FUJIFILM X100V AT THE BALL GAME + PHOTOS

Apr. 10

I remember being a kid watching Joe Carter hit that home run to win the Blue Jay’s second World Series. It’s a memory that has stayed with me all my life and sparked my love for the game. Nothing like sitting back on a warm summer afternoon to watch a ball game. Unfortunately it’s only two games into the Baseball season and the weather in Toronto is far from warm or sunny. Knowing that the SkyDome (Sorry to me it will always be the SkyDome) would be closed I thought it would be a good opportunity to test out the Fujifilm x100v in a dark indoor environment.

I did the tourist thing and shot a bunch of photos trying to be creative and mindful of composition. I didn’t use the built in flash and solely relied on the artificial lighting in the stadium. Obviously the light coming from the field was way more intense then the light coming from the rest of the building so it made for some challenging lighting situations. Overall I think the x100v handled it pretty well. My ISO was around 1600 most of the day. There were some times when I used the dials to adjust my exposure and accidentally pushed the ISO way above the usable limit. That being said despite the images being too grainy to be clean I did notice that the high ISO grain from this camera was actually really nice. It really looks like old film grain. I was really surprised by that. If I want to achieve an old vintage film grain type shot I could push the ISO really high, close down the shutter and maybe add some flash for fill. I’ll have to experiment with that in another shoot. With the leaf shutter I might be able to create some really cool images. Oh ya the x100v has a leaf shutter!!!!! How crazy is that?

I was using single shot AF and the camera didn’t struggle to catch the target. I haven’t had a good experience with continuous AF with this camera so I just don’t use it. I tried rear button focus for a bit but the small grip makes it a little cumbersome to use. So I shot the old school way with focus-and-recompose. Another thing I really enjoyed about the x100v is the compact size. I had it hanging on my side under my jacket the whole game. Never did I feel like I had a camera on me. Also nobody else seemed to mind it either. Security didn’t even look at me as I shot pictures. People around me didn’t pay any attention to the x100v either. I thought that was pretty cool. Whenever I pull out my full sized cameras they always attract attention. If you’re into shooting street photography this little unassuming camera can deliver great photos without the intimidation factor of a big lens pointing at people. You can look over the image and be the judge. Overall I would say I’m very happy with the performance of this camera in this dark-ish indoor environment.

More sample photos from the x100v