One of the things I really love about Galway city is the colour. Many of the buildings are painted in rich vibrant colours and are ideal photo fodder. So when I had the opportunity to spend a little time there this weekend, it was the ideal opportunity to try out my new Fujifilm x100. While I had issues with the X100's bigger brother the X-Pro1 and eventually sold mine, I did miss Fuji's superb colour reproduction. Fujifilm cameras capture colour in a way that can only be described as unique. I'm not sure you would consider it particularly accurate, but it leads to rich vibrant images that really do get your attention. Considering Fuji's heritage in the film world I suppose this isn't much of a surprise. So, when an opportunity came about to take another shot at a fuji camera I decided to give it a go. I have to say, I really do like the x100. It's a great little camera. It doesn't suffer from as many of the quirks as the X-Pro1 does, and more importantly you can open its raw files in just about anything. In fact, they work brilliantly in Aperture which renders them very faithfully. In my opinion it does a better job with raw files from the x100 than Lightroom does.

The other thing was that I wanted to travel light, so again the X100 was an ideal companion. There's the temptation to think that having a single fixed 35mm equivalent lens would be limiting, but if anything it was liberating. Sure there were times when I wished I had a telephoto to zoom in and pick out some detail, but it's an interesting exercise being without a a zoom. Anyway, before this becomes to techie, lets get to the pictures...

As I mentioned earlier, Galway is awash with colour. The shops along the aptly named "Shop Street" in Galway all have amazingly vibrant paint jobs. You could be cynical and say that it's just a ploy to appeal to tourists, but it does make for some great photo fodder!

As you can see the colour of these buildings really does come across brilliantly with Fuji's sensor. And it was a pretty dull day too, so the light didn't favour the situation. As well as the shop fronts, there are plenty of interesting characters along this stretch too..

The All Ireland hurling match was on this weekend to and Galway were finalists so the city was decked out in local flags and colours to show its support:

On the subject of colour, we made an interesting find out by the marina. Well, I knew it was there, but it's the first time I've gone over to actually photograph it. What is it I'm talking about? Why, it's a pile of garage. Or, crushed metal parts to be precise:

As someone who loves texture and detail I could have stayed there all day although I probably would have passed out from iron oxide poisoning. The stench was unbearable.

All in all I got some nice photos that I was pretty happy with, which isn't bad considering I hadn't set out to take pictures in the first place. They're not award winning by any means, but I like them. As for the X100 it's a very enjoyable little camera. It still has a few foibles but it's mostly a pleasure to shoot with. Here's a few more random photos of Galway: