Motion Blur, 6th Street – Austin, Texas

After I made that silhouette of a musician, I did a short walk east on 6th Street. I didn’t bother going down far — nothing was happening. It occurred to me that I haven’t tested the low-light capabilities of the Fuji X-E3, so I took a couple of snapshots.

In a break from my previous years, I’ve been doing meticulous tripod photography this year. Part of this is to add back a level of discipline that I lost when relying upon image stabilization. The other reason is that I’m using my big Fuji GFX 50R, which is not what you call a typical snapshot type camera. However, I still like the light, unencumbered, and free-form nature of hand-held photography. I find that tripods add a rigidness that can stifle creativity. Not to say today’s shots are particularly creative. Perhaps, I was just being lazy.

When I shot more often with the Olympus system, I heavily relied upon the in-body image stabilization (IBIS) and a fast lens to maximize image quality. With my X-E3, since I don’t have IBIS, I used my optically stabilized kit lens, which has a slow maximum aperture of f3.5. Zoom in some and the lens gets even slower — not the best for low-light shooting. But the bigger sensor on the Fuji does a great job. The resulting image is on par or better than the Olympus.

I like pushing the camera and my abilities, using the modest Fuji 15-45mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens shot at 1/8th of a second. That lowered my ISO into the 1000 to 1250 range to make solid photos of a moderately dark street scene. I did the same kind of shooting a few years ago with the Canon G7X Mark II compact. Except, back then, the bars were open, and there were ample engaging subjects.

Nothing special. Just snapshots of an empty 6th Street on a Monday night pre-Christmas. Afterward, I headed south on my quiet late-night walk alone. I managed to make less-pedestrian images, which I’ll show in the coming days.

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