Time.
Madonna sang that it goes by so slowly, doesn’t feel like it… of course time actually goes by at a linear rate (unless you’re frequently making trips into space) – but it doesn’t feel like it.
The cat’s just about to turn seven, our daughter is about to turn six, I’m about to turn… ah never mind đŸ˜€
But what’s gone by really fast, is the two years it’s been since I bought the X-Pro2.
I still clearly remember the almost snap decision to buy one… deciding less than a day before I was due to return to Portugal from the family home in the UK. I drove to Fujifilm UK’s HQ (mercifully only about 20 miles from my folks place) to collect it as next day delivery would have seen me already back in Portugal, the flight times back then were decidedly ‘red eye’ – thank goodness that’s changed.
What do we well I do when I get a new camera? I take a lot of shots of anything I can!!
I want to feel the camera, play with the functions and also to have a veritable banquet of photographs dross and crap to sort through to understand my new acquisition đŸ™‚
Back then I’d been happily shooting with the X-Pro1 for a while.
My first instinct with the X-Pro2 was simply to cookie-cutter port my X-Pro1 workflow to the new body.
This was almost certainly a mistake, but the biggest mistake was undoubtedly being so enamoured with the new camera that I was pretty blind with excitement that I didn’t objectively appraise my output.
I look back at these images now, and I see colour problems: too much saturation and colour casts.
Most of these images were just kitschy shite; flowers, the cat, the view out of my window, stuff in the kitchen yada yada!
These days I have two basic Fujifilm X-Trans iii workflows. My “RAF Hack” method and a standard RAF method.
So for this week’s X-Pro2 article, I’m going revisit five images from those halcyon days of inaugural X-Pro2 ownership and re-process them using my standard RAF method.
So let’s see what’s changed and if the pictures look better after two years and goodness knows how many images…
…I mean they really should right?
2016
2018
2016
2018
2016
2018
2016
2018
2016
2018
The first thing that leaps to my eye, is just how eye wincingly more saturated my initial  X-Pro2 workflow was… I just had Ken Rockwell on the phone asking me to tone it down a bitÂ đŸ™‚
The second thing that leaps out, is the orange colour cast to many of the shots.
Yes, yes I too am sitting here wondering how I missed that first time aroundÂ đŸ™‚
The 2018 processed shots are flatter, more natural looking – cooler colours (as in colder tones, not that the 2018 edits are like Paul Newman), the 2016 edits are OTT vibrant, they scream hey look I’ve got a new camera and it has Fuji colour. The 2018 edits are more tool like, they seem to say this is what I saw, this is how it looked
The flavour of my edits could almost be representative of my journey with the camera, the big rush of something new to the calm nature of contentment and cookie cutter repeatability of a set process.
For the people shots this is no bad thing! But for the other subjects, seeing those big brash colours I’m reminded of the big brash smile on my face when I got the X-Pro2 and it’s a happy memory.
Happy second birthday X-Pro2Â đŸ™‚
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The X-Pro Series Content: Referenced and All In One Place
The X-Pro Series Content: A Contents Page with Page Numbers and a Brief Description
Adam Bonn Fotografia 