New camera, new me? (no)

I think I picked the wrong image to showcase my Fujifilm X-S10.

My camera arrived today. I had it delivered my job so I can mess with the settings on my off time. I spent most of that time letting the battery charge instead as it shipped almost completely empty, which is not how Lithium ion batteries usually are when you first get them. I did manage to tweak some things and even paired the camera to my phone with the time I had left.

I don’t want to mess with other settings until after I have taken a few pictures. Even though I consider myself pretty decent with camera gear, this is a new camera system for me, and I need to get a feel for its quirks before I commit to customizing it.

As of this writing, the battery is almost full. So I believe it is time I take this thing out on my hike. I’ll update this blog with a header image and some additional photos and thoughts.

Update:

I am home now. I am starting this update while loading pictures. By the time I finish this sentence, the transfer will be done and I can pick out the photos to use for this post.

Pano of Quail Hill

So… I looked at the images… and they’re pretty good…

One thing I like about Fujifilm cameras is how good the photos look straight out of camera. I don’t have to make a whole lot of changes even if I needed to edit.

I tried to pick scenes that would be difficult for any camera to render.

Granted, I think most cameras nowadays can render good images. They have to, given how well smartphone cameras have been at churning out wonderful photos thanks to a healthy bit of computational power.

And in case you were wondering if I am easily impressed, keep in mind that my opinions are coming from a gigantic gap in camera experience. My Canon 70D was released to the public in 2013 and I haven’t had a whole lot of time with newer cameras, outside of the iPhones, since then.

Because of the time of day, I mostly shot in the camera’s HDR shooting mode. Based on how this photo turned out, I am glad I did.

Anyway, that’s my first impressions on the camera. I’ll have some more thoughts on this as I continue to shoot with the X-S10. I also need to develop a suitable workflow. The process I used to get these images out of the camera and on this blog post has been clunky.

As a side note, I don’t think Lightroom plays well with the files, even the jpegs. I know I said that the images look great right out of camera, but not when Lightroom is the intermediary. I had to replicate the look by tweaking a little bit with the sliders. However, that was relatively painless (I mostly hit the “Auto” button and left it at that), which is what led me to the statement that the files were easy to edit if I ever needed to do so.

Maybe I’ll do a full blown review once I have really gotten to know this camera. Stay tuned.