Old Estate Jalan Batu

Feeling a need to shoot something after the recent Germany trip, I packed my Fuji XE2 , 18-55mm and Zeiss 12mm and headed out to an old HDB estate in Singapore.

This estate is one of the first HDB (Housing Board Development) projects. This public housing are mostly one room or 3-rooms type. Next to the estate, there's a park link to National Stadium and there is Geylang river where water sports are held.

The beauty of such estate is the quietness and peacefulness it has compared to the new HDBs development.

There are a few small coffee shops and a wet market in the estate. Going to this place brings me back to the 70s and 80s years.

Munich with Fuji XE2

After my upgrade to Fujifilm XE2, I finally have a chance to use it comprehensively for my trip to Munich Germany.
This is an incentive trip from my company for achieving certain performance . Along with XE2 body, I bring along the 18-55mm and the wide 12mm Zeiss. This time, I left my 55-200mm zoom at home.

Shooting with the XE2 is as easy and responsive a DSLR. 90% of the shots I wanted is captured successfully. There is no frustrations or missed shots as the original x100. It is a much improved from the XE1 (although XE1 is already very good after the latest firmware).

The additional features in XE2 like the wireless transfer made my sharing of photos in Facebook a breeze process. Every night after a shoot, I can use the free wireless service by the hotel where I can transfer the photos to my Samsung Note II and to Facebook to share with my wife and friends back at home.

The other great features in XE2 is the artistic filters just like the Olympus Pen or OMD series which the XE1 does not have. I found myself using alot during the trip as the Germany weather was unpredictable and gloomy.

Nature with Fuji XF-55-200mm

Fuji X series system has an image that it was more for street photography due to it rangefinder body design(XE1.2 and XPro1) and retro SLR body (XT1).

However, I use it as it is a DSLR system from event, nature, landscape to family outings. The light weight and small design has encourage  many to bring it out whenever there is an opportunity. Last time with a DSLR system, I will always tend to leave it at home if there is no plan to shoot and regretted later when the outing has presented many photography opportunities.

These set of photos are taken during my farm outing with my family. As usual the opportunity came unexpected and luckily I had a light system with me.

The 55-200mm XF is a seriously good lens in terms of image output and sweet bokeh it can produce. As the Auto-focus is still not up to par especially during the closest focus distance, I uses the manual focus and focus-peak function to attain sharp focus. See below.

The close-up is shot with the RAYNOX 250 lens attached to the 55-200mmXF.

Kids Performance using XF50-200mm & XE2

As a spectator to my son performance for his kindergarten's 60th anniversary celebration, the best shooting position is where you are seated. The choice of lens is of course the 50-200mm XF. This is lens helped me capture the moments well. The focus speed and accuracy on the Fuji XE2 have dramatically improved and as the refresh rate on the EVF is much more smoother than the older XE1, I felt very comfortable and confidence to shoot in the indoor low light environment.