A Fuji X Pro 1 Abroad

A year ago, I was invited to go on a trekking adventure in Peru.   I jumped at the chance and paid the deposit.  At that time, the holiday seemed so far away that I hardly gave it a thought.  But after the New Year, the challenge of getting fit for altitude and collecting all the gear became a great preoccupation.  The process was not helped by the fact that I caught flu then developed shingles in the two months before leaving, but that's another story

By far the hardest decision was which camera to take.  I wanted to carry a full frame Canon but it was too heavy, even for the Kymin training walks, so I settled on a Fuji X Pro1.  It's a compact system camera, really tricky to hold and fiddly to operate (in my opinion), not least because the optical viewfinder is off centre, and the electronic one doesn't have the lovely clear resolution that you get in an SLR.  Despite this, it had a wonderful reputation and the lenses are lovely, so I thought I would give it a go. I took the precaution of packing the user manual as, often on my Kymin walks, I was stumped with some of the controls. If nothing else, it would be something to read on the plane. The story unfolded in South America but I thought I would share some of the Fuji images, and even some of the events of this fantastic trip.  

The day after we arrived, we took a dawn flight across the Andes to Puno.  I unpacked the Fuji, climbed over friends to get to a window, and saw this first view of snow in April.

I have to admit to some editing in Photoshop as shooting through the double thickness of the plane window gave blue-ish images distinctly lacking in contrast and sharpness.  

I had no expectation of good photos with the Fuji - I was comparing it with the oh-so-easy-to-use Canon, and not having access to any viewing device in Peru, I had to wait to get home to see if there was anything worth keeping. I was pleasantly surprised on reviewing them and think the Fuji is going to find itself on lots more trips in future.  In this shot, I was pleased with the detail that could be extracted, and started to look through the other pics with a little more optimism.  More to come...