You are reading part II of a post that started here.

This is about my 1 week trip to Portugal with the wonderful Fujifilm GFX100RF that, while being a magnificent camera, left me with some mixed feelings.

Care to know why, please read on (or start by visiting part I). If you are in a hurry to know about my views on the Fuji, you can jump to the tittle below A few words about the Fuji.

Leaving Natura Glamping

Resuming where I left in part I. After spending our last night in Natura Glamping located at Serra da Gardunha, we headed all the way north to Vila Nova de Cerveira.

This is a small town at the northern border of Portugal, with only river Rio Minho separating it from Spain.

But before that, we decided to drive to the adjacent summit where we could have an overhead view of our glamping site.

In the past few days when we were enjoying the beautiful scenery at the wooden deck of our “tent”, I would glance at the hill next to us and imagine what it would look like from up there.

I knew there was a hiking trail leading up to the peak of the mountain. Checking Google Maps I realized we could actually drive up the trail. So up we went.

It was a dirt track, not too narrow, not too wide, with some tight turns.

And it had no guard rails stopping you going down the slope.

I made sure to drive slow. I’m not an experienced driver under these conditions and I was concerned our mini SUV could somehow loose traction and go downhill.

I was nervous.

Following a 10 ~ 15 minute drive we finally reached the summit. I couldn’t see out properly as the car was tilted up and leaning towards the passenger side due to the uneven surface.

I couldn’t locate the edge of the road, I could only see the mountains far away and the clouds. I stopped. I was a bit tense. The scenario of rolling down the hill with the car was still playing in my head, however unlikely.

It was windy, to the point of shaking our car. The wind noise added to the drama. Then suddenly my wife yells:

Oh! Look!

I froze, my heart skipped a beat. What?!

Nothing serious. Just my wife excited because this wild goat was out there, staring at us.

I somehow managed to keep my cool. I even grabbed the camera and took a photo. Damn.

Took a deep breath. All good.

Now let’s go out and enjoy the scenery.

Fueling my sci-fi imagination

These places are always equipped with weather radars, watch towers, communication apparatus, geospatial reference points and the likes. The reason being they are high points offering good conditions for these stuff.

But for some reason these facilities are always abandoned.

Probably because the technology becomes obsolete and no longer needed?.. Some are not totally abandoned though. The equipment still active, lights still on and blinking, but with no one there and in visible decay.

You still wonder if whoever owns this stuff is remotely operating it? Or things were just left abandoned for a slow death?

Same in Serra da Estrela, same in Tai Mo Shan in Hong Kong. Even in small Macau there are a few dilapidated watch towers in the hills. These places feel eerie and dystopian, appropriate for sci-fi neo noir nerds like me.

Anyway, a few shots taken and we had to go. A long drive was ahead of us.

Convento San Payo

Following a four-hour, 370 km drive, we finally arrived. Well, before going downtown we went directly to Convento San Payo, where we were staying.

As the name suggests, this place used to be a convent. It was established in the late 1300’s and over the centuries had evolved into the actual building units we see today.

Left abandoned in the 1800’s, it was later acquired in the 1980’s by distinguished Portuguese sculptor José Rodrigues, who decided to recover it with the help of prominent Portuguese architect Viana de Lima.

This was the sculptor’s residence and workshop for the subsequent decades, until somewhere down the line the family decided to turn it into a boutique hotel.

I learned all this through Mateus, José Rodrigues’ son-in-law. He was there to greet us when we arrived. Like all Portuguese people, he was nice, helpful and talkative.

I was totally unaware of the history of Convento San Payo when I made the booking. I picked this place because it’s so different from what we are used to in Asia.

Both my wife and myself, we are sick and tired of the non-sensical, so-called luxurious experience and the accompanying low-ball attractions offered by hotels across Asia.

Here we liked the fact it was an old construction, a convent in the past, so different from these boring hotels with hundreds of rooms in a glass façade building.

It was secluded. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains and greenery.

Too secluded, perhaps?

Tell me about it… It was a 15 minute drive from Vila Nova de Cerveira. And most of it – around 6 km – through a narrow mountain road with nothing around.

We got a taste of it late at night when we returned from dinner. More on this below.

Once settled, we went out to visit the town. We stopped several times for pics in the aforementioned mountain road as weather was good, with a pleasant sunlight.

When the conditions are right, the Fuji GFX100RF will deliver the goods straight out of camera with no post-processing needed. The photos above are a good example. All shot with standard PROVIA setting.

This camera needs proper light. I’m coming to this conclusion now.

Is it not the same with all cameras?

Yes. But so much more with this Fuji. You need proper light to take full advantage of the 100MB, medium format sensor.

That’s when you see the beautiful colours and shadows, that’s when you truly realize what this camera is capable of.

Otherwise… Everything is dark and flat.

Yes, you can pull out the details in post-processing. The RAW files give you plenty of latitude. Play with the sliders: highlights, shadows, brilliance, black point, contrast, brightness, saturation, you name it.

But it’s not the same.

There’s a difference between a well lit, properly exposed photo straight out of camera; and a Lightroom digitally manipulated photo.

It’s the difference between something that’s pleasant to your eyes VS something that’s only technically acceptable.

Continuing our walk

To our surprise Vila Nova de Cerveira was a ghost town. Most shops and restaurants were closed. Because it was a week day, we were later told.

Weekends are totally different, with a flock of Spaniards from across the river happily shopping and spending their money.

We went to check the river walk as the sun was setting down.

Deep Seek AI advised my wife to pick one of many riverside restaurants for dinner, but that turned out to be wrong information. There were no riverside restaurants. Can’t fully trust AI. Yet.

And now posting this one below separately.

This is “Ponte da Amizade”, literally meaning Friendship Bridge. It connects Spain (left) to Portugal (right). Funny enough, there is a bridge in Macau with the exact same name.

Again, I was shooting JPEG here and playing with the aspect ratios. The landscape format suited the bridge for obvious reasons.

It was dinner time now and we enjoyed a good meal al fresco with a bottle of traditional vinho verde tinto that put me in a dreamy state.

And driving back to our place was the ultimate challenge. The road up the mountains had no lights, it was dark, it was black everywhere. Visibility was none due to the heavy fog.

We could only see a few meters ahead of us. We were driving inside a cloud. Good that the car had a screen with GPS showing the route, allowing me to anticipate which way to go.

Took a deep breath when we finally got to our place save and sound.

Rain and Spain

Woke up the next day and it was raining.

Portugal with rain is the ultimate show stopper to us. We love staying outdoors in Portugal.

Usually under these conditions we go to a shopping mall – an opportunity to check brands that are not available in Macau.

But there was none around. The closest mall was actually in Spain, across the river.

Off we went.

We ended up in this outlet place that had a big supermarket. Got some delicacies we can’t find in Macau, like smoked codfish. And we ate in the parking lot, in the car. We love this.

And then the sun came out. Weather looked promising. We decided to go to Vigo.

Did I say weather was promising?

Not when we arrived in Vigo. Rain was pouring, we had no other choice but to chill in a restaurant bar.

White wine, calamares and sardines had us entertained till rain stopped.

No mood to shoot under these conditions. Rain stopped, but it was cloudy.

The granite from the buildings and the pavement further highlighted the grey coloured ambiance!

More flat images with unattractive daylight conditions. Time for some Fuji film simulations to save the day. Just for fun.

Vigo turned out to be a pleasant city. Like many cities in Europe, the historic district was pedestrian only.

No cars, no noise, no air pollution.

We took a long walk and returned to Portugal. Skipped dinner – we were still digesting the calamares! – and spent the evening watching TV in our hotel room.

Every now and then a couch potato evening feels good.

Artworks

On our last day in Vila Nova de Cerveira, finally we were greeted with good weather. Yet it did not look promising at the early hours. The sky was still partly covered with clouds.

Remember we were up in the mountains. Looking down to the river, we realized the valley was acting like a container, fully filled by layers of cloud.

As the wind blew in our direction, soon we were swallowed by this stream of clouds coming from the valley.

And then came the good weather.

With this, we finally had the chance to explore Convento San Payo.

Later on Mateus opened the gate to let us visit an adjacent garden where his late father-in -law, the sculptor José Rodrigues, had some of his artworks displayed.

A private, outdoor art gallery.

And there were animals. They were friendly and came to see us.

Since weather was good, we took the opportunity to visit nearby attractions as well. Some sightseeing viewpoints, a lake… and a landmark modern deer sculpture from José Rodrigues himself on a mountain top.

A few words about the Fuji

This was our penultimate day in Portugal. By now I was totally familiar with the Fuji GFX100RF. And I was a happy man.

This camera is small, portable and light. I would just walk out of the car with the camera in my hand, not even using the strap. And it’s a 100MB medium format camera!

Is it as good as my Hasselblad 907x 100c in terms of image quality?

No. The Hasselblad produces silky smooth photos that are unmatched by the Fuji. But everything is relative and some may prefer Fuji’s outputs.

Comparing both cameras, there is the practicality side of things not to be ignored. As much as I love my Hasselblad, using it outdoors is a pain. No EVF means you have to shoot with the LED screen and under strong daylight it is pretty much a guessing game.

The Hasselblad is also heavier and cumbersome to be carried around due to its boxy shape. What I like about the Hasselblad – its unique vintage design – is also what makes it difficult to use.

The Fuji GFX100RF hits a home run here. It’s so user-friendly and portable you want to take it everywhere.

Both cameras are good, I like them both. But the Fuji left me somehow disappointed because I was expecting outputs similar to Hasselblad’s magic.

Furthermore, I expected the GFX100RF photos to be usable straight out of camera. That was my experience using Fuji’s medium format GFX50R years ago. I thought this new Fuji would behave the same.

I bought this camera thinking I could skip the time consuming process of converting RAW images in Lightroom. And I was wrong. Unless the lighting conditions are perfect, you really have to massage the RAW files to get something out of them.

So… While overall I’m very happy with the GFX100RF, I was also a bit disappointed to realize it is not what I was expecting it to be.

Back to our trip

It was now time for lunch and we went to this place called Casa das Velhas (old ladies house) that was advised by Mateus before. We had lunch al fresco with a beautiful view.

Good weather, good food and good wine. We downed two bottles of white… Below the last two photos I took with the Fuji.

After which, I switched off for a short period… I was not the only one drinking and I wouldn’t say I had more than my wife. Fact is, I get drunk easily while she is more resistant.

Paid the bill, went to our car and decided we better take a nap to avoid any trouble driving under influence.

A 10 minute power nap after lunch makes wonders. But when I looked at my watch, I realized we slept for nearly two hours!..

With not much to see around – we pretty much checked all spots – we headed to a mall in Viana do Castelo for some shopping and called it a day.

Last day in Portugal

We departed the following evening. After breakfast we bit farewell to Mateus and started our 400+ km drive heading South to Lisbon.

Made a pitstop in Coimbra for lunch with my brother and his family. After which, we had just enough time for a last stop in our newly bought apartment in Estoril, which we decided to rent out to milk the investment.

We met our tenant, had a pleasant chat.

On our way to the airport we took the marginal, this fantastic driveway along the seafront that works as therapy to us.

It’s a routine we never miss.

As always, we turned off the car’s air-con, rolled down the windows to feel the wind and the salty smell of the sea. That dark blue sea, where we can cherish the horizon touching the similarly dark blue sky with no clouds.

And, as always, we spoke about retiring in Portugal one day.

* All photos above taken with Fuji GFX100RF unless otherwise stated.