The X-T20, for the Junkyard?
Just before christmas last year, after my trip to Nepal, I was involved in a really exiting little project…….
I am lucky enough to be able to shoot some of my children’s portraits in some of the coolest places in London, and Gods own Junk Yard, has to be high on the list of SUPER COOL places to shoot!
Hidden away on an industrial estate in Walthamstow, the exterior really hides the secrets of this amazing place.
I first shot a lovely family of 6 here last summer, and knew I needed to come back! It was just amazing!
The images below were both shot on the Fuji X-T2, when the junkyard was open to the public (its a coffee shop also!) it gets very busy! And we needed to be quick.
I had since been asked to create a short film of me using the new X-T20, that I had been given a prototype version to test, and knew the perfect location to do this!
My model was the amazing Misha, whom I had worked with before, so I knew she would perform under pressure! This time we were lucky enough to have the whole place to ourselves for a couple of hours and this gave us a good time to explore and use the entire space, what a treat! If you ever get a chance to visit the Junkyard you must, its a real gem!
We managed to give the camera a proper trial, and it performed as expected, the fast focusing, wide focusing points, and ease of control were perfect to use in this situation!
The new touch screen feature was brilliant, and allowed me to quickly see if the images were in focus and colours correct, an action that is something that we are so used to doing now with our phones, it doesn’t take much to figure out what you are meant to do! Swiping from shot to shot or zooming in or out, its fast and makes sense.
The X-T20 coped extremely well with some tricky lighting and colour scenarios, which for me was reassuring, I should have expected this from the Fuji team, with colour a speciality. We lit all of the portraits with continuous LED’s to combat the colour casts from all of that lovely neon, and the EVF read the light perfectly!
Yet again, I am left feeling that Fuji has made a body that is just instinctive, something to just pick up and shoot, without have to trudge through pages and pages of instructions.
The retro feel and design of the Fuji X system cameras that we already love, paired with the technologies of the present and the future all rolled into one! A great little camera that I am looking forward to introducing into my kit, I may even go for the silver X-T20 how gorgeous is that!
At the end of the project the final out come was this lovely little film highlighting some of the features of the X-T20, movie of portrait photographer Saraya Cortaville. Please take a look!
And of course some great vibrant images for Misha and her mum!
What a little superstar!
And thank you very much to the wonderful Neal James for all of his hard work producing the film.
Saraya x
