Red and blue

I've been away from this computer for a while, either busy elsewhere or stuck at the work computer!
The weather has also put a slight dampener on my photography, although with the Df being weather-sealed, it shouldn't really stop me from taking pictures.

These were taken recently on a Sunday morning near an inner-city farmer's market and whilst flat-hunting near Bethnal Green. With the farmers market being near Marylebone, you could say that the "farmers market" is a lot more upmarket than Bethnal Green!

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO50

Nikon Df, 50mm, f/2.5, 1/200s, ISO100

Kos

I haven't been blogging recently since I've been on a mini vacation to the Greek Island of Kos. Normally known as a British, teen holidaymakers' party island...we decided to try it out in the off-season for some hiking, sightseeing and the hope of finding some good food!

We weren't disappointed!

I did think about processing some of the RAWs in-camera and transmitting them to the phone but we're not at the hotel for long, either rushing to get out or collapsing with exhaustion after a long day. I've also had a bad cold since day2 so taking photos has been my limit.

Some photos are in square format as I took them that way for Instagram.

A splash of colour

...on a wet day...

Although a bit basic and (as pointed out by Björn) a little unresponsive, the iPhone's doing well so far.

A few years ago I would never (ever) have considered even attempting a night time shot on a phone camera.

Now that the X100s is on eBay I'm paging through the menu wondering which camera next.

The Nikon dSLR is a bit rich and heavy so I may well send that back to the kitchen. The recently announced Sony A7/A7R uses some nice ingredients and won't be super expensive.

I might wait to see what the people on the table next to me order...

I could have left it alone but I wanted a slight watercolour effect on a wet evening. Tastes may vary...

Before...

A different colour palette

Some moments are fleeting, while others linger for a while but also don't last.
When I took this photo I wondered whether there was a better way of capturing the colours and messy texture.
The answer may be "yes", "no" or somewhere in between the two.
I know that the search for beautiful, striking or eye-catching images is one of the cornerstones of my photography but there is also an underlying quest for perfection. The more photos I take the further away I seem to be from photographic nirvana. If I ever get that perfect image, I will probably be the only one to appreciate it, such is the subjectiveness of art.

ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/30, RAW

Where the M&M's live

I was walking with some friends in Greenwich when I stumbled across the home of the M&M's.
Yellow, Red and Blue are here but I'll have to keep hunting for the others...

ISO 320, f/2.8, 1/30s, RAW

Hung out to dry

Before I headed out yesterday I noticed that we were drying several, colourful microfibre cloths all at once.
Even though this is a RAW conversion, I'm still unimpressed by Adobe ACR so I am looking into several options (one being very drastic - guess which one I mean):

1. Move to PhaseOne Capture (for now Express, until their v8 of Pro comes out later this year)
2. Use camera jpegs more frequently
3. Change to Apple OS and use Iridient Developer
4. Leave Fuji entirely (and X-Trans)

The fact that Adobe try to force an upgrade by not supporting new RAW formats was already a PITA and I've spent money on LR4(.4) seeing if I like the LR workflow. The answer was "no". Then I tried (spending more money on) MetaRAW, which allows use of other RAW "engines" without having to upgrade to Photoshop CC. To their credit it's great work but it still doesn't fix my problems with ACR.

Now it's got to the point where I've fairly annoyed and something drastic has got to happen.
To top it all off, the Apple OS option is now part of the equation as my Windows laptop is on its way out.

I'll post an example of my RAW conversion problems later.
In the meantime, here are those microfibre cloths...

ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/210, RAW