RAW files are something like 3.6mb vs 33mb in size. There’s definitely something to be said there. How do I get that nice film simulation look out of a RAW file? Well, that’s a college course in itself.

Take into account that shooting in jpeg doesn’t allow for automatic lens corrections and moving anything in the develop module seems a bit heavy-handed, I think I’ll stick to shooting RAW for now.

Aside from it’s shortcomings, the X100s gives me exactly what I want out of photography.

A few years back a great man by the name of Max Gerber once told his portrait class that if you wanted to be a photographer and be enjoy your life, you should not pursue the life of a career photographer. Many careerists spend most of their time shooting people, places and things that are of no interest to them, there’s a few out there who are living the dream but it’s a little unrealistic. Just shoot for yourself, that’s the secret to balancing photography and happiness.

I plan on taking this camera everywhere I go from now on. It’s not pocketable but it travels well. No more clunky DSLR hanging from my neck that looks like the Megazord from Power Rangers.

Just a indiscreet albeit sexy camera that is more responsive than any Point and Shoot on the market and a lot less overbearing than any DSLR.

Final Verdict?

A lot of people love toy cameras because of the “happy accidents” produced by them. The way that I see it is that the X100s is a bit like a digital version of a toy camera. Between the autofocusing and getting your settings right (even in full auto) there’s no way that it will ever respond perfectly to every situation you put it in but for the most part, you’ll be happy with what you end up with. I know I am.

Whiskey getting crazy with the neck contortions.

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:35:01 -0700

Whiskey getting crazy with the neck contortions.

For Charles Bae, who takes my favorite landscape photos.

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 19:12:38 -0700

For Charles Bae, who takes my favorite landscape photos.

Whiskey just lays around and sleeps most of the time. I guess...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:53:00 -0700

Whiskey just lays around and sleeps most of the time. I guess that’s what you do when you’re on your last leg. At least he has common sense enough to lay in the sun for warmth.

Quad wheeled van on the tracks. (Taken with Instagram)

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:15:03 -0700

Quad wheeled van on the tracks. (Taken with Instagram)

Swap meet carnival ride. $15 let’s you ride all day.

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 11:58:38 -0700

Swap meet carnival ride. $15 let’s you ride all day.

Psycho killer. Baby version. (Taken with Instagram)

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 10:47:18 -0700

Psycho killer. Baby version. (Taken with Instagram)

Tommy Swagmar launching a flaming frontside grab for all the...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:38:49 -0700

Tommy Swagmar launching a flaming frontside grab for all the groms at Hood Games yesterday.