Fading Light with two Fujifilm Mirrorless Cameras

Here is a collection of images I shot recently in the City of London using the Fujifilm GFX 50R and Fujifilm X-H1.

The lens used on the GFX was the wonderful 50mm f/3.5 pancake, and the lens used on the X-H1 was the exceptional walk-about prime 18mm f/2.

What all the images have in common is that they were shot in fading light, either at the time of sunset or shortly after.

The weather for the last couple of months here in UK has been pretty awful, storm after storm has swept through from the Atlantic and made everyone’s lives miserable. The only good thing from a photography stand-point is that the sky is always changing, and the low height of the sun at this time of year gives rise to opportunities for long shadows and some lovely golden moments close to sunset.

Whilst I am enjoying the experience of shooting with the GFX 50R, the convenience of the X-H1 with its built-in stabilisation can not be overstated. It’s such a great camera for travel, exploring, for cities and street photography.

Obviously, viewing images hosted on a website like this, there really is no need for a 50Mp sensor or anything like it. Even 24Mp is totally unnecessary. The raw files from both cameras can recover shadow detail equally well, and the colours from both cameras are wonderful. Where the GFX 50R really shines compared to the X-H1 is in terms of maximum print size, but so few people who buy high resolution cameras these days ever regularly print their images.

With both cameras I chose to use just one lens, a prime lens, and to choose my subjects to fit the field of view rather than use a zoom. This is an old-school discipline but a good one. It makes you think, move about and use your feet.

The 50mm lens on the GFX 50R is a really nice focal length, equivalent to 40mm on full frame. The 18mm lens on the X-H1 is equivalent to 27mm on full frame, so rather wider and a classic choice of field of view by many for street photography.

All images here were shot hand held, which meant that I had to crank the ISO up on the GFX 50R rather higher than I would have liked. I’ll always shoot at base ISO if it is possible to do so.

At 1/30th second exposure, I’m getting about a 75% keeper rate with the GFX 50R plus 50mm f/3.5, in other words one in four images shot at that shutter speed have some evidence of shake and so are unusable.

With the X-H1 and its in-body image stabilisation, I was shooting as far as 1/10th second with the 18mm f/2 and not getting any shake in my images. I could probably go even slower but did not want to push my luck.

For me, taking photographs is like composing music, I need to be inspired to successfully do either. I guess there are three main sources of inspiration for me as a photographer: the scene in front of me, how it is lit, and the camera I am holding in my hands. Both the GFX 50R and X-H1 are very inspiring cameras to use, and these last couple of days I have been lucky with the lighting!