Leica Q2 High Contrast BW SOOC, featuring Round Rock Texas
As a photographer, I have always loved editing images in Adobe Lightroom. However, I recently found artifact issues related to Lightroom and Fujifilm RAW files, which led me to explore other creating methods. As many Fujifilm users love to shoot SOOC using their Fujifilm cameras, I was interested in trying it out to see if I would be happy with the result. SOOC stands for straight out of the camera, it means you get the settings right in the camera, and you end up with the Jpegs without post-editing.
It was taunting for me to shoot SOOC, but I remember when I first started doing photography 20 years ago while I was shooting film. There was a time when digital post-editing was not an option, and I didn't even have the luxury to develop my own negatives in a darkroom. The photographing process was much slower since I had to get it right in-camera, and there wasn't even a screen for me to see a preview.
Recently, Leica released their new Leica Q2 Monochrom right after I got my Q2. Would I be interested in paying an extra $1k for a camera that only shoots black and white? Not likely, even if I had the money. It doesn't mean I don't love black and white enough. I love creating black and white images, and I often feel like my black and white work is better than my colorwork.
Since I had some time before Christmas, I decided to shoot around downtown Round Rock after visiting a local nursery there. For this shoot, I use the high contrast black and white setting on my Q2. It was a sunny afternoon, and everything was very contrasty to start with due to the light. It wasn't busy on the street because of the situation we were in. I still enjoyed exploring the town and capturing the emptiness due to the dark time we are enduring.
Looking through the images after the shoot, they were surprisingly better than my expectation, and even a couple of video clips I did turned out quite well! I love the vibes of these photos. Sometimes the darkness in the shadow obscures what you can see, but then it leaves more for imagination. With the contrasty light condition, I composed the images using a lot of lines and shapes. I had fun creating that afternoon, and I imagine I will be doing something similar soon with my Fujifilm X100V; after all, that is a camera infamous for its SOOC Jpeg!
