Hey fellow X100 lovers. Welcome to the second part of my recent trip with the X100 to Ubud on the lovely island of Bali.
In this section on the trip I decided to focus (excuse the pun) mainly on some close focus near - macro shots that I took and one or two photos from my walkabout around the town and surrounding area.
The above two Lotus shots were taken at the aptly named Lotus Pond restaurant on Ubud main street. The light here is lovely around mid morning and the lotus flowers deliciously colored. The Lotus Pond is a temple setting and in the evenings they have marvelous traditional Balinese dance and music shows, well worth a visit.
This one didn't quite come off unfortunately. I tried some fill flash from the tiny on camera unit in the X100 and set - 2 compensation to darken the sky a bit. The problem was that I nearly fell into the Lotus pond while trying to get a decent angle below the flower!!!! I gave up after this one effort :) The onboard flash on the X100 is extraordinarily good at close range for providing a little bit of fill or catch light. Use it sparingly on a low setting and the metering balances things out very nicely. See Ken Rockwell's review for more detail on this.
Here is my final shot from the Lotus Pond and its a shoot through of one of the colorful umbrellas that are on either side of the temple entrance. These umbrellas are everywhere in Bali and come in varieties of yellows, black & white and red. They make great subjects on their own or as a backdrop.
We also stopped and chatted to these very nice kids who were cleaning this theatre in preparation for there traditional Balinese dance lessons. I would like to have stuck around to shoot the lessons but didn't have the time to wait around. Maybe next time. It's possible to get very nice reflections on the tile floors of these temples and theaters, usually best in the earlier morning and with a bit of friendliness the kids or locals are usually happy to pose and see the photos in review.
The final few shots are of local people at work. The first above was preparing wood for a temple renovation project and he was nicely backlit with a little bit of flare. It's worth noting that this just needed a simple +1 compensation and its not so easy to get the flare effect with the Fujinon lens, especially with the hood on.
Finally, this very nice guy scurried up a coconut tree and chopped us down some fresh green coconuts so that we could drink the lovely, fresh, sweet milk. What nice people.
All of the images in this post were edited on the fly using the amazing Snapseed App. I am not usually that keen on these kind of things but this one is so simple and effective that I was able to quickly edit on the go without the hassle of a major selection and edit exercise in Lightroom when I got home. The final shot was a bit of fun with the 'vintage' filter and I felt it suited the subject quite nicely.
Hope this was at least a little entertaining and informative. Don't hesitate to drop me a note if you need any more info on the location or techniques used here.
Happy X100 shooting,
Steel
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
