Thanks RonI know it was cloudy with rain yesterday ... Appreciate your thoughts and your images !
I know that u like to shoot with small unobtrusive cameras ... Were the dedicated function buttons helpful ? And we're u noticed by subjects ?
Must say the colors looked rich given the weather
Thanks Eddie for the opportunity to play with the camera too.The dedicated function buttons are pretty much generic to me as I tend not to fiddle much with the settings during my walk-about. The only thing I touched most of the time was the adjustment dial to change the aperture speed so that I can get optimal shutter speed for the look I want (I was on Aperture priority). Assessment to the ISO speed was done prior to entering the space of interest (outdoor to indoor and vice versa) which again was rather easy if you are familiar with the Fujifilm in-camera menu setup. I didn't use the Auto-ISO settings as I find that it can give me inconsistent looking images sometimes due to the AI in the camera reading the scene.
Shooting with the HS 30 is quite an exercise of being trying to be invisible with a dSLR-looking camera as I'm rather large framed but because the HS 30 is so encompassingly nifty, small and very silent, the subjects that I have shot have no idea whether am I shooting them or am I just walking close to them. Not forgetting to mention that the 30X optical zoom helped narrow down the subject of interest from a far distance away.
The one thing for any camera i use on my end is the responsiveness of the AutoFocus. My current X10's AF is a tad slower in response compared to the HS30. Sometimes in a snap decision to raise the camera up to your eye-level and half-pressing the shutter button, the AF must be responsive enough to kick in the moment the button is pressed and when compressed fully, the AF lock is still on the subject. This, I find, was exceedingly good with the HS30.
For the colors, as yesterday was rather a dull greyish day, I chose to use Velvia film simulation to shoot and further, an in-camera adjustment to the density of the tone and color setting does the trick of punching up the festive colors in Chinatown. I would say that the AWB of the HS30 is pretty awesome in mixed lighting conditions (tungsten, fluorescent and ambient in the wet market scenes).
