Craigdarroch Castle
Coming back from the other side of the Vancouver Island, we decided for a short trip to Victoria. Unfortunately with highway construction that trip was long, and gave us a limited time in this beautiful city. So we decided to forgo most of it, and concentrate on the Craigdarroch Castle. As my wife described in her post, it's a beautiful house built in the 19th century. Since Canada is a fairly young country, compared to the world standards, I would call this house a landmark of our history, yet it is not being looked after by any of the government agencies. It's all done through volunteers. The passion of these people to preserve this place is amazing. We talked to one of the guides for more than 30 min about how the house was built, the attention to detail that went into design and construction of the house. It was quite an eye opener. You could feel the pride in the craft. I will echo my wife's words... if you are ever in Victoria, you have to visit this gem.
Fuji X-Pro1 and low light
Photographing the Craigdarroch Castle on the inside proved to be a bit challenging. The Fuji X-Pro1 does not have an on board flash, so I had to bump up the ISO on most of the inside images because of the dark interior. Most of the following images were done an ISO 1000 and higher, and I think the camera performed very well. Also the contrasts of very bright windows combined with darker interiors, created very high contrasts. I could have used HDR, but I did not have a tripod handy, and the shutter speeds were already dangerously low for hand held photography. Plus there were a lot of humans milling around. So I opted for single image, and no bracketing. I was very impressed how the X-Pro1 performed in such challenging situation. So enough of the ramblings from me... here are the photos of the inside of the beautiful Craigdarroch Castle. Enjoy!
