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Covent Garden Street Performers

The headline in one of the newspapers that feature this photo is ‘Covent Garden Celebrates 50 Years of Street Performance Amid Renewed Licensing Concerns’

I was asked to photograph the street performers to publicise the event due to take place on Sunday 11 May to mark 50 years of modern street performance in Covent Garden.

The performers were great to work with and for the photo at the top of this page my only direction was to choose the backdrop and tell them to bunch in from the sides and stay as close as possible from front to back so they would all be in focus.

The photos lower down this page are them getting ready, like any artists do.

The Event Will Take Place On 11th May

The photos I was asked to take are to publicise the event that will take place on Sunday 11th May 2025 with performances from past and present artists, including poet and performer John Hegley, who began his career busking in Covent Garden in the 1980s.

The Square has a proud history and has delighted millions of visitors and launched the careers of household names – names like Eddie Izzard, Dynamo, and Stomp. So the all-day event on 11th May has a pedigree stretching back 50 years. That’s 50 years since public awareness saved Covent Garden from being turned into offices and allowed artists to come in an fill the space.

Renewed Licensing Concerns

And now Covent Garden’s street performances are threatened by Westminster Council’s 2021 licensing scheme, which would make the performances vulnerable to being shut down.

It has already happened on Leicester Square.

After 50 years of successful self regulation the Covent Garden Street Performers Association wants recognition of their proven success in self regulating.

And it’s pretty obvious that the public likes things just as they are.

Look at the photo I took, the photo at the top of this page.

I asked the performers to arrange themselves. But nobody asked the crowd to gather.

The crowd gathered all by itself because the performers are entertaining.

After years and years of street performers entertaining the crowds, the crowds gather, which is proof that people like and them want them – just as they are.

So mark 11th May on your calendar and get down to the Square for what the performers do best.

Testing The Canon EOS R50

The R6, which I have, is full frame. With card and battery it weighs 680g. It doesn’t feel heavy when working with it. If you are going our specifically to shoot then it’s OK, but if you are just going out wandering then you are going to notice it. It is not so light you can take it with you without finding yourself weighing up whether you want to carry that weight.

The Ricoh GRIII is so easy to carry that you really can forget you have it with you. But it doesn’t have a viewfinder. I’ve got a TTArtisan viewfinder that slips into the hotshoe but it is hit and miss because you have to line it up very carefully to make sure you are actually pointing it at the subject.

Most of the time I work off the rear screen and that works OK except when the sun is shining on the LCD. When that happens I am shooting blind and just judging by eye where the camera is pointing. That’s not as easy as you might think although I have more hits than misses now I have done it enough times.

Still, I like a viewfinder.

The R50 weighs 375g with lens and battery, And the lens throat of the R50 is the same size as the R6 and all the R range of cameras. So any lens that fits the full frame R6 will fit the R50 even though sensor on the R50 is APS-C.

Here’s a test shot. 1/1600 second at f1.8 and ISO 200 with the RF 50mm f1.8 STM lens with evaluative metering and auto white balance. The image links to the image file so you can see it bigger when you click on the image. And then see it bigger still when you click again.

Test shot of leaves on a tree shot with Canon EOS R50 with RF 50mm f1.8 lens.

What Do I think Of The Camera

  • The camera feels heavy for its small size (it’s very small) like a little heavy lump.
  • The grip is small but the camera feels reasonably secure held in one hand.
  • The dedicated ISO button to the right of the shutter button is so flush with the body that I have to lift my eye off the viewfinder even to see where it is. And it is not easy to press, and I do not have sausage fingers.
  • I like the flippy-out screen and the ability to turn the screen to the back of the camera so the screen is protected.
  • The viewfinder doesn’t feel small or pokey – that;’s a big plus for me.
  • I could probably get more out of the settings if I sat down with someone who knew the menus inside out. I’ve had the 50mm on it for a few days and now the 16mm and both feel comfortable on the camera. I wouldn’t put a 28-70mm on it though.
  • I charged the battery when I got the camera and I have shot 164 shots and the battery info says it is still fully charged. I tend to review shots in the viewfinder, and not every shot. So the LCD isn’t getting much use for image reviews. That may be part of why the battery is doing well. Of course, it might suddenly go to zero, and it is does I will update this.
  • The images are a bit different to the R6, a bit more compressed. But then I am shooting compressed RAW. I’ll try an experiment with that if I get time.

Would I Keep It

The answer is no, and not for any of the reasons for and against that I enumerated above., What I missed, and didn’t know how much I would miss it until I reviewed the photos I took under ‘stress’ conditions, is in-body image stabilisation (IBIS). I found that I really need it.

Maybe if I were to get my hand in with a lot more shots I might do better, but I feel like I am battling against something that doesn’t need to be a problem because several small cameras do have IBIS.

Maybe with the Canon RF 35mm f1.8 IS Macro STM lens or the Canon RF 24mm F1.8 Macro IS STM lens because they are image stabilised. But then I would cutting down my lens options to just a couple of choices.

There are longer lenses that are image stabilised, but the body can’t take big lenses comfortably, in my opinion. And there are RF-S lenses designed for the DX sensor, but they don’t have big open apertures.

Bottom line is the IBIS is good because it opens up a whole world of stabilised shooting. So no to the Canon EOS R50. I wished it were otherwise because the camera is so small and light. But no.

Why I Sent Back The Fuji X100VI

It’s the latest in a line of X100 cameras, but with a higher megapixel sensor and in-body image stabilisation. So what is not to like?

The problem with experience is that once you have it, you can’t un-experience something. And I had experience of the X100s, that I took everywhere with me.

It was, for me, the almost perfect travel camera because it was almost two dimensional. Instead of a big lens sticking out, the lens was almost flush with the body.

Plus, it had a dedicated leather case made by Fuji. With the camera in the case it was a neat package one could put in a travel bag knowing the camera was protected.

So with that history I bought the Fuji X100VI as a go-anywhere camera. Now I am wondering why on earth Fuji changed the design of the leather case.

First, you may have read that the case for the V fits the VI.

The Fuji site on this page says that it fits. It says ‘Compatibility X100VI / X100V’

And on this page for the VI it says the VI is compatible with ‘Leather case LC-X100V’

And it is true that the Fuji X100VI fits the leather case. That is, you can slip the camera into the lower part of the case and it fits.

However, the hinged flap at the bottom of the leather case should allow access to the battery/card compartment cover. It doesn’t because the leather case was designed for the V, and the VI is a tiny bit bigger.

So the leather cases does not allow one to open the compartment because the bottom of the leather case covers a couple of mm of the end of the battery cover.

To change battery or card one would have to take the leather case off. That’s not good but it’s not the end of the world.

And if that were the only problem I would put up with it.

On earlier X100 series cameras, the top of the case was attached to the lower part by two press studs. When one opened the case, the top part hung down. It didn’t obstruct anything and it was securely fixed in place.

When you wanted to close the leather case you just flipped up the top part.

But Fuji changed the design, and the top is not connected to the bottom part at all with this new case design.

Are you getting this? Do you see what the problem is?

Let’s suppose you are out with the Fuji X100VI (or the X100V) in its leather case. You don’t have a camera bag or any other kind of bag with you. You are just out walking and you have your camera with you. It is a summer’s day and you are in your shirt sleeves.

You come across something you want to photograph. To actually use the X100VI camera you have lift off the top part of the case. Then you have to think of somewhere to put it. And where exactly? Shove it in a pocket? It’s too big for that.

An important part of why I was attracted to this camera is that it is a good camera, has a viewfinder, and it has a lens that hardly sticks out.

And it has a case, which would mean I could carry it anywhere protected. But for some unfathomable reason, Fuji changed the design and ruined a perfectly good system.

I have searched reviews and forums for people discussing this huge design flaw, and I can’t find any mention of it. I am mystified. Am I the first person to have ever noticed this?

Of course, maybe a lot of people don’t even want to use a leather case. That’s OK – it takes all kinds to make a world. But I do like a case.

When I am carrying a more substantial camera like my Canon EOS R6, I carry it in a Billingham camera bag.

And if I am carrying a small camera like the Ricoh GRIII, I have the Ricoh leather case. It really does mean I can slip the Ricoh in a pocket. The case even has a belt loop, so I can carry it hands free and pocket free. Still, the camera only weighs 277g.

Back To The Fuji

The bottom line is that because of the design fault in the leather case, I returned the camera. and I am wondering what to do next. My head is all over the place. With a Canon R50 or R10 I I could put a small prime on the camera and that would be a tiny package. Or I could go for an Osmo Pocket Three or even use my phone. Or get some Fuji goodness with an X-T30.

As someone once said to me when I was trying to decide between two options, it’s a good question and it’s a choice between good and good.

DxO PureRAW vs. Photoshop: A Better Way to Process Fuji RAW?

Andy Hutchinson is a no-nonsense photography YouTuber from Australia. A few days ago he talked about some standalone tools that do a better job than tools built into post-processing programs like Photoshop and Lightroom.

One of the tools he described is DxO Pure RAW, a demosaicing and noise reduction tool.

What is Demosaicing

Digital camera sensors don’t know what colour light is. To the sensor, it is simply more light or less light. So sensors have a colour filter array that sites over the sensor’s pixels. The array is a mosaic of red, green, and blue colour filters.

When you want to process a RAW image on your computer, the program has to ‘read’ the raw data in the picture, using a demosaicing engine.

Programs like Photoshop and Lightroom have demosaicing engines built into them.

Some other programs use the demosaicing engine built into the operating system of your computer.

As Andy Hutchinson describes it, DxO’s approach to decoding RAW digital sensor information is to train their machine learning model to recognise real-world noise patterns and to differentiate between genuine image features and unwanted artifacts.

At the same time, the software runs DxO’s denoising algorithm on the image data.

Because they do the denoising at the same time as demosaicing, you get a purer and cleaner image than you would if you ran the image through a denoising engine after demosaicing.

There is an added advantage to using DxO Pure RAW if you use Fujifilm cameras.

Fujifilm took their own route to the construction of the colour filter array over the sensor. The result is that programs like Photoshop and Lightroom have more difficulty demosaicing the RAW images than with cameras that use a BAYER colour filter array (almost all other camera brands).

The benefit in using Pure Raw is that its end product is a DNG RAW file rather than a RAF file. So if you then want to use Photoshop or Lightroom on the DNG file, all the difficult bit has already been done by Pure Raw.

Plus, Pure RAW also includes a built in lens softness compensation feature and also corrects for lens vignetting, chromatic aberration and distortion.

Quite a mouthful. 

Does it work?

I downloaded a trial version of DxO Pure Raw and processed a Fuji RAW file with it. I processed the same image with Photoshop and then compared the two images. 

What you are looking at is a photo processed with DxO Pure Raw with part of the same image processed in Photoshop overlaid on it.

Compare the two – click twice on the photo below to blow it up to see the detail.

Old Spitalfields Colour Walk

People of all stripes dress up on the third Thursday of each month and do a Colour Walk around and about in Old Spitalfields Market in London. It’s advertised on various sites recommending things to do in London, and that’s how I heard about it.

I went and it seemed that there were as many people photographing as there were parading. I thought the people who were dressed up would be in a group or parading as a group, but no. At least not when I arrived, after it had started.

It was advertised to start at 1:00pm and perhaps they did gather at the start. When I got there colour walkers were being shunted off in ones and twos to stand against a dark hoarding to be photographed. It all felt a bit odd somehow, as though the original bonhomie had gone or deflated a bit.

But there was one person who would not be deflated, and here is a shot of him. I recognised him because I also saw him in the middle of a crowd at the Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019 when protesters nailed a pink yacht to the intersection on Oxford Circus in the middle of London, and handcuffed themselves to the stanchions that secured the yacht.

The police at the Oxford Circus protest were a bit nonplussed about how to deal with what was then a novel situation. Eventually they made some arrests, but in terms of human interaction it was a success.

Two women I bumped into on the way to the Oxford Circus protest that day saw only good things that would come from it. A bit like young soldiers marching off to war. But we are all wiser now. ‘Just stop destroying the place’ has taken a back seat.

Just Stop

When the last Conservative Prime Minister issued new licences for oil drilling, the UK was in uproar. When President Biden said it would do incalculable harm to stop using fossil fuels rather than wind down their use, the US and the world’s media just took it on the chin. I guess it is the manner of the delivery.

Whatever the case, the Just Stop Oil protest movement has had less success in uniting the populace when they have blocked motorways to protest the use of fossil fuels. And where is Extinction Rebellion now? I haven’t heard from them for a while.

Back To The Colour Walk

Here is a photo of a woman who I think is one of the organisers of Colour Walk, being photographed, with a good natured attempt at a smile.

I shot this with the Canon EOS R6 and Canon RF28-70mm F2.8 IS STM lens at f2.8, 1/30th of a second, and ISO 100. The lens was at 70mm.

ISO 100