The Bleak, cold wet weather continued into February, but with a new camera and lens to try out, I was keen to take any slight break in the weather to try and test out all this new gear.

The 100-400mm lens coming with a seperate 1x4 teleconverter was a nice little option to have that I have not tried out before, so it has been interesting to see how it affected things when out in the field. One issue right off the bat is it increases the minimum F/stop at 400mm. Now F/8 may be ok for a monopod in nice bright light, but on an overcast February day it just won’t bring you any usable results as I found out very quickly.

One of the new processes I was also implementing was a shift away from using Adobe Lightroom when editing my photos. I have found that the Capture One programme allows me to shoot in RAW and then add the fujifilm presets to the image afterwards. I am then able to adjust the film simulation to whichever one suits the image best. This process can cut down my editing process dramatically in the long run, and gives my images a certain feel and look to them which I really like.

Once the weather improved however, the Teleconverter and this lens really began to shine, with some really sharp results coming out of the camera more often than not. The dramatic increase in frames per second and silent shooting mode also helped.

I was also lucky enough to finally find the Local white throated Dipper in my local area, which of course decided to stick to the darkest part of the river on a very overcast day. The ISO levels were beyond what I would normally use, so the X-T4 did really well in handling this challenging light situation and getting an ok image of the dipper as it hunted dragonfly larvae on the other side of the fast flowing river.

Once I knew where to find the Dippers, I returned at the end of the month when the weather was more favourable to capture some more images of the birds as they went about their day in the rapids.

Hopefully in the spring proper I can get back here again with a tripod to get some much better images of these birds as they start to nest.

A very short trip to Poland was also squeezed into the month, with only one real opportunity to test out the new camera and lens while I was there.

On a very cold, snowy, overcast day I took myself off to the local forest that I have had so much success with in the past to see if I could get any decent images with both the X-T4 and the X100V in hand.

The next image isn’t going to win me any awards thats for sure but it is my first ever sighting of a crested tit. A bird species that I thought I would never get the opportunity to see let alone try and photograph.

This particular one was traveling with other species high up in the conifer tree tops, so all I could do was point the camera vertically above me and hope.

I finished out the month with another trip to RSPB Newport. This time with the new gear to really put the long lens through its paces. As the weather had improved, and the storms passed on, the day was bright and sunny so the teleconverter stayed on throughout the day. This extra reach was really felt when trying to capture images across the reed beds, bringing the subjects just that little bit closer to me when composing a shot.

The lens is also great at compressing a background, so worked really well at getting images of the industrial buildings that surround the reeds off in the distance.

Also this month, as if a new camera and 100-400mm lens wasn’t enough to play around with, I sold my Canon 35mm F/1.4, a lens that has been a staple in my wedding arsenal for many years, to be replaced by a new 35mm FujiFilm F/2 lens which is lighter and much smaller than the former.

The shift from Canon to the cropped sensor line up of Fujifilm has meant a rethinking of what lenses will suit me best. The Fujifilm X100V which has a 23mm fixed lens, has the focal equivalent of 35mm on a full frame camera, which meant my bulkier Canon 35mm lens was made redundant back in June 2021 when I purchased this little monster of a camera.

Since picking up the FujiFilm X-T4 last month, I wanted something with a little more ‘everyday’ than just the huge telephoto lens, but still a little more zoomed in than the Fujifilm X100V. I plumped in the end for the Fujinon XF 35mm F/2 R WR, which on the cropped sensor of the FujiFilm X-T4 makes a field of view equivalent to 50mm on full frame. In layman’s terms this means that due to the crop factor of x1.5 that these sensors have, a 35mm lens becomes 52.5mm (23x1.5) if used on a full frame camera like my Canon 5D MKIII. This 50mm option should be great for portrait, streets and weddings, and hopefully be a long term replacement for the amazing Canon 35mm lens I have parted ways with. The size and weight of this new lens have already won me over, so hopefully the images it produces does too...

What a nice end to a wet and stormy February, and with covid seemingly consigned to the history books, all’s right with the world, nothing can stop me now…..oh hold up, Putin’s gone and invaded Ukraine……….FML.

FIN