Thoughts on FujiFilm X100v Camera

My name is Kris and I am a lazy photographer. What I mean by that is that I’ve never been the type of photographer who carries a camera everywhere they go, taking pictures of anything and everything. I’ve always admired such people, I’m just not one of them. I value comfort and practicality above all else. See? Lazy. When I started taking photos, it was with a Zenit 11 and that camera is built like a Soviet tank, not exactly a “throw-in-your-pocket” type of equipment (although it could certainly double as a weapon if one had to defend themselves). In recent years, with photography becoming my full-time job, I’ve worked with various Nikon DSLRs - D700, D4, D850 - but these are expensive cameras to be carrying around and not exactly light or compact either. I’ve realised, however, that I missed taking snaps of my friends or of places I was visiting. I’d usually use my iPhone for that but it never feels right for me, no matter how great the phone cameras are these days. And this is what brought me to the FujiFilm x100 series.

I’d been watching various YouTube videos about these cameras, reading reviews, checking prices on eBay, and last year I eventually bit the bullet and bought the then recently released x100v model. First of all, it’s beautiful. I often feel that in the digital age the aesthetics of a camera are the last to be considered. I realise that what a camera looks like isn’t of utmost importance for most, and I’m not too bothered about it either when it comes to the equipment I use for work (the Nikons aren’t exactly ugly but they won’t be winning beauty contests anytime soon). However, if I’m going to carry a camera with me every day, I want it to be compact, practical, and, yes - pretty. And the old-school, analog-borrowed look of the whole x100 series is really lovely (I went for the silver model). As for the performance, I’ve been shooting with x100v for almost a year now, always have it in my bag, and I really love it - it definitely exceeded my expectations when it comes to image quality and it also brought back the joy of taking photos just for fun, without overthinking. I’ve got it set on Aperture priority and don’t worry about much else. I mainly use it for personal things: meeting friends, traveling, behind the scenes, etc, but I’ve also occasionally taken it out on work shoots and ended up with decent results. All in all, I’m super happy with it, and here are some examples of snaps I’ve taken with the FujiFilm x100v so far: