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| Sunrise over the Smokys from the Foothills Parkway (click to enlarge) X-T2, 50-140mm f/2.8 lens @ 68.7mm; 1/13th sec. @ f/22; ISO 200 (tripod) |
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States. There is no entrance fee as well! We just happened to be there during one of its busiest weeks as typically the last week in October represents peak fall foliage. However, due to a summer long drought, color was spotty, but could be found.
All images were made with the Fuji X-T2 and Fuji lenses, then edited in Lightroom CC. Each are captioned as to which lens and what lens settings were utilized if you have interest in those technical things.
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| 50-140mm f/2.8 lens @ 110.6mm; 3.1 sec. @ f/16 plus polarizing filter; ISO 200 (tripod) |
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| 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 20.6mm plus polarizing filter; 12.0 sec. @ f/11; ISO 200 (tripod) |
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| 10-24mm f/4 lens @ 24mm with polarizing filter; 1/13th sec. @ f/16; ISO 200 |
Dennis A. Mook
All content on this blog is © 2013-2016 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.
Dennis,
ReplyDeletelink on your website to About Me (I assume contact link is there) is broken. Have you used Wasabi etc batteries with X-T2, or must one suck it up and buy the Fujis? And, how are they to keep sensor clean?
Thanks,
Rick
Rick, I have not. I have used them in an Olympus E-M1 and I did not experience any issues. Also, I was recently talking with a photographer who has and he said that he felt it was worthwhile. No problems, but didn't last as late no as the Fuji batteries so he carried more of them.
DeleteDear Dennis,
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is (the joy of) your new Fuji XT2, but anyway, you produced a lot of very fine and atmospheric images this trip. Inspiring!
Ton van Schaik (Netherlands)
Thank you Ton. It is that Dutch blood from my ancestors that makes the difference!
DeleteI am curious about your choice of apertures. Except for the f/22, presumably to get a better sunstar, in this set you're at f/11 and f/16. While I have not personally tested this, are these not apertures that enter into the dread "diffraction zone?" While neither I nor anyone else will see this (or the increased depth of field) on these small images on a computer screen, how about prints? Have you printed many of these and have you done comparisons with similar images done at wider aperture, the eternal conflict between depth of field and diffraction.
ReplyDeleteEric, thank you for your question. I have not printed any of these as I've been traveling extensively the past couple of months. But, I don't anticipate any noticeable diffraction softening from using f/11 or f/16 with the Fuji gear. For JPEGs, Fuji has built in "lens optimization" which improves the images in respect to vignetting, distortion and edge sharpness. I also found it positively affects diffraction softening. For RAW images, in my tests, f/11 shows so little softening that you really have to look to find it. F/16 shows a bit more, but with judicious editing one can pretty much counteract it with selective sharpening. As you see, I don't hesitate to use either aperture and these will be submitted to a stock agency for licensing.
DeleteIf you haven't done a lot of printing, you will find out that you will see a lot more image defects (for lack of a better word) on your computer screen than you will in a print. For example, digital noise you can easily see on a computer screen may be nonexistent in a print. Many of the tests you read, for practical purposes, will not be applicable in our everyday world. Many differences in lenses and lens sharpness are "theoretically" there, in a sense that a bench test will discern differences in lens sharpness, but in a practical everyday sense, won't be detected because we are not looking at files at 100% or 200%. On paper and in reality are two different things. I think some of these reviewers really do a disservice to average photographers in the fact that some worry that their lenses and images won't be excellent when, in reality, one can't see a difference.