30 Days with the Fuji X-Pro3: Day 22

I could honestly just copy and paste what I wrote on the last post and have it apply to this one as well… But for the variety’s sake I’ll talk a little about the lens choice for this image. Both this shot and the one I’m going to post next were taken with the Fuji XF 80mm f/2.8 macro lens.

I’m not really into macro photography, and the only reason I got this lens was to “scan” my film negatives. But in the spirit of experimentation I decided to toss it on my X-Pro3 and play around. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t even shoot any macro shots and ended up just treating it like a normal telephoto lens. A telephoto prime is an odd combination, and it can make finding compositions quite challenging. The long focal length requires you to hone in on details, and the lack of a zoom option means you don’t have a whole lot of flexibility in choosing what to include/exclude. To my surprise, these limits made it quite fun to use while sitting in my loft looking out at the clouds. What would be frustrating in a more urgent, high-leverage situation became a fun challenge. I probably spent an hour just looking out my windows and trying to find fun patterns in the clouds. When the sun started to set and the soft reds lit the clouds, I waited for this particular cloud to drift just into the line of sight of the moon and grabbed this image.

Tying this back to the X-Pro3 body, this is exactly the sort of mindset that the X-Pro3 encourages. Especially for a hobbyist like myself, photography is supposed to be fun and playful. I’m fortunate that I can be patient and spend an hour idly watching the clouds drift by and snapping photos. For this, the X-Pro3 is a perfect companion.