Malaysia National Day (Fuji Blog)  (1 of 3)

We were commissioned to shoot the Malaysian national day celebrations at the Hilton in Abu Dhabi a few days ago. We were two photographers so I thought we would both shoot Canon, same setting, JPEG…. Then only one of us sorts the photos and send them to the client. But my colleague omar said,

Man, just keep the Fuji around your neck, you never know what you could get.”

And maaaaaan…. That was some pretty good advice…. Here are some snaps. All straight out of the camera

My setup:

  • 56mm 1.2… All photos at 1.2
  • Shutter speed on auto with the minimum set s 1/125
  • ISO on auto
  • White balance on auto, although in hind sight I think I would prefer it to be colder. Probably tungsten since…. Well, the lights were tungsten
  • Spot metering
  • Classic chrome film simulation

The Experience

Great overall experience. So much more fun than I usually have. Here are some of my thoughts and tips

Autofocus: I had it on continuous almost all the time.

  • The middle focus points worked more accurately than the ones further out, so I had to change up my composition slightly to accommodate. I usually like to fill the frame so the subject’s eye would be somewhere in the top half with the top of his/her head outside the frame. Once I decided to make that adjustment the experience got better
  • Face detection was a little tough. Works like a charm when there’s only one person in the frame. Then behaves quite erattically when there’s more. So I turned it off once I discovered that.
  • The autofocus struggled a little when the subject was backlit
  • I did NOT try zone tracking this time… Slipped my mind actually


Other tips

  • The way fuji handles noise reduction with skin tones at high ISO still needs some work. So I turned down the noise reduction to -2. Unwound rather have grain that super smooth artificial skin
  • The minimum shutter speed of 1/125s was probably too slow for the 56mm but I got away with it only because the subject were moving very slowly and gracefully…. Given the nature of the event. So, next time, I would probably go 1/180s
  • When in continuous shooting mode, I had the priority to release the shutter (as opposed to focusing on the subject). In a corporate setting, the image would be unusable if it’s out of focus (unlike in any other artistic setting where it may produce a cool effect). So I would change that for next time
  • Spot metering was great… Until the subject was backlit. I had the focus point and metering point set to be the same…. I think a nice solution for this would be if fuji can make the spot metering points smaller

Hope this helps someone….
Regards

Waleed Shah

Instagram @waleedshah

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