I had a week in Istanbul – a city with a riot of colour and noise and people and water and amazing buildings. It’s a city where you take your life in your hands when you step onto a zebra crossing, but a city where you’re so pleased you crossed over because there was something even more lovely to see.

I never know what camera to take on holiday – or what lens. Last year, you might recall, I took a borrowed compact, a small user friendly Fuji and my beloved 5Dii with only a Lensbaby to both Venice and Barcelona.

This time, I revived my first proper DSLR love, my 40D ( not my first DSLR – I’ll save that for another blog post), added the Lensbaby, knowing that the crop frame would give it a different feel to the full frame of the 5D. I also threw in the bag my 85mm 1.8, which stayed in the bag and never came out. A wonderful lens – but not what I wanted on a trip. However, the one that I was most interested in taking was my ‘new’ Fuji X100. It wasn’t new, it was an eBay purchase – but it was new to me – and although I loved the idea of something small, compact but which could provide detailed RAWs – oh and let’s not forget, looks so stylish as well, I was slightly concerned that I was too used now to DSLRs to really enjoy returning to a small handbag sized camera.

Well, I fell in love – and wouldn’t hesitate to take it as my only camera on a future trip. There are far too many images to swamp you with – so I’ll be splitting them up over my next few posts – both X100 and Lensbaby shots -but today, a small introduction to my images from the X100 – ones where I have chosen everyday life in Istanbul; from colourful and joyous buskers, to overladen trams and demonstrations, through to backdrops of mosques to make you gasp and people fishing from a main bridge for their supper -to the chaos that is Taksim Square, I hope they will give you a tiny feel for this truly one of a kind city.