with Fuji X10 at OSTFEST 2012 – summer rock festival

I think the best way to evolve in photography is to always carry a camera. Of course, this implies I also take out the camera and shot with it, which unfortunately I still struggle with. Fuji X10 is a wonderful little camera that I can take with me most of the time.

Between 15-17th June, a lot of great rock bands played in Bucharest, at OSTFEST summer rock festival. Great names like Motorhead, Motley Crue and Manowar were joined by lesser known bands. Sometimes these lesser known bands can become the highlight of the festival….

I used the Fuji X10 for fun –  looked for interesting festival participants, tried to catch some atmosphere concert shots and also some photos of the friends I went with. The camera behaved pretty well – and it was definitely the perfect camera I had with me (ie the only one).

Without starting a full camera review, these are the shortcomings of the little Fuji X10:

• the LCD in full sun is very hard to use – and this ties in perfectly with the next quibble

  

• the optical viewfinder has no focus confirmation and suffer from Parallax errors – I knew how the viewfinder works, but using it in practice is something else (which I just have to get used to)
• the autofocus, while pretty snappy, sometimes misfocuses completely and I am left with a beautiful photo of coloured blobs
• battery life is not very great, at least compared to my DSLR
• that’s it!!

It is obvious that Fuji X10 – just a premium compact camera – cannot really compare with a DSLR. And while I could enter the festival grounds with the Fuji without any issues, a DSLR was not acceptable. Besides the previous negatives – I found the Fuji a fun camera, easy to use, that took very nice and sweet photos. I didn’t mind the famous white orbs, I didn’t find any problem with focus speed nor operational speed in general – so in the end I was very happy to bring the camera with me. The new Fuji X20 solves a lot of the problems, and I intend to get one.

And because a blog post without any photos would be shameful for me, I have a full photo gallery.