FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO1250)
We keep coming back to this shop but not for shopping and we are not alone.
This a not the typical furniture and living accessories shop. This is an old castle with a lot of big rooms with high ceilings. I always loved those high ceilings that remind me on me on our flat when we used to live in Vienna. Very beautiful to look at but also hard to heat in the winter. The temperature in the castle was also a reminder of my first years in Vienna when I lived in a small flat that was always cold in winter.
There was no need to put off our winter jackets in the castle too.
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO800)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO3200)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO4000)
I just love this place and it is perfect for playing with a new camera. There are fantastic colours but there is also a mix of natural and artificial light, lots of contrast and some of the rooms are rather dark. Sounds like a real challenge for a camera.
Before digital photography the only way to take good images here would be with a camera mounted on a solid tripod and even then the high contrast and mixed lighting would have made it very difficult to get good results.
Today that’s not the case. Clean high ISO images, excellent auto white balance and a high dynamic range makes this a walk in the park for most modern digital cameras but I still think that Fuji has an advance here when it comes to colours. Of course I can’t proof it because I haven’t used any other camera that day. The only thing I know is that when I shot with the Nikon Z6 for a couple of weeks (before it became a Christmas gift for my mother in law) I noticed that I had to correct white balance a couple of times and that there was a yellow colour cast in some images.
We get used to good or perfect quickly and take it for granted. Only if we step back we will recognise how good it was. It’s the same with high end audio gear. The step back to a lesser product is much more obvious than the initial gain caused by the better performing piece of gear. So instead of A/B listing I only listen to the new gear for a while. After a couple of days I get back to my old setup. If it’s an obvious step back I most likely will buy the product. I will not buy a Nikon for myself. Don’t get me wrong. Nikon Z are great cameras but at least the Z6 is no real upgrade regarding image quality. When I compared the Z6 with the 24-70/4 to my Fuji with the 16.55/2.8 I preferred the image of the Fuji.
I’m aware that the Z7 plus the 24-70/2.8 would be a different story but I’m not willing to deal with such a big, heavy and expensive camera again. And most of all I got spoiled by the perfect out of camera white balance and colours of my Fujis.
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO1600)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO1000)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO640)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO1250)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO500)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO3200)
There are no people in those shots simply because there were not many people in this shop because we are right in the middle of a pandemic. I have no problem with that. I also prefer to avoid the infection if possible. At the end this is not street photography. Street photography would be unthinkable without people but the images of those rooms work better without any people in it.
Those rooms almost look like they are parts of a dollhouse. Detailed, colourful, exotic, unreal. Almost like a set in a Wes Anderson movie.
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/4.5, 1/60 sec, ISO2500)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO1000)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO1000)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO320)
Of course I could have taken my Fuji X-H1 in order to shoot at lower ISO settings to get an even better image quality but I wanted to take out my new camera. Plus I prefer to shoot with a small and light camera.
The last couple of years I simply set Auto-ISO to max out at ISO 6.400 and the slowest shutter speed to 1/30s or even 1/60s in poor light and to 1/250s if there is plenty of light. This way I hardly loose any shots because of camera shake or subject movement. Even with IS or IBIS I usually don’t go below 1/30s because usually I do have people in the frame.
The sensor in the X-Pro3 is excellent but it is no improvement to the sensor in the X-Pro2 when it comes to high ISO. So I’m not sure if I want an APS-C sensor with a higher resolution. I sure don’t want that if it comes with inferior low light performance.
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO2000)
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (14mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO2500)
These rooms are so fantastic, so colourful and filled with stuff that it is easy to forget that this is just a shop and that everything on display is for sale. Strangely we never bought any furniture here but I think the reason simply is that we don’t live in a castle. When we discovered this place we already bought the furniture for our house a long time ago and unlike those shops we don’t constantly redecorate.
The second reason is price. The items here are on the high side of the spectrum. That’s why I didn’t get this beautiful carousel. It’s not that I don’t love those things – I really do but that carousel was just too expensive for something that you take out once a year for a couple of weeks around Christmas and then put it away for the rest of the year.
If I would live in a castle I would have one colourful room filled with carpets, paintings and glass cabinets filled with beautiful things and Kitsch that I would visit on a dark and grey day.
FUJIFILM X-Pro3 (23mm, f/2, 1/125 sec, ISO1000)