Good morning to everyone wherever you are in the world...thanks to Nigel for his excellent work over the last couple of weeks. My Tuscany trip was nearly as fruitful as I'd hoped in the photography sense, never is on a family holiday. And holy cow, did we have baaaad hay fever for thge second week.

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Some donkeys take a lunch break in the hot sun, near Sienna, Tuscany. A shot I stumbled upon as my satnav sent me along a dirt track for about 20 minutes. There are unfinished roads and then there was that road. Luckily my hire car just about survived.

Beanfeast

I love broad beans. I love to eat them, but I also love the scent of their flowers and the beautiful black velvet splodges on their petals. I don't have space for many vegetables in my tiny garden, but I make an exception for some beans 😀

Most of the garden is covered with dull grey gravel, but in one tiny spot I tried recreating an 'alpine roadside'. This little campanula (C. cochlearifolia for you plant nerds) grows at the gravelly edge of the tarmac on high passes of the western alps, so I figured it might survive in my back garden! A slug's eye view shows it blowing in the wind... I'm almost there...

Every garden needs a honeysuckle.

Rivington Pike: A Black and White Night

Well, more of an evening really, but that didn't make such a good title.

As I've been suffering with my back quite a bit of late, I decided I needed a more lightweight kit for longer walks and as I had no issues with the IQ of the X-H2 and still had all of my Fuji lenses, the recently released X-T50 seemed like a perfect fit. I'm not ditching the bigger cameras, I love the results from them, but for days when I'm feeling a bit weary or my back is giving me grief, this will be the kit to reach for, at least in nice weather, given the lack of weather resistance.

Like most other internet commentators, I thought the film simulation dial was a pointless gimmick and would have preferred an ISO dial, but having it sat there encourages you to play with the film simulations a bit more and I found myself quite enjoying shooting in black and white, specifically Acros with the red filter to really punch up the blue skies, which is how I ended up with this all black and white set (there were various colour images too, but these are what I preferred).

They are all derived from raw images, so the colour is there if needed, but I liked the look of these as shot in B&W, given the live view at the time of shooting was also B&W I think it helped me to see the play of light and shade better than I would have been able to shooting in colour and then converting later, something I couldn't even do back in the film days of the 80s when I shot B&W out of necessity so that I could process and print them myself at home.

General thoughts on the camera, I like it. It's tiny, taking me back to micro four thirds days. The viewfinder is pretty good and the control layout matches my GFX pretty well, except for the lack of a dedicated ISO button (re-definable options are available) and the playback button is in the wrong place (top left rather than bottom right for one handed use). The only other complaint I have is the clickable thumbwheels feel very flimsy, but time will tell to see how they hold up.

All images taken with the Fuji X-T50 (although the EXIF will say X-T5 because I had to hack the raw files with EXIFTool so that my version of Capture One Pro could read them) and number of prime lenses, mostly the 23 f/1.4, but I think the 35 f/1.4 and 56 f/1.2 are in the mix too. I've subsequently bought a Sigma 18-50 f/2.8 giving me a tiny 24-70ish zoom kit which I took out on Thursday for the Summer Solstice, more pictures to follow with that.

Sometimes it rains in Carinthia

Two views from the hotel balcony

and then the sun shines again,...

Those bean plant flowers look wonderful. I'll have to get some for our garden:-)
Years ago used to make a teepee frame with 12 bamboo sticks and let the beans grow up each pole to make the teepee. The kids used to love it.

The campanula photo blowing in the wind is great. you are really getting to master this.
We had a bunch of those and other freshly hand picked wild flowers in our wedding bouquet years ago :-)

The sat nav can certainly lead you to interesting and unexpected places sometimes ;-)
Good shot !

Bobbio

Bobbio is an interesting little town near Piacenza. I took a day off work to visit this town. I wanted to see the incredible Medieval bridge and the Romanesque mosaics in the Abbey (next week).

I chose a weekday before the schools broke up to photograph the bridge, as this place becomes the local beach, for the people who live in the valley and it gets very crowded.

The Cathedral is a wonderfully colourful Baroque inside. Outside it is Lombard Gothic.

Could not resist this snap.

Light and shadow

Italy is always full of little surprises.

My Satnav has also taken me down some "strade bianche (white roads)" on the limit of destroying my car. They are pretty common in rural areas, and often start after a stretch of asphalted road.

At least it looks like you had good weather.

Number 1,2 & 4 of the bridge are very good. , number 5 is good too.
The inside shots of the abbey are extremely colourful and ornate without being completely over the top. I like 'em !
...well photgraphed in your usual competent way :-)

My late mother always grew broad beans in the garden, they were lovely freshly picked. The pictures brought back some childhood memories.

The bridge looks to be well worth seeing and you've captured the scale of it well here. These are my picks from the set.

Ha! I think most of us who like to 'follow our noses' as my father used to say in the days before sat nav, have ended up in some curious places. I particularly remember a strawberry field in Armenia...

The quality of the Leica lens really shines in this 2nd shot.

An interesting post as usual. I am not a great fan of digital B&W for some illogical reason. I loved black and white film photography, but I cannot bring myself to do B&W in digital.

I have problems with carrying heavy camera gear too. I risk another hernia. I solved my problems of carrying heavy camera gear with my camera bag on wheels. It is like one of those hand bagage trolleys. I know it is not helpful for your type of subjects.

It has been raining more than usual in sunny Italy too. I like the way you have caught the rod in the rain. The last bike shot evokes a nice day out in the mountains.

How does the camera/lens combo compare with the m4t equivalent, weightwise and bulk? One day I'm going to have to consider alternative options.

These two are the stars of this set for me.