Photos taken during another visit to the old-favourite Natural History Museum with Jai Shah, a pro wedding photographer (check out his inspirational 365-project in which he takes a new photo daily through 2013 - harder and more creative than it sounds!). Charged with inspiration after viewing the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit, we made the most of the time experimenting with our new cameras (and an old lens).

Technical details: Fuji X-M1 with Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 MF lens.

A few photos taken on a dreary winter day walking around the ever lively Waterloo station and Southbank (although the last photo is taken near Soho). I particularly like the second photo which was taken outside the National Theatre.

Technical details: Fuji X-M1 with Fujinon 16-50mm lens.

My free Friday afternoon led me to the London Ice Sculpting Festival, located in the midst of Canary Wharf skyscrapers on Wood Wharf. It was breathtaking to see the international sculptors from all over the globe race against each other to carve wonderfully intricate designs into their monolithic blocks of ice. The work in progress is taken during the "Freestyle" competition in which the sculptors had only 4 hours to carve their masterpieces. Additionally an unusually warm and rainy January evening with temperatures of approx 9 degrees resulted in the exhibits dripping and melting while being worked upon!

The super low-noise capabilities of the X-M1 deserve another mention (see post from Westminster a week ago)... most of the below photos were shot at ISO 3200-6400! (Photos have not been post processed / edited).

Technical details: Fuji X-M1 with Fujinon 16-50mm lens.

Two posts for today... the start of my afternoon began with a wander down Marylebone High Street and around Oxford Street, shooting in monochrome inspired by the somewhat beautiful vintage / retro design of the camera. The colourful (although obviously can't be seen in the photo) station in the last image is Tottenham Court Road.

Technical details: Fuji X-M1 with Fujinon 16-50mm lens.

This evening was the first proper chance to test out a new toy - the Fuji X-M1 and its 16-50mm kit lens. A near cloudless sunset over the Thames provided an apt setting and the camera did not disappoint. In comparison to the Olympus E-PM1 (not a fair comparison, although there are good promotions and cashback offers with Fuji at the moment) I loved how they squeezed in so much manual control in a small body. Having a tilting screen is something lacking on both the E-PM1 and my Sony a850 (the latter, being a "traditional" photographer's tool, doesn't even have live view anyway!) The jpeg engine and colours seem good (one of my favourite things about the Olympus cameras), however what blew me away was the lack of noise produced by Fuji's X-Trans sensor. Several of the below photos are taken at ISOs between 1250 and 4000, and are even on full crop, essentially noise-free while retaining reasonably strong detail. More on this later in upcoming posts, but I can see this becoming a favourite camera to use with the old manual focus lenses too - I'll post up more images soon.

Back to the photos - the Palace of Westminster (AKA Houses of Parliament), Big Ben and sunsets taken from Westminster Bridge.  The lantern is taken at the entrance of the cloisters of Westminster Abbey (photos 6 and 7) and the last 5 photos are taken in the Victoria and Albert museum.

Technical details: Fuji X-M1 with Fujinon 16-50mm lens.