In the last 48 hours Tasmana has received a lot of heavy rain. Both Esk rivers have risen dramatically showing at least a 500mm increase in the first basin literally over night. The family of Tasmanian hens that live on the small island were hopping around in an agitated frenzy as their home succumbed to the mass of water flowing in from the north Esk river. This image was taken at the little bridge as the water flowed into the main gorge. Fujifilm XE5 hand held 1sec @ ƒ11 on a Viltrox 25mm ƒ1.4. I have been using IBIS since it was first introduced on an Olympus twelve years or so years ago and this version on the Fuji is without doubt is the best manifestation of the technology I have ever used. Fifty years ago as an arts student I could have never imagined that this would have ever been possible…
There is a very good possibility that the first SLR that was placed in the hands of most photography students in the 1960’s was the venerable Pentax spotmatic or the Practica both of which had M42 threaded lens mounts. The Harris College now the University of Central Lancashire had a mix of Pentax and Practica SLR’s that were literally hammered by students learning the basics of the craft, they were both fine cameras some had built in light meters and some were completely manual. Once one learned how to read and set an exposure on the Pentax the process and method at that time became engraved on ones brain. It evolved as the standard for setting and judging every subsequent camera used. For the last twelve years I have used a mix of Olympus M4/3’s and Fuji’s, first XPro1 followed by an XT2 which is still operating perfectly. The XPro1 was/is a wonderful camera, perfection… Almost except for the fact that the processor was so slow it became painful. The XT2 resolved all of my minor Xpro hates up until a few months ago when I realised that I was losing many images due to shake and low light noise when the ISO is set much above ISO 2400. DXO fixed most of the noise issues but the shake, that’s due to age and like many others of my years the elixir of youth has yet to appear! I wanted an XPro4 but that is still some time away so I settled for an XE5 and in short I have to say this little camera is close to miracle territory. Which brings me to tonights post; a landscape, the race course at the top of the phot is exactly 8 Km away as the Raven flies hand held ƒ11 1/850th of second ISO 400 with a Canon 100-300 @ 300mm which is almost 50 years old. I’m impressed, I used this lens mostly for bird and landscape photos and not with any crass intentions I will add that it happens to be for sale on Gumtree for the princely sum of AUD270. Nothing wrong with it in its original rather worse for wear case. And oh yes the XE5 has an align the pointers exposure system… everything old is becoming new again!
