Hey fellow X100 shooters.
I was strolling around the Esplanade area in Singapore the other day when it occurred to me to comment on an aspect of the X100 that disappoints me when using the camera. This is the optical viewfinder. When I bought the camera originally I was so excited about having the frame lines and being able to compose within them while still seeing the whole scene. This in mind would lead to lovely tight rangefinder style shots that locked the eye into the scene. Well I have to say it didn't work out that way and I have found it to be so unreliable that I have stopped using it completely in favor of the electronic finder that I simply find much more accurate.
Fortunately, I am a lover of wider angles and think nothing of shooting all day with a 24 mm lens on my Nikon D3. This is of course a fair bit wider than the X100's 35 mm equivalent so I find it easy to frame tightly and have no qualms about going close to subjects. I would strongly urge anyone who enjoys street-shooting with the X100 to try shooting wider angle for a few weeks and you will feel like the X100 is a telephoto !!!!
I noticed that when I first started in photography I rarely had people in my shots and if I did it was taken from a distance or discreetly. It took a while but I managed to work my way out of this and I read a lovely quote in a book where a photographer stated that he took the point of view that everyone interesting that he came across deserved to be photographed by him. This somehow helped my state of mind when photographing people and I developed the mind set that I was somehow doing them a favor by capturing and sharing something about their life. I also read a piece by the wonderful Thorsten Overgaard where he said that he always strives to show something good about the people he photographs and never takes a shot that would ridicule or show them in a way that they would be unhappy with. Again, somehow that helped resolve something in my mind that gives me the courage now to get in close and get the shot. Incidentally, Although Thorsten is a huge Leica fan, his writings and essays will resonate completely with the X100 shooter and I would urge you to read his marvelous essays on the love of shooting.
Anyway, back to the theme of the article and the optical viewfinder. As I said, I have stopped using it because I found that when I get tight to people as per above, both the framing and focus was all over the place. I am very interested to hear from anyone who has found a way of mastering this but for me the electronic finder, once I got used to it, is fine and I can concentrate on the composition, get in tight at F2 or 2.8 and shoot. Although it can be laborious, I always try to manually shift the focus point to be where I think the focus will be required before I step in close to shoot. I do this as a bit of insurance because I tend to shoot at the widest apertures and its possible to loose focus when you are in close if you recompose all of the time.
By adhering to the principles of everyone deserving to be shot by me and trying to show them in a positive aspect, I managed to get in very close to these lovely old gentlemen who, although practicing Falun Gong were aware of my presence. I am no lover of politics and wish to play no part in it however, I couldn't help but be persuaded by the concepts that these people could change things trough positive and truthful thought. How nice that would be. I like to think that the above photo shows a little of the strength and completeness that this practice instills in them. This is very typical of the way I use the X100 and I don't think this shot would have worked so well with the optical finder as the framing and focus at f2 had to be spot on.
Here's a bit of a fun evening shot taken at the end of my stroll that didn't involve getting in close and was shot at either F8 or F11, its a shot of the lovely Singapore skyline for the Esplanade side and the light is very nice over there when there is some cloud in the sky and the lights are just coming on.
As I said, interested to hear from anyone who can advise on better use of the optical viewfinder and enjoy your X100 this weekend.
Steel
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