One of the best things about Fujifilm cameras is the built-in film simulation modes, which give you various monochrome options, Astia, Velvia, Provia, and more. I find that they aren't too harsh, and seems to mostly improve the look of my photos. They aren't applied to the RAW file, so it doesn't take anything away from the image.

However, there's also an "Advanced Filter" mode, which gives you some more filters and effects. Although they are a lot more obtrusive. There's quite a few, including partial colour filters, soft focus, and pop colour. But the one I have the most fun with is "Toy Camera". The description it gives is "Create shaded borders as taken by toycameras. (nostalgic effect)".

I can't say it will produce the most professional photos, but as a person that enjoys retro camera apps on the iPhone, such as Dispo, Huji, and Hipstamatic, it's fun to have it directly in my real camera too.

Here are a few quick examples:

I'll have to give the other filters a try now, and I'll see what I can get when I can actually leave my house and go somewhere interesting.

It snowed pretty heavily near my house this morning, which meant I had to go out and take some photos.

Luckily for me, there's a small area of woodland just behind my street. So I grabbed my iPhone 12 and my Fujifulm XT100, and went to see what I could capture.

The iPhone 12 seemed to put a green tint on most photos, and sometimes over-exposed the photos. Halide seemed to work great though.

After playing around in Lightroom, I've got 12 photos that I'm happy with. They're pretty similar, since they were taken in the same area. But I have tried to give them slightly different looks.

You can see them all on my Flickr, but here are my 6 favourites:

I just spent a week in Lanzarote, and since I had just received my iPhone 12 before I left, I decided to leave my real camera at home and force myself to use the iPhone.

There were over 200 shots, and after reviewing them, checking the composotions, and giving them a little touch up in Lightroom, I was left with 24 photos that I was really happy with. I've uploaded them all to Flickr, so you can check out the full album.

Being in Lanzarote, the focus of my shots are all relating to water. Whether if it was the sea caves of Los Hervideros, the beaches around Playa Blanca, or the black sand of Playa de Janubio.

A lot of the time I was focussing on getting portrait-oriented shots that would be suitable for phone wallpapers. And a lot of the time this was caputring the transition of the waves hitting the sand, or the combination of the sand, rocks, sea, and then the blue sky. At the same time, there were some really nice landscapes that I tried to capture as well.

From the final 24 photos, I've picked out 9 that I'd like to feature here on the blog. I hope you like them. And if you want to see the other 15, you can view the full album on Flickr.

I came back from a week trip to Edinburgh a few days ago, and while I was there I took quite a few photos.

Over 300 made it back, which was then refined by removing duplicates, blurry imags, and just bad compositions. I then spent some time in Loghtroom this evening trying to make them look even better, and I've been left with 44 photos that I'm really pleased with.

I've uploaded them all to Flickr, and put them in a single album. But as usual, I thought I'd post a few of my favourites here directly:

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View the full Edinburgh album on Flickr

I’ve been trying to get better at photography recently, by watching a ton of YouTube videos mainly by Nigel Danson and Thomas Heaton, and a ton more. There’s one thing that I notice all photographers go back to, and it’s that simply going out with your camera, is the best thing you can do to improve your photography skills.

So just over a week ago, I decided I would wake up just before sunrise, and go for a walk around where I live. I walked through a few wooded areas, down near a river, and through some generally green areas. The environment wasn’t on my side for the shots I was trying to get, as in I found a few compositions in a woodland where some mist would have really added depth, and by the river, there was a shot I could have got if I had more direct sun instead of it being hidden by clouds.

However, on the walk back to my house, I did discover that there is a small area of “woodland” essentially behind my house. I just never noticed it, because it’s out of the way, and hidden between a load of houses. But anyway, even with lighting that I didn’t like that much, I think I got a two shots that I’m happy with.

I’ve uploaded them to various places – Flickr, 500px, and Instagram. 500px is something I’ve used for a while, so there’s a lot of old photos there, and to be honest I’m not happy with a lot of them. So I’m hoping that Flickr will become my new canonical place for my photography, before I most likely decide to put them here somehow. And, I’m probably going to be uploading a lot of my favourite shots to my Instagram too.

I travelled to Wells-next-the-Sea this past week, as you may have guessed. As usual, I ended up taking my Fujifilm XT100, and taking it with me everywhere. Saying that, all of my favourite photos from this trip are from the beach. So here they are:

I was just out in my garden with my cat, Jay, seeing as that’s as far as I can go at the moment. But he was walking up and down one of the fences, so I decided to grab my camera[1] and take a few shots of him.

What I’ve now learned, is that I really like the colours at this time of night. Or more specifically as blue hour, (as opposed to the more commonly known golden hour), which happens in the twilight ether just before sunrise or just after sunset when the sky has a really blue tint.

Anyway, that’s a good enough excuse for me to post some photos here on my blog. Enjoy.

Me and my girlfriend had a but of a small photoshoot with our cat today. He was making all kinds of poses on the sofa, so we instantly got our cameras out. It also gave me an excuse to use my relatively new Fujifilm XT100, with my brand-new Fujinon XC35mm F2 lens.

The light was behind us, which didn’t help, and the blanket on the sofa was pretty reflective. However, I did get a few that I liked. So here are my favourites, which have been slightly adjusted in Lightroom.

Just a few weeks ago, my girlfriend and myself took a short trip to Dorset. One of the main parts of the trip was to visit Durdle Door. I was just going through my photos, and I picked out a few of them that I’d like to share here. All photos were taken on my iPhone XS.

I’m currently on holiday in Lanzarote, which is one of the Canary Islands. It’s technically part of Spain, but it’s closer to the western coast of Africa.

We spent all of today travelling around the south side of the island, and ended in a place called El Golfo, which has some very rocky beaches. It resulted in some interesting photos that I thought would look good as mobile wallpapers, so I spent some extra time seeing what else would look good, and I came up with 12 different options!

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If you want all 12, then you can download this one zip archive. Just a warning, it’s 34 MB. If you want to unzip this on iOS, you can use my Shortcut that can extract any downloaded archives.