Michael Finnegan

....begin again. This is now home to all my images, acrylics, monoprints and photography.
Mankymaxblack, maxblack and maxblackphotos are now things of the past, 15 years in total and in these digital times...well that's a very long. I had become increasingly distraught at my efforts in Stock imagery, the switch from Rights managed to Royalty Free and the subsequent law of diminishing returns, the disappearance of one site altogether and video clips having to conform to specific container types that meant another investment in software which lets face it, at my age was a bit of a non starter. So after some head scratching and a lot of 'Hmmmmmmms' I decided that hoicking bagfuls of camera bodies and lenses about should really come to an end and be replaced with something far simpler if not, more creative.
​So I got a very impressive quote from MPB , boxed up all the gear and with some of the credit plumped for the newish  FujiX100V . 
​It's man bagged size portability, endless list of useful menu configurations and point and shoot ability with the heft of a Depleted Uranium shell in a very compact body. The fact that it is silent (if you want it to be) will shoot HDR Jpegs in any film profile off Fuji's list of all time greats, multi exposure with editing in camera, 120 FPS video and flash sync beyond 1/3200...well these are just some of it's attributes.
The image above was taken on a quick wander around the house, yes , it's raining...mind you, the front filter turns up today which will render this camera weatherproof...in Scotland that is a bonus. So no blithering that it's raining so we can't go out...

...Then I forgot to mention Panorama mode which can be shot in different sizes/quality portrait or landscape add to that a touch screen that you can customize on the fly. I am still learning, which is good, setting Aperture, ISO and shutter to 'A' then looking at what the menus offer has been a good way of finding out it's capabilities, here are some shot in Toy Camera mode in a 1:1 ratio...yes you can change the image ratios, well these are in camera 1;1 ratio, Toy camera in Eterna film mode straight out of the camera

...and to finish off some in camera multi image shots given a tweak in Camera Raw..I will have a chat about software in the next posting...So thanks for popping in and having a look