Articles written by Dylan Goldby

Two weeks ago, I wrote about using the Fujifilm GFX 50S as a travel camera. As part of that article, I touched briefly on using it for portraiture. I also touched briefly on using the GF 110mm f/2 lens and a few autofocus issues that I had. Today, I would like to dive a little deeper into using this camera for portraiture and my experience with it. We’ll take a look at focusing, sharpness, skin tones, working with flash, and handholding the camera. Finally, I’ll wrap up by giving you my personal feelings about the camera and whether or not it could be an effective portrait camera.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen digital medium-format photography go from something of a hulking utilitarian beast into something a little more elegant in terms of usability. The Phase One and Hasselblad flagships, although coveted by many, were only attainable by a select few and really only intended for methodical work. The latest additions to the medium format realm have flipped this market on its head and put digital medium format into the hands of the masses. The Hasselblad X1D-50c and the Fujifilm GFX 50S are more in line with the everyday consumer's needs in terms of both price and features. I have had the chance to spend the last six weeks shooting with the Fujifilm while traveling through northeast India and today I’ll share my thoughts on it as a travel camera.

David DuChemin has become very well known for his so called “sermons” on vision. He has written books about it, including the beautifully crafted "VisionMongers." He is a champion of exploring art over exploring gear, and even his YouTube show uses his motto in its title, “Vision is Better.” In Episode 61, he goes into a common misconception about vision and style. Then he offers us a few tips on how we can get over our difficulties and find our own work.

For all the stranded Mac users out there who’ve bought into the future that’s not quite here yet, there has been no shortage of products hitting the shelves to take you right back to the port-filled glory you once lived with. With all those ports taken from you, there is now an extra box on your desk just so you can reconnect the devices you use on a daily basis. USB-C and USB 3.1 promise so much in terms of potential that just isn’t realized yet. In the interim, connectors, hubs, and dongles are filling the void. At the high end, one such device is the CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station.

One of the most commonly heard pieces of advice within creative circles certainly seems to be the need to find your “style” and market that. What is your style? How to find it? These questions we’ve been told should plague us and drive us get inside our heads if we let them and begin to dictate what we do and how we do it. However, if you take a look at the popular sharing platforms, you will see a few patterns emerging. Instagram, Facebook, and even Fstoppers have a certain style of imagery that rises above the rest as you look at a volume. It can be tempting to emulate a popular style and fit in with the crowd, but it may not be ultimately satisfying to the inner artist. So how exactly do we find our own style?

For quite some time now, there have been plenty of flash options available for the Fujifilm X system. Fuji themselves have released several flashes, Nissin and Metz have also had some good offerings. However, many have been waiting for the big names like Profoto and Elinchrom to offer full Fujifilm X support and bring some serious power to the system. Over the past couple of weeks, Godox has announced and released two new products to bring their entire system to Fujifilm X users. The first of which we will meet today, the TT350F Thinklite Flash.

Inspiration is something we all wrestle with as creatives. Where do our ideas come from? Why can’t we simply come up with them on the fly? Why do we wake up at three o’clock in the morning with the perfect shoot planned out? How can we get more of these kinds of ideas? Let’s look at a few things that I do to keep myself inspired and ready to create.

Chase Jarvis has been getting real with a lot of topics on his show The Daily Creative. He's been answering questions from callers all over the world and doing it in an honest, straightforward way. If you haven't been following this, I recommend you start below and then head over to watch a whole lot more direct advice from one of the photography industry greats. In this week's episode, entitled "Dabbling Gets You Nowhere," Jarvis takes a question from my good friend Jason Teale that I think is something a lot of us struggle with.

Back in the day (not all that long ago, in fact), the only memory cards you would find in a “pro”-level camera were Compact Flash. That all changed as SD cards started to get faster and faster. Speeds up to 95 MB/s were great for emptying out the buffer on machine-gun mode and writing 1080p footage, which meant that space in the bodies could be used for other things. These cards were great. You could dump 64 GB of images while you watched the evening news. Then came along UHS-II cards, and if you’re not using them yet, you should definitely add them to you list next time you're upgrading cards.