The best job I ever had was at the “creative hotshop” advertising agency where “God of Copywriting” Tim Delaney was Creative Director. The agency was referred to as Leagas-Delaney and its full name was The Leagas Delaney Partnership, and it was based in London.
Continue reading “The amazing building where I worked in the best job I’ve ever had.”
Apologies to all our dear readers for the lack of new articles recently.
We’ve been coping with serious viral infections on and off over the last couple of weeks and have yet to fully recover.
They’re either a side-effect of the multivalent influenza injection we had over two weeks ago as reported by many of our colleagues or they’re yet another type of influenza, not cold virus, that is circulating in the city and beyond and may not be included in the annual influenza vaccine.
Either way, please do what we strive to each and every day and wear your masks and keep a social distance away from others especially those who refuse to wear masks in public.
We’ll return to publishing new material here and at The Robert Krasker Project as soon as we are well enough.
We’ll have older material such as our illustrated hands-on impression of Fujifilm’s X-S20 APS-C “mini-X-H2” camera used with the company’s excellent Fujinon XF 8mm f/3.5 R WR compact ultra wide-angle lens and one of the recent Discover Fujifilm events.
We also have a tonne of material, as it were, on Australia’s great but forgotten feature film cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC to be published at the Robert Krasker project site.
The Fujifilm House of Photography in Park Street, Sydney, is becoming a defacto friendly regular gathering place for photographers and videographers with its (mostly) twice-monthly free workshops on a wide range of aspects of photography and videography.
Attendees don’t even have to own or use Fujifilm cameras and lenses and there’s always plenty to learn regardless of which manufacturers’ gear you love and use or which genre of subject matter you favour.
I attended Fujifilm Australia’s X-H2S and X-H2 hybrid APS-C X-mount camera touch-and-try event and documented it with our Fujifilm X-Pro2 and a Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro “Fujicron”-style prime lens kindly loaned by the Fujifilm House of Photography, the lens equivalent in 35mm sensor terms to 45mm.
My three-word verdict on the lens? I LOVE IT!
One of my ambitions for the photographic documentation of these events is to do them in a slightly different way each time whether via different cameras, different lenses or different choices in raw image processing software and film simulations or other colour grading treatments.
I’ve been intrigued by the 45mm-equivalent Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro since its release in late 2022 and the X-H2 and X-H2S touch-and-try event presented the perfect opportunity given the Fujifilm House of Photography wasn’t filled with as many attendees as usual.
That meant I could physically get a little closer and my usual medium-wide and super-wide lenses were less necessary in order to document the look and feel of the proceedings.
I’ve loved and relied upon “perfect normal” focal length lenses for many years now since acquiring one for my 4″x5″ sheet film cameras and equip new cameras with perfect normal lenses whenever possible.
Perfect normal is slightly wider than standard normal and it produces the most naturalistic perspective, the relationship between near and far that’s closest to human vision, of the two.
Despite the common assumption that “normal” is standard normal – 50mm for 35mm sensors, 33mm or 35mm for APS-C and 25mm for Micro Four Thirds – for me at least perfect normal is, well, more normal – 40mm to 45mm for 35mm sensors, 27mm to 28mm for APS-C and 20mm for M43.
That may be why some cameras and lens makers have chosen perfect normal focal lengths in the past, from Ernest Barnack when making the first three Ur-Leica cameras to Leica and Minolta for their CL and CLE compact 35mm rangefinder film cameras, by Zeiss and Yashica for the G1 and G2 35mm t film cameras, and before that by Minolta for its 35mm single lens reflex cameras.
Arithmetically 30mm in APS-C is a little longer than 40mm and a little shorter than 50mm but in practice its look and feel is closer to perfect normal than standard normal and the ease with which I used it for the images above is testimony to that.
The legendary 28mm prime lens for moviemaking is the so-called Hollywood 28 and I’ve written about it at length here:
Given that available Hollywood 28-style lenses are almost always vintage, and are now unsupported by their manufacturers if repairs or maintenance are needed, is there a new equivalent or even near-equivalent?
Perhaps Cosina’s Voigtländer brand may provide an answer with the company’s Voigtländer 28mm f/2.0 Ultron Vintage Aspherical VM Lens Type II in combination with its Voigtländer VM-X Close Focus Adapter II for FUJIFILM X?
Vintage and vintage-style lens expert Phillip Reeve has an in-depth review of the Voigtländer 28mm f/2.0 Ultron and its variations:
Optics like the Voigtländer 28mm f/2.0 Ultron Vintage Aspherical VM Lens Type II are best described as “character lenses” as opposed to the more optically correct Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro and thus may be more suitable for narrative moviemaking than for documentary stills photography.
The Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro’s field of view is close to that of the XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR “pancake” lens and our Panagor PMC 28mm f/2.8 Auto vintage lens, so much so that I visualized images, framed them then made the exposures quickly.
Usually when using an unfamiliar focal length it takes a little time to learn to visualize, frame then expose quickly but that wasn’t the case this time.
Compared to the other two lenses as well as our now non-functioning XF 27mm f/2.8, the XF 30mm f/2.8 was fast and sure in autofocus and manual focus modes and the focusing ring was easy to use with just a fingertip.
Fujifilm’s choice of a linear motor hence LM in the name was a wise one for the Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro and the company should extend that to all new lenses, especially those that’ll be used for documentary stills and video as well as photojournalism.
I concentrated on stills this time but am sure that the lens would be just as sure, fast and easy to use when making videos.
The XF 30mm f/2.8 is the first “Fujicron” lens to feature a lockable aperture ring allowing you to set it to A for auto and stay there without drifting off.
I’d like to see this as a standard feature for all of Fujifilm’s Fujinon lenses from now onwards.
Other features I appreciated while using the lens are its sturdy construction and tapered front but 43mm filter diameter that can be stepped up to 52mm for neural density filters.
I used it without its cylindrical plastic lens hood as that didn’t seem to be available at the time but its optics and coatings very effectively guarded against flares from in-frame light sources.
Fujifilm USA’s tech expert Michael Bulbenko recommends the Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro as “best choice for your first Fujifilm X-Mount prime lens” and I couldn’t agree more.
Although I didn’t use it in full macro mode at 1:1, just the fact that I had that option was comforting.
As the photographs above attest, it performed admirably whatever distance I was from the subject and I’d feel very comfortable carrying it day after day as my default prime lens especially on an X-Pro camera or the coming X-S20, for stills and video.
It wouldn’t be out of place on an X-H2S or an X-H2 flagship DSLR-style camera given its 40 megapixel sensor readiness.
Stephen Pierce makes photographs and videos for a range of prestige clients mostly located overseas in Europe and the United Kingdom with subjects ranging from architecture through travel to live performance and he relies on a number of Fujifilm cameras and lenses in the company’s APS-C/Super 35 X and medium format/large format GFX ranges.
He has often shared his appreciation for the large sensor size and high megapixels count of Fujifilm’s GFX cameras and the 40 megapixel sensor in the X-H2 and X-T5, allowing his clients the option of heavy cropping to suit a range of layouts and usages.
He also expounds the virtues of recording video in 8K and 6.2K when the option to crop is useful in post-production.
I’m yet to have the opportunity of using the X-H2S and X-H2 for video cannot comment on their capabilities there but have borrowed an X-H2 to document the first Fujifilm House of Photography workshop in January 2023:
As usual Stephen Pierce presented an in-depth run-through of both X-H series cameras’ capabilities and benefits, and if we had the means we’d have plunked the cash down for one of each.
I’m not currently working on commission from Australian or foreign clients as I used to, on stills or videos, but if I were then my core kit would comprise an X-H2S and an X-H2 for stills and video and two X-Pro cameras for immersive documentary stills photography as I find rangefinder-style cameras work best for me there.
I’d add vertical battery grips for both X-H series cameras for ease in shooting in portrait aka vertical orientation and for long battery life from all three NP-W235 batteries in this combination.
The form factor of Fujifilm’s compact aka “Fujicron” lenses works well with the X-Pro series’ optical viewfinder – which I rely upon for most of my documentary work – but Fujifilm needs to radically extend the range of focal lengths in this range and upgrade some existing compact lenses to Fujicron optical quality and mechanical functionality.
Given Fujifilm is now taking video production seriously the company needs to upgrade its Fujinon XF prime and variable focal length lens range to parity in stills and video performance, taking full advantage of the company’s legendary Fujinon Cinema lens design expertise.
Let’s see what Fujifilm has to announce in its coming X Summit in Bangkok!
I made the photographs with a Fujifilm X-Pro2 digital rangefinder camera and Fujifilm’s Fujinon XF 30mm f/2.8 R LM WR Macro prime lens.
The X-Trans raw files were processed in DxO PhotoLab Elite with DxO FilmPack Elite and DxO ViewPoint as plug-ins, all using DxO’s DeepPRIME XD – for extra detail – denoising and demosaicing feature as well as the Kodak Portra 160VC – for vivid colour – film simulation.
While researching the background of the great Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker I learned that he was educated in optics and photography at the same technical university in Dresden as the great American photographer Imogen Cunningham, both studying under Professor Robert Luther.
Krasker attended the university some years after Cunningham and their photographic styles were very different as they were of different outlooks, with hers pictorialism while his was based more in the Bauhaus, objectivity and realism.
I’ve always believed it’s a good idea to keep experimenting and keep learning by doing things the opposite of my customary approach every so often, so I picked up the Canon EOS 5D Mark II that my maternal uncle Sir Brian Bell gave me before he died, attached our Panagor PMC 28mm f/2.8 Auto M42-mount vintage manual focus to it and made the photograph above through a less-than-clean plate glass window.
DxO has profiled the camera’s sensor but not this 1970s vintage lens so I’ve yet to work out the best settings for processing the camera’s .CR2 raw files.
I chose the Color Positive Film/Fuji Provia 100F film simulation in DxO PhotoLab Elite with DxO FilmPack Elite as a plug-in and went for a bit of a vintage look.
The Panagor’s 28mm focal length is my favourite for documentary work and daily carry but I only have it in this vintage prime lens right now and not in primes for Micro Four Thirds (14mm) or APS-C (18mm).
I do have 28mm-equivalent focal lengths in several variable focal length lenses in those two sensor formats but there’s nothing like relying on a 28-equivalent prime for daily photography.
Let’s hope that Fujifilm releases a Fujicron-style Fujinon XF 18mm f/2.0 R WR compact prime lens soon so it can be my daily lens of choice on our X-Pro series cameras.
There’s an obsession where we live for imitating vintage architecture from other lands such as this imitation of a French château built of composite panelling and what appear to be foam mouldings.
Other homes nearby are based on 1920s Hamptons houses, Georgian townhouses, Italian hilltop villas, Andalusian villas, Cape Cod cottages or other house styles so poorly suited to the climate that their owners must often have their air-conditioning and wood fireplaces going 24/7.
This house seems to have been abandoned and its owner currently lives in the little Cape Cod-style cottage at its left.
The owner bought the land and the tiny cottage that was on it from an elderly couple who had planted a magnificent forest of protected Sydney Turpentine trees, our favourite Australian tree, around it, forming a superb environment for native plants and animals, many of them also protected species.
The new owner illegally destroyed the Turpentines, the mounds and nests of the protected species and gladly paid the $100,000 fine for having done so.
The microclimate here has become much harsher as a result.
This practice is very common now.
The City of Sydney is one of my favourite destinations for long walks through the central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs and I love being there when the sun is shining and people are everywhere.
On those days I fix a Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R to my X-Pro2 and look for deep vistas with sunlit foreground figures engaged in oftentimes inexplicable things.
On days like this one where the clouds sucked the light and the life out of the streets and made everything look like it was all pressed hard up against itself I’d usually choose a narrower focal length but today I thought I’d try exaggerating how everything felt squashed up together with a 75mm-equivalent lens via the Fujinon XF 50mm f/2.0 R WR Fujicron lens.
I processed these Fujifilm X-Trans raw files in DxO PhotoLab Elite’s Digital Films/Fuji Classic Chrome film simulation while using DeepPRIME XD denoising and demosaicing for maximum detail.
Header image art direction by Carmel D. Morris.
With NAB just over and May’s Fujifilm Summit coming soon there is plenty of subject matter to keep us going with hardware and software-based articles and items relating to documentary photography and video.
But we’ve had to make the decision to take a break from all that for a little while in order to do some serious work on The Robert Krasker Project.
We’ve reached the limit of what we can find out for free about Robert Krasker and his many achievements in feature film cinematography during his brilliant career that extended from the early 1930s until his premature retirement due to ill health in the mid-1960s.
He, his life and his work were remarkable and all of us in the screen industries should be proud of him and know his name and achievements, but we seem to have acquired a national amnesia about him.
Robert Krasker is one of many remarkable creative Australians we’ve forgotten in this way.
We’re seeking to help change that for the better.
We’ve been coming up against what amounts to paywalls that are in the way of further, deeper research, so now we’re working out how to obtain funds and thus access to more information.
Even without breaching those paywalls there are a number of useful things that we could be doing but again they cost money in time and resources and the means of production.
If you wish to assist us in this effort, please consider donating via our PayPal account that’s linked to at top right of each page under the heading of Please Donate.
We’ll still be attending the Fujifilm House of Photography’s free workshop events in Sydney and will be documenting them and photographing them in our usual way.
We’ll also be producing some of our more usual articles if they warrant drawing time and attention away from The Robert Krasker Project.
There was a saying going around some years ago amongst documentary photographers that the most interesting images are to be made before and after an event and not so much during it.
That was the case to some degree during this Fujifilm Australia workshop presented by Stephen Pierce on how to best look after your cameras, their sensors and your lenses with a free sensor clean for each participant thrown in for free when they’d normally cost around AU$100 depending on the condition of your gear.
As usual Mr Pierce shared much of his hard-won in-depth knowledge and if I’d had a free cameraless hand I’d have been taking copious notes as some audience members were doing, but I did my best to commit as much as I could to memory.
I’ve been thinking about video production quite a bit lately while researching the late, great and forgotten Australian feature film cinematographer Robert Krasker in preparation for writing up a treatment for a documentary or a series of short movies about him and his many achievements.
That may explain why I felt compelled to photograph this event in more of a cinematic way or was it the presence at the event of some terrific Fujifilm hybrid cameras such as the X-H2S and the X-H2 and more video-oriented lenses like the Fujinon XF 18-120mm f/4.0 LM PZ WR, Fujinon MKX 18-55mm T2.9 and Fujinon MKX 50-135mm T2.9.
Add a Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R to the 18-120mm f/4.0 and the X-H2S along with a Tascam CA-XLR2d-F audio adapter and you’d have the core of a powerful, versatile documentary stills and video production kit.
Fujifilm Australia’s series of free ‘Discover Fujifilm’ workshops is a good demonstration of free being better than fee.
They may be motivated by the need to get feet in the door of the Fujifilm House of Photography in Sydney and to get Fujifilm cameras, lenses and accessories into the hands of customers for try-before-buy, but they’re also an example of sharing the benefits by conveying knowledge that isn’t available all in one place and for the price of just showing up.
No other camera and lens brand does that here in Sydney.
The quality and volume of the knowledge that Fujifilm Australia has been sharing, thanks to presenter Stephen Pierce and his decades of professional experience in photography and videography, is beyond anything I experienced at university art school and TAFE colleges where what was taught was not worth the cost.
This workshop went one step further with free sensor cleaning for one camera from each participant and it looks like every one of them brought a camera.
The sensor cleaning was done by Fujifilm Australia camera and lens technician Zaffer and he went further than the sensor, cleaning the rest of the cameras and attached lenses.
Here is Zaffer cleaning our Fujifilm X-Pro2 and Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R:
I made these photographs with our venerable Fujifilm X-Pro2 digital rangefinder camera with a Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R and XF 23mm f/1.4 R then processed the X-Trans raw image files with DxO PhotoLab Elite, DxO FilmPack Elite and DxO ViewPoint using the Kodak Portra 160VC colour negative film simulation and DeepPRIME XD.
I rarely if ever used colour negative films during my analog photography days preferring to give my corporate and magazine clients colour transparencies to eliminate the extra step of printing from negatives and to keep more control over the result.
The wide and ever-growing range of accurate film simulations in DxO’s software tempts me to try out films I have never used and it’s fun to apply various film simulations to a series of short projects made in the same place under similar lighting to see what they have to offer.
My default film simulation is Fujifilm Astia for its subtly accurate skin tones but lately I’ve been enjoying trying out some Kodak and Fujifilm colour negative simulations that have more pronounced ways of rendering colour and particularly skin tones.
Another variation I’d like to try in these projects soon is in focal lengths.
I love Fujifilm’s Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R and 23mm f/1.4 R for their manual clutch focus rings and their speed and ease for manual focusing given the age of our X-Pro2’s autofocusing capability.
A variable focal lens may help produce a very different way of documenting these events especially if it offers a reasonably long focal length range, with my ideal being from 14mm through to 180mm, the range I’m most used to for documentary stills and video as well as portraiture ai the longer end.
That’s why I’m keen to put the Fujinon XF 18-120mm f/4.0 LM PZ WR to the test with a Fujifilm X-H2S.
Its f/4.0 maximum aperture should not be a problem as I usually follow the old news photographer’s rule of “set f/5.6 and be there”, stopping down to f/8.0 for deeper focus in crowds.
Supplement the 18-120mm f/4.0 with the 14mm f/2.8 and you have all the focal lengths you could wish for, the first on the X-H2S and the second on the X-Pro2.
If required to photograph in available darkness, say during an in-studio lighting demonstration, then the best choice might be the Fujinon XF 18mm f/1.4 R LM WR Fujilux prime lens.
I’m hoping that Fujifilm will see fit, though, to create a worthy successor to the old pancake-style XF 18mm f/2.0 R in the form of a Fujicron XF 18mm f/2.0 R WR, a focal length perfectly suited to the coming X-Pro4 so long as it offers 18mm bright-lines in its optical viewfinder and X-Pro2-style OVF dual magnification.
For a classic two-camera, two-lens documentary combination I can’t think of a better companion to a Fujicron XF 18mm f/2.0 R WR than the Fujicron XF 50mm f/2.0 R WR, an incredible lens too-often overshadowed by its larger, flashier sibling the XF 50mm f/1.0 R WR.
One benefit of Fujifilm Australia’s ‘Discover Fujifilm’ Camera & Lens Care Workshop at the Fujifilm House of Photography in Sydney on Saturday 15th April 2023 was one free sensor clean per attendee, done by Fujifilm Australia camera and lens technician Zaffer.
One benefit of arriving well before the start of the event this time, no thanks to Sydney’s public transport system, was being at the head of the queue to get our Fujifilm X-Pro2 and Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R cleaned.
Normally such a clean would cost around AU$100 so thank you, Fujifilm Australia!
The closest I’ve come during the digital era to the waist-level photography of the analog era via such cameras as Rolleiflex TLRs aka twin-lens reflexes and medium-format single-lens reflex cameras with their waist-level finders such as Bronicas, Hasselblads, Kowas, Mamiyas and more is Panasonic’s Lumix GX8.
My first Rolleiflex TLR was a beautiful grey one and I loved its perfect normal lens with 75mm focal length a little wider than standard normal’s 80mm.
I’ve always preferred the more naturalistic vision of perfect normal and so, as it turned out, did Oskar Barnack of Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar when he was creating his trio of Ur-Leica 35mm cameras and chose a Micro-Summar 42mm f/4.5 for them.
Popular belief had it that he actually chose a 50mm lens and that’s been used to justify the longer focal length as default for 35mm aka “full frame” or “full format” cameras for decades now.
Those 35mm cameras were long referred to as miniature and anything but full, by the way.
Even 120 roll-film cameras were rewarded with some degree of contempt by press photographers wielding 4″x5″ sheet film Speed Graphics, Crown Graphics and Linhofs until the latter cameras seemed to leap out of their users’ mitts to become wedded to tripods as stand and not hand cameras.
During the last days of analog being the default for magazine and newspaper photography I saw many such photographers supplementing their 35mm rangefinder or single-lens reflex cameras with a Rolleiflex TLR for their more serious personal photography projects.
I had two different Rolleiflex TLRs, one with perfect normal lens and the other with standard normal lens, but I would have also loved a Rolleiflex Wide and a Tele-Rolleiflex like some of the British fashion and portrait photographers I knew when living in the UK.
The great documentary photographer Walker Evans was also a longtime user of all three types of Rolleiflex TLRs as proven by the image above of his last three.
All is not lost for waist-level photography during the digital era, however, as Panasonic’s Lumix GX8 and GX9 Micro Four Thirds cameras have tilting electronic viewfinders aka EVFs that ably recreate the waist-level experience.
Leica also offers a waist-level viewfinding experience on its more recent Leica M System cameras with a hotshoe-mounted tilting EVF as does Sigma with a side-mounted tilting EVF for its fp L 35mm-sensor hybrid camera.
Fujifilm, in turn, offers a tilting EVF for its older large format aka medium format digital cameras the GFX50S and GFX100 though it remains to be seen if the company will make future GFX cameras that can be used with the Fujifilm EVF-GFX2 Removable 5.76m-Dot OLED EVF or its possible successor.
I certainly hope they do as it would be tragic if photographers were denied the waist-level experience that so easily comes with waist-level EVFs.
I often find myself having to bend and twist when using non-tilting cameras at my subjects’ mid-height to avoid undue perspective effects and it never really turns out as I’d have liked it, never quite at the perfect height or angle to subject.
If not photographing in bright daylight or even cloudy days with lightbox skies then waist-level viewfinding can be simulated via a tilting or fully-articulated LCD screen but the catch is that their brightness is never enough to easily view the screen and design a beautiful image with everything perfectly aligned.
The GX8’s tilting EVF is just bright enough when used with its optional deeper rubber eyecup to help design Rolleiflex TLR-like images and there are two added benefits to the camera.
First is that its M43 sensor allows far deeper depth-of-focus than a 120 roll-film camera at the same aperture, usually f/8.0 by my default.
Secondly is that you have a wide range of focal lengths in M43 prime and variable aka zoom lenses available to you, far more than Rolleiflex’s four.
I made the images in the gallery above with my beloved Panasonic Lumix GX8 and Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro variable focal-length lens then processed the Bayer raw files in DxO PhotoLab Elite with its standalone applications cum plug-ins DxO FilmPack Elite and DxO ViewPoint using the Kodak BW 400CN film simulation.
Am I seeing things or does DxO’s list of monochrome, colour transparency and colour negative film simulations created from real analog film-stocks grow a little longer each time FilmPack and PhotoLab are updated?
I would love it if DxO added Kodak Panatomic-X with its creamy high-values were added to the ever-growing list of simulations despite the film having been tragically discontinued in the 1980s.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/how-muriel-box-broke-down-doors-female-directors-britain
“She directed more films than any woman in Britain, then or now, yet the accomplishments of Muriel Box are still not widely recognised. Ahead of a new season of her work, BFI curator Josephine Botting celebrates a pioneer in telling women’s stories.”
Well Peter Poete and I can’t agree on everything such as the questionable and prone-to-fail flip-down LCD screen with sub-monitor and the original, clanky and slow-autofocusing Fujinon XF 18mm f/2.0 R “pancake” lens but we do seem to have common ground with the best of the X-Pro2 and some of the worst of the X-Pro3.
We’re both also holding out high hopes for the hopefully coming-soon Fujifilm X-Pro4 and want to see it appearing with in-body image stabilization aka IBIS, 40 megapixel sensor, updated optical viewfinder aka OVF to accommodate 18mm lenses, X-Processor 5, current X-H and X-T battery and updated electronic viewfinder aka EVF, and in my case more, much more, which you’ll see in my two articles in the list of links below.
Mr Poete writes that “would I part with my Fujifilm system in perspective [?] if there was no X-Pro4? I don’t know, but to be honest, the chances of that happening would increase considerably” and I agree with him there too given that the X-Pro2 gave me back the OVF and its unique way of seeing and photographing that I thought I’d lost forever when I had to sell my Leica M-4Ps and their five Leica M-System lenses.
https://peterpoete.de/x-pro4_hope/
I’ve been struck by how so many professional and enthusiast photographers have come out online in support of the X-Pro2 and against the X-Pro3 while hoping for the best of both in the coming X-Pro4, in recent comments at Fuji Rumors and various Fujifilm camera and lens online fora.
I thought I was alone in wanting so much more for the X-Pro line of cameras but it’s great to see that many out there love digital rangefinder cameras with actual OVFs almost as much as I do.
Let’s hope that Fujifilm has some encouraging things to tell and show about the X-Pro4 at its upcoming Fujifilm X Summit on May 24, 2023.
I would also state that, like reader Oli and Mr Poete himself, that “I would love to see an update to the Fujicrons (14/16/18), keep them small but make them faster. I‘m not so keen on the new f1.x versions as they are bulky and do not that much „classic“ on the XPro.”
Fujicron, please enlarge your currently small but needing to be big collection of Fujicron lenses given they so perfectly fit the X-Pro camera line as well as the other-than-flagship Fujifilm X camera line-up.
Again, I’ve written about the Fujicrons I want to see in the two articles at the base of my list of links below.
And I want to see an excellent Fujicron-style XF 18mm f/2.0 R WR released alongside the X-Pro4 to make a perfect combination of camera plus lens for discrete and immersive documentary photography and photojournalism.
UNITITLED.NET 