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Posts from the ‘Personal’ category

My Fuji X70: Portra Sunset (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Morning light in San Francisco’s Financial District. Photo, 29 Mar 2025.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in both domestic and international settings. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with the following recipes:

• CineStill 800T
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
• Fujichrome Slide
• Kodachrome 64
• Kodacolor
• Kodak Color Negative
• Kodak Platinum 200
• Monochrome Red

What follows are images made with the “Portra Sunset” recipe, which Yon Pol describes in their YouTube video.

This recipe is for X-Trans II sensors and the built-in availability of “Classic Chrome”. The settings on my X70 are:

“Classic Chrome” built-in film-sim
Dynamic Range: DR200, but I’ve set this to DR400
Color: +2 (High)
Sharpness: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Highlight: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Shadow: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
White Balance: Daylight; +3 Red, -5 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to 3200

I assigned this recipe for an “all-purpose or daytime” setting as 1 of the 7 camera’s custom presets. The following JPG images are “almost” straight-out-of-the-camera; only minor adjustments to brightness level and a crop to a predefined image size have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation.

Just like the Kodachrome 64 recipe, Portra Sunrise uses the Classic Chrome film-sim in-camera setting that produces accentuated reds and an overall orangey-flavour. Blues seem more “subdued”, until foreground objects are illuminated against a clear blue sky. There’s more “diffuse washout” when I point closer to the sun. I imagine I’d get similar results with the Standard Provia film-sim under a clear sky with higher dust- or smoke-content in the atmosphere.

( Click here for images )

10 years, to the place where I died

Seems like yesterday: ten years have disappeared in a flash. And yet, a hint of grief is as fresh, now as it was then.

Before dawn, I swear I heard his voice calling out to me. The official pronouncement: 610am, 9 August 2014. Ken Lee, dead at 82. I was afraid I had already forgotten his voice.

Northern summer will always have an air of finality, tainted by memories of frailty and inevitability: entropy at its absolute finest.

One day, I’m on the well-travelled stretch between Mannheim and Cologne, fiddling between an online ticket for an express train and an online (Deutschland-) ticket for the next regional train.

The next day, I’m in a Vancouver cemetery on a late Friday afternoon. I see only two to three other visitors out here. It is almost mid-August. Sun’s out, it’s almost 30C. Somewhere outside of this green patch of stone, metal, and flowers, life thrives and goes on. For me, I’ve come back to get “stuck”; I might as well be 8000 km away, back on the other side of the planet.

*Up on the 10th floor is/was the palliative ward where Dad spent his final 2 weeks.*

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 9 Aug 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

24T90 The experiment is complete

(E89)

Travel day 90, Europe day 89.

As I write this post, I’m in Frankfurt am Main to conclude my experiment of 90 consecutive days of journaling during my time travelling in Germany and Austria. By the time these words are unleashed, I’ll be in Vancouver with the “modern magic” of travelling west across the planet, back over the big eastern pond.

As I look forward to begin a new “experiment” (experience), I’ve created a summary page, including links to each log or entry.

Some numbers

Total walking distance: over 880 km.

Total number of walking steps: 1.1 million.

Daily average walking distance: just under 10 km.

Daily average number of steps: 13-thousand.

Average distance per step: 0.78 m.

Average number of steps per 1 km: 1283.

Number of World Heritage Sites newly visited: 12 in Germany, 1 in Austria.

Vienna totals in 36 days: 375 km, over 460-thousand steps.

I’ve spent a total of over 100 days in Vienna over the last three consecutive summers.

I bought online an Airalo 90-day 50-Gbyte all-data eSIM, but used only 22 Gs, with ubiquitous WiFi in all places I stayed, as well as decent WiFi on Deutsche Bahn long-distance trains. I had no issues setting up the eSIM in Vancouver and arrival in Frankfurt, and aside from some intrinsic network reach and access in Europe, I had no problems over the 90 days.

*Travel day 90: nearing the end of this experience/experiment. 825am on the 5th of August, Frankfurt am Main central train station.*

*FRA airport: Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge.*

*Inside the lounge: lots of room, plenty of tables, plus quiet booths. The food and drinks spread is decent.*

*Half-day later at YVR airport: Condor Airbus 330-900neo, and its striped livery in yellow.*

*Squamish welcome figures, international arrivals at YVR.*

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 5 Aug 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

24T89 Giessen, to say hi and goodbye

(E88)

On a quiet overcast Sunday morning, I’m on a regional train for an hour north from Frankfurt to the university town of Giessen (Gießen). At their old cemetery Alter Friedhof is the grave site of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, discoverer of X-rays. I visited his birth town of Lennep two days ago on travel day 87. Röntgen was also professor of physics at the University of Giessen from 1879 to 1888.

It’s where I’ve come to say hi and goodbye: both to Röntgen, and to 90 consecutive days “on the road”. Tomorrow, I must (but reluctantly) fly out from Europe to Canada.

*Modest entrance to Giessen’s Alter Friedhof (Old Cemetery).*

*There’s plenty of signage leading the way.*

*Memorial grave for Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen, Professor in Giessen from 1879 to 1888.*

*The first two names are Wilhelm’s parents, followed by his wife Berta, and lastly, Wilhelm himself.*

*In Giessen’s Theaterpark is a memorial statue to Röntgen (north side).*

*South side, with Röntgen’s calm cool gaze.*

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 4 Aug 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

24T88 Frankfurt: beginning and end

(E87)

Travel day 88: double eight, double happiness!

Europe day 87.

Three days remain, and I end where I began when I arrived in Europe on travel day 2: Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

The familiarity of the train station, the sight of the city’s towers, the taste of “Frankfurter Grüne Sosse”.

I have a few project goals in mind, but it’s become apparent these past few days that I’ve reached the end after my self-imposed breakneck pace of the last few months. But I still look, and I still want to document what I see. These below are some of the final observations from Frankfurt.