I was downtown last night, for a post holiday party. It was at the new and fancy JW Marriot, the 1000+ room mega-hotel. I shot this abstract, a self-portrait of sorts, in the lobby, afterwards with my go to party camera.

A party camera? That’s what I call my small and stylish Fujifilm XF1. It’s old now, released in 2012. The slim camera fits into a jacket pocket and its notable feature is ambient light flash blending. What that, you ask? Some of the Fuji cameras, including the XF1 and the X100 series, have a super intelligent flash, that nicely blends the available light with the flash. You don’t get that deer in the headlights look with a dark background, typical of many cameras using flash.

You can see, between the great flash, small size and stylish looks, why I like to bring it to parties. The image quality doesn’t match my modern cameras with larger sensors, but it punches above its weight. And, it certainly does better than smartphones, which have low powered flashes.

I did a fair amount of post processing on this image. Mainly to increase saturation and contrast but I also added a Fuji Fortia SP film simulation. The reflective and transparent glass fireplace added enough dimension and layers to create a confusing, in not abstract, image.