I went to the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST) on two successive weekends this year. On the second weekend, I used the Fujifilm XQ1 that I recently purchased from a friend. It’s a six-year-old enthusiast point and shoot, and I wanted to put it through its paces. It’s a small camera and with a decently fast focusing system. It worked well for quick candid street photos.

The picture up top is of one of the artists at the Changarrito, which I talked about a couple of days ago.

The Canopy is ground zero for EAST, and they had new mini self-contained studios. Of particular interest was this one with a working artist and model.

I’m filing this under Keep Austin Weird, which is the unofficial marketing slogan of the city. A troupe of minimally clad and painted performance dancers shimmied through the crowd. They are known as the Body Art Movement and attracted considerable attention.

A semi-circle of half a dozen artists showcased their skills painting the same model. These folks were essentially promoting their art classes, which sounds enticing to me for a future creative endeavor.

The Modern Rocks gallery features photographs of famous musicians.

Two views of the Canopy’s central spine. All the traffic flows through here, which means it’s a great place for street photography.

I’m currently using two vintage point and shoots from Fuji and Olympus. Both have their strengths. The Fuji XQ1 is faster and smaller than my Olympus XZ-1. The Fuji has better high ISO performance, but I prefer the Olympus color. At a lower ISO, Olympus has a unique look that I really like.

Finally, the Fuji XQ1 can print directly to a Fuji Instax Printer, which I talked about yesterday. This probably means, the Fuji will be my go-to party snapshot camera. I’ll use the Olympus in good light for a compact take-anywhere camera.

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