So, last Saturday, on a whim, I went to the camera store. Not just any camera store, but easily the best one I’ve been to here in the bay area: Looking Glass Photo, over just off San Pablo. The Fuji reps were there, hanging out with a pile of cameras and lenses for people to play with. They even had the GFX, the new medium format (some part of me dies, calling something less than 6x4.5 medium format, but I digress). So, I got to play with the X-Pro, which was another frontrunner for my next camera, and decided that waiting 6 months and paying triple the price really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So I bought it.
I’m still getting used to the camera, and this isn’t really a review, jut my initial impressions. The important stuff: AF is a bazillion times faster than the old model, but still not quite as fast as my nikon D750. Whatever, it doesn’t need to be; it’s sufficient. There’s very little shutter lag; I don’t have any kind of test rig but haven’t had any problems. The files are great, probably two stops better than the old xpro; the highlights drop off a little faster than my nikon, at least subjectively.
The viewfinder is just wide enough to show the edges of the 14mm framelines, although with my glasses on I can’t see the edges. Luckily, the live view is a little narrower and there’s enough eye-relief that it works. Lag is down to almost imperceptible levels; the old camera would make me motion sick if I used it in live view in a car, but this one is fine. Also, the picture-in-frame focus aid is really quite good.
The bad: the wifi doesn’t support downloading of raw files; you have to convert them in camera and then it’ll read them. I seem to keep knocking off settings by accidentally pressing buttons, although the basics seem to stay in place. I’m also not used to it at all, so it’s very possible this is my fault.
Sunday, instead of my usual sit-around-the-house-and-watch-cartoons, I went out for a photo walk, and the weather cooperated and gave me lots of nice clouds and clear air. It was rainy in Oakland, so I headed for the mission, where the sun was shining and it was also raining– SF, where the microclimates have microclimates. I decided to fight my natural urge to walk downhill and headed up 21st street, towards Twin Peaks (the park, not the bar). About a mile and a half uphill from there, I called a lyft to get me the rest of the way up; I didn’t want to get there and be completely blown out.
I did a first pass edit in the camera, but I ended up going back to the raw files for this post; the final images aren’t that different, but I feel better about them.
