This is me. The picture was taken with my camera, but I didn’t take it, so technically I guess it’s not a real selfie. But I like this picture, partly because it was taken with my Fuji X100T by someone who was not at all into photography and had never touched an X100T before, and partly because I think it shows what the X100T can do, even in amateur hands. They say you can’t shoot portraits with a 35mm lens. Could’ve fooled me! By the way, this is the jpeg straight out of the camera with no post processing whatsoever.
I love cameras. I first started fooling around with them in 1972, and my first real camera was a Nikkormat (“entry” level camera made by Nikon) with a 50mm lens, exactly like this one. Obviously we used film back in those days, and I did my own processing and printing. They were fun times, but I’m not inclined to want to have that kind of “fun” anymore. As much as I love the look of film, especially for B&W, I’m just too spoiled by the ease of shooting digital.
A few years ago, when the Fuji X100 first came out, I was enthralled by what I was seeing online, and decided to take the plunge and get my first Fuji camera. As it turned out, I fell completely in love with that little camera, the first of the X100 series, and I’ve been a Fuji shooter ever since. As the camera evolved from the X100 to the X100S and now the X100T, I moved to the new cameras as they became available. I love the X100T, and the improvements they have made in the cameras over the years have made the new “T” a remarkable camera. But that being said, I have to admit that I still have a soft spot in my heart for the original X100 and the image quality its sensor produces. A friend of mine still shoots the X100 and looking at his images I occasionally find myself wishing I still had one. But time marches on, and like I moved on from film when digital came along, I also moved on from the old X100 when the newer models came out. Who knows though, maybe I’ll stumble across a used X100 someday and I won’t be able to resist it. Probably a good reason to stay away from the used camera stores!
I recently added one of these to my X100T, a thumb grip from LensMate. It makes the camera easier to hold on to and more steady in my hands. And at my age, anything I can do to hold the camera steadier is a welcome addition. This grip was designed specifically for the X100T. It fits like a glove and gives me a nice comfortable hold on the camera without adding a lot of bulk. I also have a grip plate for this camera, but it starts to make the camera a little too bulky, and one of the reasons I love the X10T is that it’s so compact and easy to carry around. So the grip plate is sitting in the drawer for now.
The X100T is not the only member of my Fuji family. I also have the X-T1 and the XQ1. The X-T1 is easily the best camera I have ever owned, and since it’s capable of far better things than I am, I don’t think I’ll ever feel the need to upgrade from it to whatever comes along next. That camera, along with a few lenses, gives me everything I could ever possibly need. Even so, the camera that still gets carried around with me every day is the X100T. There’s just something about that camera.
One last thing, I recently got a Fujifilm Instax Share SP-1 printer. It’s a small printer that runs on batteries and fits in a coat pocket. It prints little credit card size prints on instant film, kind of like an old Polaroid. It’s certainly not a high quality printer by any means, but it’s small enough to carry around and it’s fun to print and share pics with people around you. It’s possible to print directly from the X100T or the X-T1, but I prefer to use the camera wifi to send pics to my iPhone and print from there. That way I can edit the pics if I want to before I print them. Another way to have fun with photography.
