About a decade ago ago, I made a dumb decision and succumbed to a near-fatal case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I dropped for a Nikon D800 that I neither needed for my general work, which was street and documentary, nor had any specific other purpose for. Along with that, I spent a s**t-ton of money on some great Nikon glass. Almost immediately I suffered buyers’ remorse. My camera backpack weighed about 8kg.
But then one day, an epiphany. I looked at my sad, under-employed face in the mirror, and said, ‘Enough already! Sell it all and downsize!’. Of course, I lost money on the resell, and hated myself even more for a while, until I picked up the first camera I ever really actually loved to use. That would be the first iteration of the the Fuji X100. I dropped from an 8kg backpack to fixed lens ‘toy’ that would nearly fit in my pocket. I also downsized from 36mp to 12mp in that move.
This little camera taught me two things. Firstly, that size matters, in the reverse way. And secondly- and this is obvious- what mattered to me was the subject of the images, and not how they were obtained, and much less their megapixel count. Of course, horses for courses here. You need a more substantial piece of kit for professional studio/commercial work, as well as the flexibility of an interchangeable lens set-up if you’re to make a living from photography as a nobody. If you don’t have an established schtick that depends on one focal length ‘look’, then you need to be versatile.
Cows being treated to watermelons, Ha Tien, Vietnam (2012) X100 1/80s @ f/2.8
Two bridesmaids at a wedding in Ha Tien Vietnam (2012) X100 1/125s @ f/4.0 + built-in fill flash.
The subject matter must be arranged in some aesthetically relevant way (composition), and that the elements must relate to each other not just spatially, but also with respect to their colour and luminance (contrast and lighting).
Shooting with an approximately 35mm fixed full-frame equivalent focal length necessitates ‘zooming with one’s feet’ - either in or out, so as to frame the shot. Looking for ways to insinuate oneself into a favourable position becomes a thing. You might even have to engage with your subjects (heaven forbid!). All this made me fall in love with wider focal length perspectives, and that constrained field of view, especially for street and documentary work.
But all this is off the track. Having dumped the heft of a dSLR kit and been introduced to a radically new, and chromatically appealing alternative (Fuji ‘color science’ is legendary), I became a Fuji fanboy. I subsequently owned the X100S, XT-1, and XT-4 cameras. My favourite of all was and still is the 16.3mp XT-1. With this camera, I shot images that featured in my first publications- firstly online on the FujilLove website, and later, in FujiLove Magazine- fantastic projects established by Tomasz Trzebiatowski.
Attention to detail. Mekong Delta, Vietnam (2013) X100s 23mm, 1/1000 @f2.0
For the first story in the magazine I wrote a naively pretentious essay about the photographic muse, using the history of Edward Weston’s bevy of young women to illustrate the point that they probably helped his career more than he’d have cared to admit. Leaving his wife to embark on a succession of affairs with women whose talent, in my opinion rivalled his own, introduced him to new places, techniques and even a world of political intrigue, embodied in the subsequent work of Tina Modotti. The story was illustrated with some of my own images about which I’ll say nothing further.
My second FujiLove publication was born out of a creative funk that led me to really not shoot much at all for a year or so. Several years prior, I’d begun shooting little out-takes of life in the tiny alleys which form the sociocultural ‘glue’ of Saigon, the largest city in Vietnam. I called this the ‘hem project’, ‘hem’ being the Vietnamese word for alley. In a lazy play on words, I called this article and photo series, ‘Hemmed-in’.
I went back into the streets and shot a bunch of new images on my recently acquired XT-4 camera (yes, submitting to the allure of new gear porn is one way to snap out of a funk- but probably the worst way). The accompanying essay was all about the people in the images, and the history of some of their locations. I would not consider any of these images to be even amongst my top 100 faves, but at least I was back in the game.
So, what is it about the Fujifilm ecosystem that photographers find so attractive? Let’s start with the obvious. Fuji create camera bodies with a pretty cool old-school look. Top plates are adorned with dials and in the XT range, the EVF is housed in an old SLR-style mirror bump. The rangefinder look of the X100 and X-Pro series mimic the classic Leica aesthetic. Some models are two-toned, with the top section remaining its metallic sheen, and the rest being wrapped in faux leather.
Then there’s the image quality. I remember that around the time I purchased my X100, Sigma had been developing its radical Foveon sensor, which boasted incredible ‘perceived resolution’ due to it capturing red green and blue light data at every spatial location on the sensor. Normal Bayer sensors have a repeating pattern of spatially separated RGB photosites, meaning the processor engine has to make ‘best guesses’ as to the chroma values of pixels in a process called demosaicing . The Foveon sensors wound up in Sigma’s DP Merrill range of fixed lens cameras and boasted excellent image quality, but from impractical camera bodies. That fabulous IQ came at the expense of ridiculously short battery life. Worse, they could barely shoot more than a half-stop above base ISO without the image files falling to bits due to excessive chroma noise. Nonetheless, if used within their limitations, the sensors could produce images rivalling the quality of my old 36mp D800 - not bad for a 15mp APSC camera costing two thirds less than the Nikon. Some pundits even likened the DP Merrill images to those from medium format cameras. The DP1 camera is still a shopping bucket-list item for me. You can learn more about the Foveon sensor design philosophy here.
At the same time, Fuji was developing its own proprietary sensor design, the X-Trans sensor. This featured a 6x6 distribution of RGB photosites, and also boasted improved perceived resolution. Sharpness and contrast also improved due to the elimination of a low-pass filter. The first Fuji camera to feature this new 16.3mp X-Trans CMOS sensor was the X-Pro1, released in 2012. I waited until a couple of years later and got the second iteration of the sensor in the X-T1, via a short stop-over with the X100s, which also had the X-Trans II sensor.
One problem with the X-Trans cameras was (and still is at DXOMark) proprietary snobbery. Whilst Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom had an algorithm to decode the sensor, it wasn’t great. Some of the fine details, especially in saturated greens like foliage, had a mushy appearance, which some described as ‘wormy artefacts’. Independent software developers, like Brian Griffith from Iridient Digital came to the rescue and produced demosaicing software that could extract the full potential from the Fuji sensors. However, this originally wasn’t well-integrated into traditional Adobe workflows, and meant an extra step of conversion was needed before importing into Lightroom. I believe this has since been remedied, Adobe have also been producing better demosaicing algorithms for X-Trans sensors. However, most dedicated fanboys say that Capture One is now the best all-in-one solution for processing X-Trans raw files.
Fuji ‘colour science’ is legendary.
Sure, I guess so, whatever that means. I will say this- I absolutely love the skin tones from my X-T1 and before that from the X100S (well, duh- same sensor). I think what people mostly mean when they talk about Fuji color science is the range of Fuji film simulations of their old film products. These are available in the cameras to apply directly to jpegs, and ACR, Lightroom and now Capture One also support these as colour presets which you can apply with a click to raw files after importing them.
Fujifilm make excellent lenses
All Fujifilm XF lenses are engineered from metal, unlike the plasticky offerings from Canikon and Sony. As with most lenses designed for mirrorless cameras, they employ focus-by-wire technology in which the rotation of the focus ring sends a signal to the focus motors in the lens to move the glass elements back and forth. There is no direct mechanical coupling from either the focus or aperture rings to the lens itself. That said, they all have well-dampened manual focus rings, although some of the aperture rings, notably the one on the 56mm f/1.2 (original version) can be a bit light and easy to move accidentally. Any lens with the WR suffix in its name is weather-resistant. I have been out in pissing rain with these ones and have suffered no issues with water ingress. As the aficionados like to say- Fuji lenses ‘feel good in the hand’.
My first Fujifilm lens purchase was the fantastic 56mm f/1.2 R. With a full-frame equivalent focal length of about 85mm, it was released as their first dedicated portrait lens along with the 18mm f/2.0 R, and the 60mm f/2.4 R Macro. The original 56mm has some secret sauce- a certain magic that reviewers eulogise as ‘character’. It’s sharp wide open and has a lovely dreaminess to the roll-off from the focal plane. The bokeh is creamy and specular highlights are nicely rendered, too. However, it’s mightily prone to flaring and loss of contrast when shooting backlit subjects – so make sure to use the included lens hood in these situations (see below).
My next lens purchase was the original version of the 18mm f/2. This lens got a sound workout on my ill-fated trip to Myanmar in 2016. It was pretty much bolted to my X-T1 for the whole trip. It’s not optically brilliant wide open, nor is the AF nimble or silent. All that said, it was cheap, and is basically a pancake lens and so discreet enough not to freak out people when you want to get close. Stopping down to f/5.6-8.0 produced very fine results.
As with the 56mm lens, the 16mm f/1.4 WR is another excellent optic and boasted the added benefit of serious weather-sealing. Actually, I reckon it was probably better sealed than my camera body. This became my go-to wide angle lens and I sold the 18mm to help pay for it. I used it for street, landscape and wide-angle portraits. I can’t think of any flaws that this lens has, and it was lauded by reviewers when it arrived on the market. It just works.
Napier Pier, New Zealand (2017). XF 16mm 1.4 WR, 1/120s @ f/11
District 2, Saigon (2019) XF 16mm f/1.4 WR, 15s @ f/11
I also had a brief play with the XF 60mm f/2.4 R Macro. It’s tack-sharp straight out of the gate at f2.4 and doesn’t really get much sharper by stopping down beyond f/4.0. I couldn’t find many images taken with this lens, but the one I included here also demonstrates what I said earlier about the X-Trans II sensor. The random portrait of a great old traveler I met in Saigon shows just how sharp this lens is, and just how much you can push the pixels to even greater sharpness without them falling apart and becoming halo-y.
Street portrait, Saigon (2018) X-T1 60mm f2.4 R Macro @ f/3.6, 1/160
Finally, after I bought the X-T4, my least favourite Fuji camera, I was cash-bloated and stupidly bought my least favourite (though probably most practical) Fuji lens, the XF 16-55mm f/2.8 WR. I guess I was driven by the need to (again) lighten the load in my camera bag by replacing a bunch of prime lenses, and also to use GAS therapy to get myself motivated to get back out and start shooting again. At least it worked, and pretty much all of the images for my Hemmed-in story were shot on this lens. Don’t get me wrong- this is some very high-end glass, and every professional really needs a standard zoom in their kit- just for its versatility, but I’m just not a big fan of them. I find the wide end not wide enough for documentary and street and the long end not long enough for portraits.
Both the X-T4 camera and the zoom lens are great pieces of kit capable of capturing stunning stills and video files alike. Truth is I just didn’t like the flippy screen on the camera. It felt cheap and plasticky to me. Plus, it drew the ire of street subjects when I flipped it out. I rarely shoot video, and if I ever did so seriously, I’d use an external monitor anyways. I just bought the wrong thing. Looking back- the cheap and dirty old 18mm on my X-T1 would have done the Hemmed-in story just as well.
Moving on, and to this day, I have settled on the Panasonic S1 as my main workhorse. I’m not going to spruik all of its virtues here nor diss it for its foibles (yeah yeah, AF), suffice to say, that having owned and used pretty much every platform except for Canon, I find this one to be my ‘best fit’. The one thing I’ll mention is the robustness of the camera, and its genuine weather-sealing, which really is a benefit in a place where it rains for six months of the year. That said, it’s a heavy beast to carry around, and so I also own a Richo GRIII, and still have my beloved FujiFilm XT-1.
The End of the Affair?
Absolutely not. I still love using the remaining Fuji gear I have, and one day hope to inherit enough money from an as yet unidentified rich relative to be able to enter the Fujifilm GFX medium format world. Let’s see. In the meantime, I hope to do another story for FujiLove Magazine- a sort of homage to the X-T1, and its influence on me and others.
