This past Sunday I got a chance to take my new Fujifilm X-T5 camera out for some first time test shooting. A photowalk around San Francisco Chinatown in the afternoon was called for. After reading the manual front to back and adjusting the custom buttons to my liking, it was time to see what the X-T5 camera can do. (Pairing it with a Fujinon XF 23mm F2 lens.)
Perhaps it’s the substantial money I dropped on essentially switching to a new system (Sony to Fujifilm) talking, but I was pretty immediately smitten with the X-T5. A touchscreen on a camera is so useful (My old Sony A7R2 did not have one). On the Fujifilm I can touch to lock focus on a subject/object and it will do so until I tap again to cancel. It honestly feels kind of cheating to me. I remember the old days of having only eight focusing points on a DSLR, and needing to perform the focus and recompose technique.
Now I can simply touch almost anywhere on the frame and it will lock focus automatically. Magical.
Fujifilm’s famous film simulation modes is as advertised. After seeing how each of them look, I chose Nostalgic Negative as my go to. Nostalgic Neg has the bump in saturation I typical do for my own RAW edits, plus a warm tonality that I prefer over something cool. Set white balance to automatic, and I simply let the X-T5 do its own interpretation of the scene vis a vis the colors.
Kind of funny how I’m essentially treating a “DSLR” camera as a point-and-shoot. It’s like going back to the days of instant film cameras: I don’t control how a film roll will look coming out of development. Being able to get interesting and usable JPEG files straight out of the camera makes me want to go shoot more. Because upon returning home, all I do is transfer the JPEG files off the X-T5 and onto my Mac’s Photos app. That's it! I’ve not touched any of the RAW files from the Chinatown photowalk - there’s really no need.
At some point I might even shoot only in JPEG…
Jewel on the crown.