Skip to main content

artboard-32xfter Vienna, we spent a night in Budapest with our parents. Our plan was to just rest one night and then start our road trip around Romania. We did the unthinkable: we drove through the Hungarian border and entered Romania, continuing for almost ten hours until we reached the city of Brasov. Before I proceed, let me say that crossing the Romanian border was not the most pleasant experience. It wasn’t necessarily problematic, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. Make sure you have your passports handy with enough pages for stamps (my dad’s was full), and you will have to purchase a vignette (basically a toll-like ticket that will reside in your car and help you avoid fines :).

Brasov is very quaint. It is actually a beautiful place with remnants of the Soviet era. The people are friendly, but not necessarily accustomed to large tourist crowds.

The Xpro2 really shines here. The Acros film simulation really manages to bring out all of the details in each photograph. Because some of the buildings are run down and the paint is wearing off, the gradation of tones is truly spectacular. This tonality was easier to emulate with film, especially using different contrast filters to achieve subtle gradations. With digital, however, the conversion would require extensive use of luminosity masks. It is absolutely possible, and digital raw files give you tremendous flexibility for tonality. The X-trans sensor and Fuji’s Acros, however, acomplish this task with great precision, requiring only minor adjustments in post. Indeed, most of these shots are fresh-off-the-camera JPEGs with slight contrast adjustments in Lightroom.

We caught a very rainy day in Brasov, which made for some very interesting photographs. Rain always adds contrast because it creates highlights where there weren’t any (for example, water on the road reflects light, creating white spots on photographs), and most colors are darkened, causing deeper shadows. This, in turn, increases the difference between the lightest and darkest points of the image, increasing contrast.

The X-Pro2 body is very well built and weather resistant (as well as the Fujinon 35 mm f/2 used in these photos), so this was a good test of the WR features of Fuji products.

Leave a Reply