I’ve decided to trade in my FujiFilm x100T after it served its purpose as a travel camera. Basically I’ve decided that it just doesn’t fit my style of shooting and its redundant in my equipment lineup.
My usual camera is the Canon 6D but I didn’t want to lug around a full frame DSLR camera and heavy zoom lens on a recent trip to Italy which was not suppose to be a photography trip.
I decided to get a FujiFilm x100t crop sensor range finder style camera. Reviews on this camera are great but I found it didn’t exactly fit my needs for a few reasons.
1. The size – its not pocketable although its much smaller and lighter then my DSLR, it didn’t pass the cargo pocket test. For travel around Rome, Florence and other spots in Italy, it wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Sitting in a restaurant I’d often have to choose to keep it around my neck or to the size with my side strap or place it on the tiny little cafe table.
2. Lack of zoom – the prime fixed 23 mm lens which equals a 35 mm on a full frame is a great focal length most of the time but I found in the cities that I would have rather had something a bit wider like a 24 mm.
3. Automatic letdown – running around on a tour most of the time and just suffering from cultural overload and jet lag, I often tossed the camera on “Auto” and hoped for the best. Big mistake. The camera typically defaulted to the maximum aperture of 2.0 and this lens is sharpest around 5.6. I wasn’t happy with any of the shots at 2.0. Auto ISO on the other hand was good and I probably could have pushed it past the 1600 limit I had it set at. Noise was very minimal.
4. Weird post processing – I found the post processing with this camera to be kind of strange. The out of focus areas were kind of crunchy and overly smoothed out. After processing a ton of shots I just don’t like the way some areas are processed. If you are just taking casual snapshots its probably fine but I’m used to looking at the files at 100% on my Canon. The Canon 6D by the way gets noisier faster than the Fujifilm x100t when you increase ISO but I suspect that the Fujifilm is doing some kind of processing in the camera to get rid of the noise. On the Canon I shoot everything in RAW while with the x100t I shot Raw+JPEG and the JPEGs actually looked good while the RAW files were lifeless. One plus on the x100t is the JPEG film styles you can choose.
5. View finder – I just couldn’t get used to the view finder. With my glasses on and the various viewfinder modes that would get switched around too easily, I found that I ended up cutting off things on the sides or didn’t get things centered when I wanted them dead center.
In summary I think the main reason this camera didn’t fit my style is that its too much like a DSLR. Its not small enough to be a pocket able point and shoot while at the same time its small enough to be difficult to use with buttons getting accidentally pushed. I love the old school looks and the real dials for shutter-speed, aperture and exposure compensation (but not ISO) but I missed the top LCD panel on my Canon 6D that gives useful information such as settings and exposure at a glance.
With my 6D all I have to do is look down at this top panel and thumb dial the aperture up or down to get the results I need. Anyway, if only had the FujiFilm x100T as their camera I’m sure it would be great as you would get used to all of its particulars but as a second camera I’m thinking about getting something more pocketable. Perhaps one of the Sony point and shoots with the 20 megapixel 1 inch sensors.
“ The RX100 IV is among the most technologically advanced cameras of its type that we’ve ever seen. Internally, we’re told, Sony’s engineers judge that their new 1″-type stacked CMOS sensor is roughly five years ahead of anything else on the market, and on paper at least, it’s hard to argue with that assessment. “
And its about $300 less than the x100t and can do 4K video.