I made another trip to Karachi during the Eid holidays; a drive down the sea view corniche turned out to be a fantastic place to conduct some night photography. As always I had my Fuji XT with the 18-55 m kit lens with me. I did, however, not have a tripod. It had not been my intentions to take any images at the night; I was actually on my way to attend an Eid dinner but got completely sidetracked by some of the scenes on the way. For the most part, I always carry the Fuji XT because it's light and compact and since the opportunity presented itself, I decided to hand hold and shoot and essentially let the chips fall where they may.
I basically set the ISO at 6400, set the Drive dial to "CH", held hand the camera as firmly and securely as I could and shot these images. The sharpest images were typically the second or third image of each series. Not surprising, given I was hand holding the camera.
For the most part, I really was impressed by the quality of the images that I got. Yes, there was a bit more noise at 6400 that I would have liked but a simple "Define" filter reduced the level adequately. Personally, I think that shooting at ISOs of up to 1600 would be optimal with the XT.
I even shot the last two images at the High ISO of 25600 by mistake! I have to say these images were very noisy but then I don't expect to shoot at these levels ever.
The kit lens did a really decent job of dealing with the low light especially when I was able to get close to the subject thus enabling to me shoot at the wide end of the lens. The images where the focal length limited the aperture to f4 was obviously a bit more noisy.
I am now waiting anxiously for the launch of the 16-55 mm 2.8 Lens that Fujifilm has promised. I can't wait to be able to shoot at night using a very fast lens all the way through the focal range. And hopefully, I will have my tripod with me!! Now on the hunt for the ultimate lightweight tripod for the FujiXT!