On Thursday 7th January I crossed the straits between Portaferry and Strangford on the ferry, with my Fujifilm X-T4. It was a cold, bright winter day, and Strangford village was sparkling in the winter sunlight.
Around 2.30pm this afternoon, I was about to cross the Slaght Level Crossing, outside Ballymema, when this old trackside hut caught my eye, and I thought, “Ah ha! There’s an old trackside hut! Time to get the camera out.” I parked the car, and walked to a gate with a view of the track, and fitted a medium length zoom on the Fujifilm X-T4. (No, I wasn’t trespassing on the tracks.)
Fujifilm X-T4, F=200mm, f/4.8 @ 1/250th sec on ISO 1600.
I needed the faster shutter speed to steady the lens in the wind, – I should really have got the monopod out, lowered the shutter speed to 1/60th and the ISO to 400.
Actually, a few days down the track (see what I did there) and I decided to take away that ugly sign in Photoshp. It probably improves the image significantly!
Talk about the Ugly Duckling? Here’s the prototype, surely the ugliest egg in the world!
I photographed the egg over a saucepan, with the Fujifilm X-T4, and a Fujinon 16-80mm f/4 lens.
F=80mm, f/8, Q 1/30th sec, on ISO 3200.
Easy enough for me, I chose f/8 to get a decent depth of field for the close-up, but because the light was low at the time, I chose a slow shutter speed, and a high ISO. Neither of these extremes are a problem to the X-T4, – its in-body image stabilisation, lens stabilisation, and fantastic sensor make slow shutter speeds and high ISO’s as easy as boiling an egg.
Not so easy for the hen though! Passing this ugly spheroid must have brought screams of pain. The egg, however, was delicious!
