Shooting Straight

The reality of being a professional photographer is that (for me at least) the opportunities to enjoy taking photos for yourself become somewhat limited in number. There are a variety of reasons for this, chief among them in my case is the fact that whenever I pick up a camera these days it feels like I am going to work, so laying my hands on the tools of the trade doesn’t bring with it the kind of excitement I used to feel when I was an amateur photographer. Instead it brings about a thought process that is anything but leisurely in nature. If I have my cameras in my hands I’m usually thinking about pleasing clients rather than myself.

In fact, camera gear has become so banal to me over the 15 years since I declared myself open for business as a photographer that I literally only own the bare necessities these days. 4 lenses and 2 bodies. That’s it. Really. Everything I need to do my job is there.

That was until just before Christmas 2022 when something new, but old entered the scene.

Alan Lesheim (@Alan7140) and I have exchanged many lengthy private messages over the 10 years since he became a member of Fotozones. We were both early adopters of the mirrorless revolution in photography, with me going down the Micro Four Thirds route and Alan the Fujifilm one. We have developed a “pen-pal” kind of friendship that I really appreciate, because if I ever need to know anything about photography he is my go to guy. After reading my November newsletter wherein I expressed a desire to start taking photos for myself again by perhaps investing in a Fujifilm X100 sometime in the future, Alan reached out and offered to send me his original Fujifilm X100 as a gift since he wasn’t going to use it again. I would just need to get some batteries for it as the originals were no longer serviceable.

Wow! Talk about suddenly finding impetus amidst the mire to engage in personal photography and gear lust again! Ordinarily I wouldn’t have accepted this generous offer because of the terrible situation with the postal service in my country. There is maybe a 50/50 chance of any parcel sent from abroad actually getting to me when using the PO, such is the level of corruption and thievery going on there.

But then I remembered that a very good friend of mine was working a contract as a care-giver in Wales until the end of November and would be coming home to SA just before Christmas. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind receiving the parcel for me and then bringing it with him. He happily agreed to do this, so Alan then sent the camera to him and thus began a countdown as to whether it would get there in time before he went to his next assignment in Essex, England. As luck would have it the package arrived with him literally the day before the UK Postal workers went on strike.

After sourcing two 3rd party batteries and a USB charger from Amazon for less than £20 all I had to do was wait for Nigel to get back home, which with all the other strikes that are going on in the UK these days started to look a bit sketchy. But he made it back and I collected the X100 from him on the 23rd of December.

From the moment I held the camera in my hands I knew that I was going to love using it. It truly is a unique and masterfully engineered piece of kit, but what I wasn’t quite expecting was the exquisite image quality that comes with this little package. I mean, yes, I had read enough about it over the years to know that this range of cameras has achieved a near cult status among users since it first hit the market, but the images I am seeing from this “mere” 12MP Bayer sensor are just different to anything I get from my MFT kit. The colours are more lifelike and the rendering has this kind of 3D effect that reminds me of my days shooting with Leica 35mm rangefinders. Maybe it’s all in my mind, but I know that I like it. I like it a lot.

To begin with there was the obligatory random snapping around the house to get to grips with how everything worked on the X100. It didn’t take me long to familiarise myself with the menu and the few buttons it has. It’s wonderfully simple (unlike the Panasonic G9 I have had for the past 2 years that still has me scratching my head when I need to quickly change a setting somewhere). Operationally you have your aperture ring, a shutter speed dial and an exposure compensation dial. A couple of other buttons on the back and the top plate give you all you need to make whatever other adjustments are necessary to take a pleasing photograph. The D pad and ring around it are actually very similar to what I remember from the Olympus Pen series cameras I have had over the years, just better implemented, it seems. The X100 just feels right. It feels the way a camera should feel to me. It makes me want to go and enjoy photography again, which means that it has already “done its job” of getting me thinking about personal photography again.

These interesting flowers only open at night. 

They grow on a vine that lives on this fence between us and the construction site. 

The way I have it set up now is to shoot in JPG (fine) + RAW. The Fuji JPG’s are brilliant, but I am always going to want a RAW file to play around with in Lightroom. I have set the top Fn button to activate the built in ND filter, so I can shoot outdoors at f/2.0 and not blow the exposure, then the RAW button is set to select the film simulation for the JPG, since I am always going to have a RAW file captured alongside the JPG. I use Auto-ISO in Aperture priority mode with a minimum shutter speed of 1/30 before it bumps the ISO to the next higher level. The auto ISO mode seems to top out at ISO 3200. You can however select a higher ISO when shooting in regular ISO mode, just not Auto.

If I am honest I find that this camera is much more responsive than my 2018 Panasonic G9. It turns on faster, it displays the shot you’ve just taken much faster and it’s also a lot faster to zoom in on the image than it is on the G9. The AF is not as fast but it is a lot snappier than I have read about it in reviews. The one thing that I do find a little awkward to work with is changing the AF point. To do this you have to press the AF button on the left side of the camera and then use the D pad on the right side to navigate to the point you want to use. It is a bit clumsy to operate this way as you need two hands, but I’ll get used to it.

Other things I have come to love in the short time I have had it are the tiny little flash, which is fuss-free and offers a decent amount of well balanced fill flash for casual use. Images shot with the flash active actually don’t look like they have been flash lit at all. The macro function is also nice and allows you to get the lens up much closer to a subject, but it isn’t a real macro magnification. Focus confirmation is also different to what I am used to. There is no green dot in the viewfinder, instead the focus point turns green when it has achieved focus. The readout also tells you how far away your subject is, which is the first time I have seen that in any camera.

Something I probably won’t use much is the optical view finder. The hybrid OVF/EVF was the big talking point when the X100 and X-Pro 1 were released and it remains a pretty unique feature of the Fujifilm cameras in this rangefinder style. I suppose this is probably useful in dimly lit situations where an EVF might battle a bit, but for me personally I’d rather have a poor EVF that shows me more or less what the image is going to look like before I take it than an unwanted surprise afterwards where I have totally messed up the exposure.

So where is my personal photography journey headed now that I am officially inducted into the Fujifilm owners club? As a former GAS sufferer the first thing I did when Alan said he was sending me this little gem is start researching the entire Fujifilm line-up. What lenses are there? What bodies would be best suited to my work? Can I use the system in the same way that I use the MFT system? Then all at once I scolded myself and resolved to only consider the Fujifilm system for my personal photography. There is nothing to be gained by selling off my MFT equipment and replacing it with similar equipment from a different brand. Not a single client will notice and I certainly won’t be able to charge more for photographs made on a slightly larger sensor than the one I have been using for the past 10 years.

What I can do though, is simply enjoy the process of making photography for myself with a proper camera again. The X100 will become my trustworthy side-kick whenever I go somewhere and I want to bring back some photos. It lets me get what I need without becoming a nuisance or hindrance to what I want to record. It’s all I will ever need to keep me interested in doing the thing that made me pick up a camera in the first place.

Thank you, Alan!

Here are some personal shots made over Christmas Day and around the house.

Stress relief for my son who still lives at home. 

Stress relief for his Dad.

Me and the Missus.

When it rains on Christmas, make a ginger bread house. 

The kids had great fun building it up, but the eating thereof didn't go down so well!