Shooting with the ‘F’

I have had my ‘F’ for 12 months now, I have used it exclusively this year as my main camera for my personal photography, so I thought I would write something of a user experience review, with my take on this little gem.

On my photographic journey, I have come to realise that I prefer to shoot with prime lenses, a lot of my images were shot with either 35mm or 50mm lenses, even before I bought my first X100s a few years back, it is the ‘S’ that originated my dalliance with Fujifilm cameras.

My own story is like so many others, the ‘F’ was bought as a secondary camera, to take out on the days when I did not want to carry a bag with a heavy camera body and lenses, then slowly but surely, it was the ‘F’ that was being taken out exclusively.

This is a camera that you can trust to take some stellar images, the 35mm full frame equivalent focal length is so versatile, it is a camera that is a joy to use in so many ways.

Fujifilm are renowned for their colour science technology, I really like the colour rendering it produces, its out of cameras JPEGS are superb, if you prefer not to shoot RAW and post process, I will often shoot JPEG only and upload to a mobile device and post to social media, not something I thought I would ever do in the past.

As well as its portability, the ‘F’ is silent when shooting, a real asset for street photography, it’s leaf shutter offers nothing more than a whisper, so much smoother than the shutter slap of larger cameras that tell the world you have just taken a photo!

Like its older siblings, the ‘F’ has a built in 3 stop ND filter, ideal for shooting wide open on bright days, I have assigned this to the front custom button of my camera, for ease of use.

One of the the features of the X100 series that has always appealed, are the physical shutter speed and exposure compensation dials on the top plate, this is so much better than diving into menu systems in my opinion.

I am not keen on the integrated shutter speed, ISO dial, it is a little too fiddly for me, but the option to programme ISO control to the front command dial is available, this is what I use.

It is possible also, to assign custom control to the 3 of the four way control dials on the rear of the camera, which brings me to the one thing that I hope Fuji will change in the future.

The top ‘drive’ button is assigned to control the use of film or exposure bracketing and other custom shooting styles, I find this rather too easy to press inadvertently and find I am in panorama or video mode when I want to take a shot, as I use these features so little, if at all, perhaps this could go back to being a dedicated button on the other side of the camera as it used to be?

Of all the cameras I have bought and changed over the last few years, this one will be staying until it ceases to be, until it has shuffled off its mortal shutter, such is the enjoyment I get from using it….