Florian Cramer

Camera hack: Snap Focus on Fuji cameras

Apr 6, 2022 by Florian Cramer 3 Comments

Ricoh’s GR cameras and Fujifilm’s X-E and X100 series are probably the most popular affordable street photography cameras. Although both are ultra-compact APS-C cameras, there is at least one unique street photography feature that sets Ricoh apart from Fuji: snap focus. This allows the camera to be set to a fixed focusing distance (such as 3 meters/10ft) for ultra-fast snapping. When Snap Focus is enabled, the camera shoots with minimal delay because the autofocus does not hunt.

In addition, Snap Focus minimizes the risk of misfocusing when a photographer has internalized the right distance between camera and subject and set a small aperture for a wider depth of field. Snap Focus is therefore a direct functional equivalent of traditional zone focusing techniques in rangefinder photography but on a digital autofocus camera.

How to make Foveon sensor-like images with a traditional Bayer sensor array camera

Feb 21, 2022 by Florian Cramer 6 Comments

You can achieve Foveon-like images with deep colors and crisp individual pixels with your conventional (Bayer) camera. However, this comes at the price of losing 75% of your megapixels and having to work experimentally and outside the comfort zone of your camera manufacturer’s color science.

Owners of Foveon and 3-chip video cameras swear by their camera’s color reproduction, and for good reason. Other, conventional digital camera sensors can’t see true colors, but only record monochrome red, blue, and green pixels. In other words, a 24-megapixel camera with a conventional (Bayer) sensor doesn’t really record 24 million color pixels, but 6 million monochrome red, 6 million monochrome blue and 12 million monochrome green pixels.

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

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