Fuji X-T1: Gallery expanded with high ISO, long exposures and more

 

 

If you've been waiting for the second part of our Fuji X-T1 Shooter's Report, there's good news. It's coming soon, and in the meantime, I've just uploaded another batch of gallery images to tide you over. As with the shots from my previous Shooter's Report, these new additions were all shot during my recent vacation in Hong Kong.

Among the 20 new Fuji X-T1 photos I've uploaded, there are a selection of night, high sensitivity and long exposure shots, as well as a couple of in-camera panoramas. (Not to mention some of the vivid neon lighting that Hong Kong is famous for.) And raw files are also available for most of the shots, as well as a couple of versions tweaked in Photoshop, and a three-shot bracketed series stacked in Unified Color's HDR Expose.

 

The Vietnamese cargo ship "Sunrise Orient" shipwrecked on Cheung Chau island.

One shot in particular -- a downsampled version of which appears above -- bears a little explanation. Shortly before my trip, a sizeable Vietnamese cargo ship was wrecked on the island of Cheung Chau after its crew, fearing an imminent capsizing, abandoned ship with the engines still running. I set off in search of the wreck with an idea of what I wanted to shoot, but with no knowledge of precisely where the wreck was to be found. My intention was to get close to the ship's bow, and shoot a bunch of low-to-the-ground, wide-angle exposures to emphasize its size. Each would be tripod-mounted, shot at low sensitivity and with a narrow aperture to get a longer exposure time, and then I'd stack them to blur out the waves even more.

I knew the Sunrise Orient was stranded somewhere on the eastern coast of Cheung Chau, and chose to start my search from what seemed a promising location on the southeast corner of the island that seemed (from a look at Google Earth) to match the shape of the bay as I'd seen it in others' photos of the wreck. As it turned out, I'd chosen the wrong end of the island, and by the time I found the wreck -- with the help of a friendly local photographer who guessed what I was searching for and set me on my way -- I was already down to the dying minutes of the day. Worse still, I had only my partially-charged cellphone to guide me home on an unlit, rough and unfamiliar trail, having not been expecting to be out til sunset, let alone after it.

 

Hong Kong Island's dramatic skyline, as seen from Tsim Sha Tsui. I bracketed my exposure, but ended up deciding to merge the three shots using Unified Color's HDR Expose 3.

That left me time for just two attempts at the long exposure shot I was hoping for, and from a lot further away than I'd intended, as well. (Thankfully, I had Fuji's 55-200mm zoom with me, or it'd have been an entirely lost cause.) Eyeballing the exposure, I was at least in the ballpark, but before correction the shot still appears rather underexposed. Bear that in mind when viewing the gallery, as it was my fault (and bad luck), not the camera's problem. The surreal look of blurred water against crisp ship would probably have worked much better from closer (and in front of the bow), where I'd intended -- but I still rather like the shot, so decided to include it in my gallery nonetheless.

See the freighter shot and a whole lot more besides in my updated Fuji X-T1 gallery, and if you've not already done so, be sure to read Part 1 of my Shooter's Report, as well.