As you may suspect I own a few cameras, but I love the idea of having a dedicated one for black and white photography. In my arsenal is a Fujifilm XE-2S, the updated version of the XE-2 that was first launched in 2013. That’s an old unit in the world of cameras, although it is often agreed that most cameras made after 2016 are good enough for the average photographer. The XE-2 is, in my opinion, a good example of this. Its auto-focus is a little slow and film simulations limited compared to today’s cameras, but for static black and white shots its monochrome setting produces lovely images.
Often, when I can’t be bothered to go out shooting for a whole day, I’ll grab a camera and set myself a little project to see how many ‘keepers’ I can capture in an hour. I call these ‘one hour photo walks’. The aim is to produce five photographs that work together as a set that I’m not embarrassed to publish.
It had been a while since I’ve used this camera. The battery was dead so I lost all my settings, and as a consequence there’s a few photographs shot at high ISO that weren’t intentional. Whatever, it didn’t matter because the great thing about the XE-2 is that it renders high ISO well. Fujifilm is famous for its filmic look, and part of that is the sensor that produces digital noise more akin to film grain better than many digital cameras.
These photographs were taken in the space of an hour, at high noon, on a bright day.
This is a rewrite of a recent article posted on Jamie’s photography blog, which dives a little deeper into the technical aspects of the camera used.
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