A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed a few days off with my family. I thought this could be a good opportunity to practice landscape photography. To be honest, this is the kind of photography I love the most, I wish I could do more of it, but it is seriously demanding in terms of time, physical conditions, and locations. Also, in my opinion, it demands the most of my gear, it is very technical, and the learning process seems to be slower than usual, given the lapses between shootings.
However, I think I focus this blog my recent experience using the Fujifilm X-T2 for landscape photography. From the get go, I chose to carry a very light gear: the X-T2, the XF 10-24mm lens, and light tripod and a couple of filters and polarizers. I used this gear to go hiking la India Dormida, and around the shores near the cliff side of a beach in Pedasi.
Never mind the weather conditions or sunlight was ever appropriate. Atop la India Dormida, with mild to strong winds, the camera wasn't much a problem as opposed to the light tripod, and carrying a ultra wide angle lens made good for some photos, but creating a composition was very difficult, and most were to be honest very bland. Next time I re-consider bringing a telephoto lens alongside the ultra wide one. Having a short light tripod made me kneel a lot. Thankfully the tilting screen of the X-T2 helped those low angle shots, but I have to say it was hard to check for sharpness, because for some reason it wouldn't zoom beyond 50%.
Besides that, I have to be honest, in such distracting conditions, with the clouds all around us, it was hard for me to decide how to meter light, where to focus, or whether to bracket a shot or not. For those shots around the cliff of Pedasi, or the river streams of El Valle, I have also noticed the importance to know the sweet spot of your lens. Many pictures I decided to shoot at F16 to slow the shutter speed, but later when doing post I realized the photos were not as sharp in comparison to those I casually shot at F8. Light diffraction is another important lesson when using small apertures.
In addition, using the LCD was very challenging when the light was bright, hard to check for sharpness, unless my camera were at eye level, which in most cases it wasn't.
All said, I could say the Fujifilm X-T2 is a great camera for casual landscape, but even though is weather sealed, I don't think it could take an accidental fall on the ground, or worse, underwater, and I had to be conscious of that fact a lot.
Enough said, let me share a few pictures from this trip.
