In November last year I upgraded to the iPhone 8Plus purely and simply for the camera, I have enough phone contracts because I pay for all of my teens on the condition that I get the newest phones and really they don't mind that at all.  So after using that until a few weeks ago I decided to loan and iPhone X from my lovely friends at Three who I've worked with lots of times now.

I'd tried an iPhone X in the shop when it came out but I really didn't like the swipe up instead of the home key and I wasn't at all convinced I would like the fact that you unlock the phone and pay for things by using your face, hell, I don't even like my face!!

The phone came, I unboxed it and I was safe in the knowledge that I could use it for a month and then send it back, I really was sceptical about the fact it's got a whole new camera system and could it really be better than the 8Plus?

Let me tell you, it took me 3 days to not only completely fall in love with the phone but by the Saturday I'd been in store to do the upgrade on my own contract.

The iPhone X completely knocks it out of the park when it comes to photography, I'll give you an example of when I was in the lake district with the iPhone X and my DSLR which had a £1500 lens attached to it, I didn't really believe that a phone retailing at just over £1k would equal £2500 of professional photography equipment but you know what?  I was wrong!!

Now I would tell you which on was taken with which but that really would spoil the fun so which one do you think was taken with an iPhone X and which one was taken with a Canon professional body plus a Canon L Lens?

One of them was quickly edited with Instagram and the other was edited with Lightroom but the differences are completely subtle.

Now I'm someone who's always believed that it's not about the camera it's about the person behind the camera and also that the best camera is the one you have with you at the time.  I know after using the iPhone X for nearly a month now I no longer feel the pressure to take my big camera unless I'm specifically shooting for a stock photography agency and then the only difference really comes down to pixels rather than quality.

So, let me show you some more favourites from this last month taken with the iPhone X

I think we'd all agree that for something which you can just have in your pocket all of the time it does a pretty great job and really for me it's a little scary just what a good job it does, I don't think there'll ever be a time when we don't have digital SLR's but at the same time, technology is progressing so quickly, it's only a couple of years since Apple introduced portrait mode which could throw out the background and it's come on since it was first launched in Beta on the iPhone 7Plus.  If you can replicate the effects of a £1500 - £2000 lens with something you can carry in your back pocket, well the world is your oyster and it's a sign of the times that photography will never be the same, I do still think there are times when my big camera is always going to out perform the iPhone and thank goodness but if they're this good now, can you imagine the progress over the next 10 years, maybe one day I'll just need to go to weddings with six small iPhones in my kit....I'm joking about that, no, really it's way too scary to even imagine that.

Thanks to Three for the loan of the iPhone X and for introducing me to my own new phone.

Best Camera For Bloggers, Fuji X70

I've had a long standing romance with Fuji, the first camera I bought myself when I was 29 and fell in love with photography was a Fuji, my second and only bridge camera was a Fuji and then I walked away and bought a Canon as my first DSLR, then a couple of years ago I bought a Fuji X-Pro1 and fell instantly head over heels with the yummy high definition colours and the gorgeous images which have helped me bring many a travel image to life.  I went back to a Canon for portraiture and I truly believe that Canon make the very best cameras for social photography but when it comes to travel, I am Fuji all the way.

Now I have an extra problem with a prolapsed disk and need to keep the weight off my neck as much as possible, I also want a camera which will take photographs as beautiful and professional as my agency and my own high standards require.  So I've just bought the perfect travel bloggers camera, the Fuji X70, it's a new camera and at £499 it's not cheap but it's also smaller than my iPhone 6S, has an integrated teleconverter for switching between 28, 35 and 50mm focal lengths, something I require as they're possibly my favourite focal lengths for travel photography and blogging based images.  

The beauty of this camera is undoubtably it's size and it's simplicity, if you aren't an expert photographer then you can simply throw the X70 into auto and it will literally do everything for you and a series of rings like old school cameras I find are easier to understand than complicated digital things, if you are a little more advanced then you are going to find Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and full manual, for anyone who's wondering how I choose to shoot these days, well it's no secret that after perfecting my craft in manual I rarely use anything other than aperture priority but that's because I also know that I know manual settings inside out and can switch between the modes quite comfortably should I need to.  I tend to shoot most travel images at f8, portraits at between f1.8 and f2.8 and the X70 offers f2.8 so perfect for my needs, if I'm shooting food in a dark restaurant I find f2.8 is absolutely fine and the Fuji X70 will quite comfortably go to iso 6,400 which is about as much as I'll need but it is expandable up to 51,200 which is insane, my Canon 6D goes to 25,800 and it's only occasionally at evening wedding discos that i've ever needed it so to think of a compact which must literally photograph in a cave is incredible.  Incidentally, the X70 is more expensive than my first and second DSLR's.

It doesn't have a viewfinder of course but I can live with that, I often use the screen on the X-Pro1 with my 42 year old eyes!  I also love that it has an adjustable screen you can flip out for the occasional selfie and being that it's quite a wide lens (although don't forget to figure in that crop factor as it's not a full sized sensor) you can quite comfortably take the odd selfie.

Video on the go is also another thing which I think i'll probably use in the future but haven't yet, I'm not the biggest fan of vlogging but you never know, I might still fully embrace it and 4k crisp video might just come in handy!

So, downsides, well having just spent a half hour editing through the same process as I do with all of my images it was easy to see that these images are not going to be quite as good as my huge clunky Canon but then I'd be expecting way too much if I'd have thought that.  I have to admit to using the wrong film simulation mode today, I usually use Velvia for enhanced colours, today I used the classic chrome and I'm not really a fan, it's a little on the washed out side for me  and so there was more post processing than usual.  I shoot in Jpeg these days, I have for about 2 years now, I'm just not sure there's a need for RAW as long as you know what you're doing, obviously your opinions may vary but from a bloggers point of view I'm not sure just how many shoot in RAW.

The things I've loved today were the lightness, the small size with such mighty power and it is occasionally just nice to point and shoot!

If think if you are an intermediate photographer who wants a great camera for blogging that you can pop in your handbag or messenger bag then really, the Fuji X70 is the best compact camera for blogging that's currently on the market.

Dear Fuji, I love you, That is all

It's been another heavenly gorgeous spring day and my flu is just about gone so I got to go out with my Fuji X-Pro1 coupled with the 35mm f1.4 to do some testing, shall we call it Testography dear reader...maybe not!

I'm lucky in that I had Abigail with me today who's also now thoroughly recuperated and she yayed (or rather she didn't) at the news that she would be going back to school tomorrow.

I should say before I go any further that if you have stumbled upon my blog looking for a very geeky blogpost about the technical workings of the X-Pro 1 then you should probably click away now, there are far better more qualified people out there to do such illuminating blogging, what I will say though is that it's a system which is so removed from anything you already know if you usually shoot Canon that you might just fall in love with photography all over again, I can't wait to take it in my kit bag and use it to shoot kids portraiture, I'm excited about shooting portraits with it at my next wedding, it's a whole new adventure, I'm not ready to ditch my Canon just yet, I still love the yumminess of my 50mm f1.4, my favourite lens for the last 7 years, I'm onto my second one because of that pesky place I like to shoot called the beach!

So here's just a few of my photos from today -

oh and if you're wondering, I'm usually Ms Flash the hell out of everything, well in your face EX600, I didn't buy a Fuji flash, luckily I've spent the last 8 or so years of my life watching the light, learning how to use light with or without a flash, my old assistant used to call me the human light meter which is suppose is a little geeky but hey I'm a little geeky too!

My daughters are such great people to photograph though to be honest it does usually take a whole lot of bribery, I remember the Christmas Card shoot, my daughter said "you've had 10 minutes mum, work with what you've got"

Spring is always signified for me by the arrival of the humble Crocus and the not so humble tulip

Heaton Park in spring, well yes, I know it's not technically spring unless you're a meteorologist which I'm not but I'm calling spring!

Jesmond Dene was also sparkling in the sunshine today, we had a lovely walk

and oh this evenings light, well it was just splendid, Looby was wearing her riding helmet even though she wasn't riding, she was actually roller booting and using it as protective headgear, it works for me!

and so my splendid photography day was indeed splendid, next on my list to add to the 35mm f1.4 are the 27mm f2.8 and the 18mm f2.0, I'm surely going to take over my own world of fabulousness this year, I might even start shooting in Jpeg...

What we got up to this weekend...

It's Spring dear reader, did I mention that enough yet?  I adore spring, people start to come out of hiding, including me I must add, I am a virtual hermit during winter but now it's March I feel I have fully conquered SAD for another year and that alone makes me happy and delighted.

Interesting and wonderful things happened over the weekend, first and foremost I had a Saturday off!! That does not happen very often and so when it does you have to embrace it and grab it by both hands, usually I have my daughter Looby who comes out to photo shoots with me while Abigail goes off with Daddy and does the footbally sporty things!  This weekend Looby had a horse riding lesson booked so we swapped and Abigail and I had a mummy/daughter afternoon, she said she wanted to go and explore the charity shops in Hexham and so that's what we did, a whole £6.10 with our railcard on the train and we got some fab bargains in the charity shops, I shall not be complaining about a beautiful Per Una linen dress for £7.50!

I have some Instagrams to share from our weekend -

Claude is a famous Lobster Mobile, I've never seen him before, well until Saturday in Hexham, have you seen him?  I want to know just how famous Claude the Lobster Mobile is.

It's either horse riding or it's Lady Gaga's new fashion statement

Hexham was sort of springlike but definite touches of winter still remained!

Abigail in her £1 bargain hat

First day of sunglasses wearing this year!

Yes it was a very good mum/daughter day!!

Sunday was a portraits on the beach afternoon, catching up with old clients and new ones and having lots of fun with little people who all seemed to think that the sea was the place to be except that it wasn't really because it was very cold indeed and they didn't seem to be quite so happy 20 minutes later when they were wet through and a bit chilly!

Geek Alert, read on if you're a photographer, you care about camera systems or you're nosy, feel free to skip if you don't have a clue, haha!

This week is going to be splendid, I purchased a new camera, I've just bought into the Fuji X-Series after following the amazing and inspirational work of Kevin Mullins who I'm also happy to call a lovely friend of mine, being around him and his enthusiasm for the system as well as seeing the results finally got too much and I knew it was the camera I wanted, now I know that it's very much the photographer who makes the images and not the camera but in truth the Fuji X-Pro 1 is a complete game changer and it's half the weight and size of my Canon which means I might just avoid the claw the day after I've shot a wedding for 12 hours.  I think it's going to take me a stage further, it's going to be a path to somewhere new, I'll still have my trusty Canon with all of my favourite prime lenses but I'm excited to see what I can add to that with the Fuji X-Pro1, maybe nothing will change and no one will be able to see the difference and only I'll know or maybe everything will change and in a years time the face of my business and also the way I do photography will change forever, it's at the exciting start-line of the journey (I hate that word) and I can't wait to see what happens, I just wish I didn't have to sit and wait unpatiently for it's arrival along with the 35mm f1.4, except they're from different places so I hope they arrive at the same time, haha!

So that's it dear reader, another week commences and I'm a happy smiley Mandy, if you would like to talk to me about photographing your wedding or kids/family portraits then you can catch up with me on my website, via email or my facebook business page.