For my birthday this year my Mother brought me this Fuji Experience day in the Peak District. I have often like many places in the UK, past through this region many times but never stopped to explore, so I was excited to take part in this. Added to that was my lusting after another Fuji camera because with this experience we were going to be able to use the X-T3 coupled with various lenses for the day.
The date was to be Thursday October 24th, so I decided to drive up the day before and stay at the George Hotel in Hathersage for the night, as we were due to meet there at 9:15am there anyway, so all I had to do was get up have breakfast and walk into the reception area to join them.
The Fuji Ambassador / instructor for the day was Chris Upton (website), who has many years experience both as a professional photographer and teacher.
After a preliminary chat and the handing out of Fuji cameras we set off in the minivan for our photo-shoot experience. I love street photography and Fuji had just announced that the X-Pro 3 was being released in November and as we had a couple of Fuji staff with us I decided this would be a great opportunity to quiz them on what that new camera could do. Imagine my surprise mixed with shock and joy when James from Fuji took the loaned X-T3 off me and handed my his Pre-Production X-Pro3 to use for the day!
I grew up composing photographs through the viewfinder and when I owned the Fuji X100F I would walk the streets of London with the digital screen turned off and either shoot from the hip knowing the field of view I had or again by composing in the viewfinder, so getting a camera where this digital back is hidden is bliss for me. OK on a tripod taking landscapes, the screen is helpful, and the X-Pro3 was able to do that without much of an issue.
Lenses on the day were in short supply, the new 16-80mm for example there was only one, so it was a case of borrow for a few shots then hand it back. I think it would have been better to equip us all with the kit lens and have a few others like that new one as try outs. As it was I found myself increasingly being forced to use a lens not suited for what I wanted to take so repeatedly pulled out my Sony A7iii to get the shots that I wanted.
Being a new camera there isn’t any support that I have found for the RAW files, so I will only be able to show jpgs. Don’t expect stunning images I threw caution to the wind and hand held many shots at very high ISO, just to see what sort of results I would get. Unfortunately I can’t get to see because the camera will have done all of the noise reduction in the jpgs. I would have preferred to process the raw files.
However I thoroughly enjoyed my day and fell in love with the X-Pro3. Chris was a great instructor and managed to give us all some individual time. I offered to look after the X-Pro3 for a while but James declined my kind offer and took it back :(
This is a provisional draft of my day and I’ll update it over the week-end with a link to the photos taken.