X100 Goes to Ubud Market

I had the chance last weekend of a quick trip to Bali with bargain flights on Qatar airlines and naturally jumped at the chance to take the X100 to this exotic setting. I have been to Bali many times but never flown with Qatar before, the main benefit of this airline for a weekend break is that its possible to get a Friday afternoon flight and return late on the Monday evening thereby giving a nice long weekend break by only using one days holiday - great stuff. I decided that for this trip, given how short it was, I would base myself in one location only and avoid traveling around the island as I would normally do. I settled on Ubud and I managed to get a good deal on Agoda for the very nice Puri Garden hotel which is at the bottom end of town on the road from the airport.

Ubud itself is a the cultural centre of Bali and, while reasonably modern, retains the basic Balinese cultural heritage and actually manages this blend pretty well. There are no shortage of interesting sites and subjects and the whole place lends itself beautifully to drifting around X100 at the ready. I wont patronize by reminding how good the X100 is for this kind of trip but I really did find it refreshing to sling it over my shoulder and head off early to get the best light. I found that Ubud market (the real local one, as opposed to the art market next door) was a great location for discrete street style shooting. The market opens at 4 a.m. and closes between 9 and 10. I would advise to get there between 6 and 7 to get the best light outside and the shafts of low light that begin to break through between the stalls.

Have a look at the above three shots which are my personal faves and you can see the possibilities that exist. I set the X100 on auto ISO with a shutter lower limit of 1/100 th as I new there would have been a lot of people and movement. It would be possible to go as low as 1/15 with the X100 and its delicious, soft and quiet, non-mirror slapping action but inevitably you will lose sharpness as people move around. I found the ISO 1600 ceiling and 1/100 combo ideal for the low, but contrasty light.

Despite the low light, with careful positioning the X100 performed great. Only occasionally did I run into any focusing issues and although you could never describe the X100 as a speed demon, it was fast enough for thoughtful use.

One good option in these generally cramped and crowded markets is to find a good location and wait for the right subject to come along. Having positioned myself at the top of this grungy staircase I simply had to wait for an interesting person to come into my pre-focused view. It does need a little patience but usually the right combination eventually shows up . 

I found that most of my best shots came in the darker corners of the market but its also well worth exploring outside and above for interesting subjects and the X100's 35mm field of view is spot on for these kind of contextual shots.


I do hope this gives a little flavor of a small corner of Balinese life and hopefully whets the X100 enthusiasts interest for Ubud itself. I will follow up this post with some other aspects of Ubud and the some of the other uses that I put the X100 to including some nice macro style flower shots.


Happy X100 shooting,


Steel