The World’s Most Versitile Tiny Photo Office

Introduction

A while ago, I saw a blog post on a photography website regarding the world’s smallest photography office. It was basically an iPhone, a portable keyboard, and a camera with WiFi. I really liked the idea of this. Something that’s small and powerful and can be ultra portable and unobtrusive. I decided to try it.  

The Gear

The full list of gear is as follows:

• Chrome Kadet Bag

• Fujifilm X100F & Pouch & five batteries

• Fujifilm X100 Telephoto Lens & Samsonite Pouch

• iPhone 8 Plus

• Joby Micro Tripod

• Joby Grip Tight Phone Holder

• Poloroid Zip Printer

• Logitech K380 Keyboard

• 2 Yongnuo RF-603C Triggers

• Neewer NW-610II Speedlight & Canon Pouch

• Anker 10,000 MAH Power Bank

• King Sized M&Ms

• WIPOUCH reusable wipe pouch (because kids)

• Travel Advil (because kids)

• Toothpicks

• Lenspen lens cleaner

• Apple lightning to SD Reader & USB

• Gerber Dime Multitool

• 2x lightning cables

• Aukey USB port & Micro USB cable

• Pilot G2 Pen

• Bower SD card case

Making the Image

The first thing I’ll go over is the gear I use to make the images with this setup.

The camera

The camera I chose was the Fujifilm X100F. This camera is the perfect one camera...uh... camera. The reason is simple, it can do portraiture, pseudo-macro, landscape, low light, telephoto (more on this later), street, high speed sync, and various other types of photography. I don’t know of another single more versitile and small-ish camera. It’s compact enough to fit in a jacket pocket or the pocket of some pants, but it’s kind of a stretch.

The Lens

I didn’t want to have an interchangeable lens camera for portability purposes. However, I did include the Fujifilm telephoto x100 lens because it does something wonderful to the x100F. The x100F has a digital teleconverter built in. When you pair the teleconverter with the digital teleconverter, you get a 100mm equivalent lens. It’s jpeg only, but it still gives you a ton of reach without much size or cost.  

One of the primary criticisms of the x100f is the fixed lens. With the digital teleconverter and the teleconverter lens, you have focal lengths from 35mm all the way to 100mm. I’ve thought about getting the wide angle converter as well, but, because it’s only on the wide end, it’s not as multifaceted as the tele-converter lens. 

FLASH

The last component of my tiny photo office is my flash setup. I use a Neewer RF-610II flash which is incredibly small and portable while still offering enough power to overpower the sun with the leaf shutter of the Fujifilm. For triggers I use a pair of Yongnuo RF-603s. I’ve used most of the Yongnuo flash products and have found them to work nearly as well as my more expensive flash options.

Having an off camera flash is essential for use with the X100F. I’m going to write an article just about high speed sync flash, but basically the X100F allows you to overpower the sun due to its unique design. Getting the flash off the camera allows you to achieve the best results. I don’t have a light modifier for this setup, but maybe someone could suggest one for me.

Processing/Sharing The Image/Writing About The Images

Iphone

I have been on team apple for a few years now and I’m really impressed with the phone. I have the iPhone 8 Plus and, despite the lack of a headphone port (which is terrible and silly) it’s a great phone. My favorite aspects of the phone are the long battery life, the excellent apps, and the ease of getting images from my camera onto the phone (this may be just as easy or easier on android, but I’m an Apple guy for now).

Portable Keyboard

One of the main things I do on my iPad/iphone is write. Most people will tell you that the I-devices are primarily content consumption devices, but they have completely replaced a laptop when it comes to blogging and image manipulation. Regarding photography, the only thing I still use a laptop for is backing up my images. There’s not currently a great option for this on the iphone or iPad. Lightroom creative cloud is a pretty good option, but it just doesn’t work as well as a good old fashioned laptop and hard drive. 

All of that said, if you’re going to write on your phone or laptop, you need a keyboard. If you’re going to have the world’s smallest photo office, you need a small keyboard.  

The keyboard I use is a Logitech K380 which pairs via Bluetooth to my iphone. The keys have great travel, the Bluetooth is effortless, the lag is nonexistent, and it will connect to three separate devices at one time. This keyboard is lightweight and great to type on. There are other smaller keyboards out there, but they’re nowhere near as nice to type on. This keyboard is also relatively affordable.  

The Bag

The bag I use to carry all this around in is the Chrome Industries Kadet. It’s a small bag, but it’s got more than enough room to carry the Fujifilm X100F, my phone, my keyboard, the printer, and the miscellaneous accessories necessary for such an undertaking. This bag is water resistant, well made, comfortable, looks great and allows you to carry everything you need without being bogged down by excess. 

Printing The Image

Oh yeah, I’ve got a printer in this setup as well. Printing images is a big part of the overall process of photography, and one most people ignore nowadays. Getting the image off the phone and into the real world is a really wonderful and rewarding process. It’s also a really great way to break the ice with a person you want to photograph. Offering them a photo in exchange for taking their portrait is a sure-fire way to get permission. 

The printer I use is a Zip printer. It’s a small battery powered printer that makes business card sized prints via WIFI. It uses z-ink paper with does not need any ink to work and is much less expensive than the Fujifilm mobile printer (although the Fujifilm is actual film, if that makes a difference to you).

The prints aren’t museum quality or anything, but they certainly look great for how big they are. Additionally, and this is my favorite part, the backing makes the prints stickers. This means that keeping a true photo journal is an easy process.

Having an off camera flash is essential for use with the X100F. I’m going to write an article just about high speed sync flash, but basically the X100F allows you to overpower the sun due to its unique design. Getting the flash off the camera allows you to achieve the best results. 

Miscellaneous Stuff

Some of the miscellaneous stuff is just as important as the primary stuff in my bag.

Joby Micro Tripod & Joby Grip Tight Phone Holder

Job makes the gorilla-pod, which is a great product I don’t have room for in this setup. However, they also make the micropod, which works great for use with my camera as well as my phone when I’m writing. These two items pack up about as small as it’s possible to pack up and they weigh next to nothing.

Anker 10,000 MAH Power Bank & Cables

Power is extremely useful when out and about. I typically keep this powerbank with me and charged up. This is useful for charging phone, the batteries for my camera, and also for powering the USB hub so I can plug things into my iPhone without getting that “not enough power for accessory” message. It’s very useful and pretty small for the amount of juice.

King Sized M&Ms

Sometimes, you get hangry.

WIPOUCH reusable wipe pouch & Travel Advil

One of the best things about having children is being introduced to wipes. Wipes can take care of a huge amount of different messes and situations pertaining to children and just general life. Having wipes with me at all times is a no brainer.

Secondly, having a small pill container with Advil, headache medicine, and stomach medicine is a really smart thing. Kids can give you headaches, carrying them can give you muscle pain, and bad food can give you…stomach issues. Carrying a small medicine kit is a must.

Gerber Dime Multitool

The gerber Dime multitool is a lifesaver. It has a knife, a package opener, a screwdriver, scissors, pliers, and bottle opener. This thing is a lifesaver and is cheap as well.

Pilot G2 Pen

You always need a good pen and pilot G2s are my favorite.

Workflow

My workflow is pretty straightforward for this type of thing. I take the picture with my X100F. I will use the primary lens for most things and only screw on the teleconverter lens if I need some additional reach (if I know I’ll be far away from my subject). 

Once the shot is taken, I process the RAWs (I always shoot RAW) in camera. One of my favorite things about the Fujifilm cameras is the in-camera RAW processing engine. You can tweek the looks of a photo to a large degree. You can’t do as much as with Lightroom, but as long as you aren’t trying to recover a basically unusable image, it works great.  

Once I’ve processed the RAWs into JPEGs, I will transfer them over to my phone using the built in WIFI.

Once I have all my images transferred I process them using primarily VSCO and Snapseed. I’ll probably write an article just on using these apps later on.

After a few edits, it’s up to instagram and Facebook and, if I want, my printer.  

The Results

I genuinely think I get pretty good results with this setup. I’m going to attach some recent photos. These are by no means my best photos using this setup, but they are a good example of what this equipment is capable of producing.

Closing

In closing, this is a really effective minimalist setup for photography. It does basically everything you’d need it to and nothing you don’t. This setup can fit in an incredibly small bag and is as versatile as it is small. There really is no weak spot in this lineup either. If I had to list a weakness, it’s video, but I don’t do a lot of that anyways. If I did, I’d probably use my phone.

This setup can handle a wide variety of photographic situations without bogging you down with a ton of gear. I liked the idea of limiting my gear to focus my photography. I would highly recomend using a limited, but versitile set up like this for your own photography. What about you? What would you use for a tiny photography office? What would you change about my setup?