My car is 17 years old, but I bought the Fuji X100V – you know, priorities.
I’ve never quite been happy with the Fuji 23mm f/2 WR lens. It’s way too soft at f/2 when used up close. The 23mm f/1.4 costs a million dollars. I don’t trust third party no name brands – i.e. Veltrox (although when they are available, I might just buy one anyways). However, I really enjoy a 35mm full frame field of view, and I like Fuji cameras. In the past, every time I’ve reviewed any of the X100 variants, the close focusing at f/2 looked like mush. I bought the X100V for a few different reasons – compactness, the new lens, weather sealing, tilting screen, and Fuji-ness of it all (feel free to use it #fujiness).
For this first outing, I used the following two items (these are Amazon affiliate links that help pay for this site) to protect the camera from possible rain today:
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I mention the filter and attachment, because filters technically degrade the image quality. I almost never use them – other than polarizer or ND filters.
These images were shot in RAW and edited using Capture One with the Pro Neg High curve (built into Capture One) and then tweaked from there. I notice that the up close shots are not as sharp as I would like, but this is a really compact package, a pancake type of lens, and not full frame – you make tradeoffs for the compactness of it all. A Sony RX1R II would be the closest thing to this in terms of performance (actually it would beat it), but it’s a clunky camera, not even remotely weather sealed, and the EVF is nowhere near as nice. In fact, the EVF is so nice, that I opt to use that over the optical viewfinder – even in broad daylight! Also, the price of a used one is as much as a new Fuji X100V. Lastly, Fuji just has a wonderful tonality to the colors – one that Sony doesn’t have.
