What I've Learned After 2+Years w/the Fujifilm x100v

today I'd like to share my thoughts on the Fujifilm x100v I've had this camera for the greater part of two to two and a half years I bought it back in about July 2020 and it really has shaped my current photography and the way I look at photography and the world now so this camera I've taken to many many places I've gone all over the world with it from California beaches to Europe and other places like that and it's just been my ultimate travel companion and it's been useful in all of those scenarios so in this review I want to share my thoughts on the camera as a long-term camera about keeping it for many many years and what it's like using after all this time and how I kind of go about using this camera in not only my photography but I think what it's good for and what it's not good for rather than just the camera that you'll buy and use and then maybe resell later just things I've learned over the time I've spent with this camera let's go ahead and get started the first point I'd like to talk about is whether this camera is worth keeping forever and I kind of already answered that I know you guys know this is my favorite camera it's my daily driver I use it for pretty much everything both practical and personal related work and I just have no real reason to sell this camera particularly because it does everything I need it to do it's good at what it does and I think it's a camera that's not going to get outdated for a very very long time because the way cameras work we can update the processor we can update the technical specifications and things like that but with the x100v in particular I feel like we've reached kind of the threshold of you know speed in terms of autofocus speed and in terms of you know startup speed and processing speed and all those things where I'm not really hindered by anything like that so if a new version comes out yes I would probably be tempted to get it but as for keeping this camera and whatnot I feel like this camera has reached that kind of threshold where it doesn't really need to be quote unquote faster it doesn't really need to be updated in that sense it just works that's my point it's durable it's fast it functions well and it does what it's supposed to do so it's kind of The Sweet Spot in terms of megapixels sensor size and other technical specifications that I'm kind of happy where it is right now I think any improvements in the technological side might make this camera Faster by the milliseconds or something like that but in real life scenarios in real terms of use I don't really have any use for that stuff because more often I'll miss a shot because I was too slow or I didn't see the shot or I didn't get ready as opposed to the camera taking too long to start up and auto focusing and taking the shot you know what I mean this camera's Advanced enough and I don't see it becoming outdated anytime soon moreover this camera is just really fun to use and I enjoy spending time with it and I think further versions of this camera might change certain aspects about it which could potentially make it better or worse but as it is now I I'm just content so that brings me into my next point which is does this camera ever get old and long story short for me personally no it doesn't I've shot with many other cameras like the xt4 the x-pro one the bronica sqa and multitude of other film cameras and digital cameras and they don't quite hit that Niche for me and this is kind of a particular thing that has to go in what kind of shooter you are and the type of photographer you are and the scenarios you find yourself in but for me personally I can't see this camera ever getting old it's kind of perfect for the type of Photography that I do and although I have many other cameras I still find myself picking up the x100v to take out because it's just so convenient to use it's portable it's small and it gets me the right images and the Right image quality that I want so personally there's a lot more to experiment when it comes to Fujifilm cameras there's things like the new XF 23 millimeter F 1.4 which I'm quite interested in but I do think it's the combination of all the features that the x100v has that makes it so special you know the things like the ND filter the optical viewfinder the flush tilting screen and all those things I feel make it such a versatile companion for your everyday life you can take it out you can shoot in bright daylight you can you have a flash built-in flash that works really really well syncing with the shutter speed so you don't have to worry about low light capabilities and you can take all the pictures you want at complete pitch Darkness if you attach a UV filter it's weather sealed so you don't have to worry about getting splash or you know spilling things on it and stuff like that it's just really a complete package and complete unit for what it is and this kind of brings me into the next point and that's what it's good for and what it's not good for because I feel as if this camera has gotten a lot of Praise but also a lot of criticism and I think a lot of the criticism comes from trying to use this camera for what it's not good for you know what I mean and obviously if you're going to judge a camera by different standards than what it's not made for it's not going to perform so well so let's kind of get into it in this camera you have a focal length of about 35 millimeter full frame equivalent and what that is good for is honestly just about everything it's a very natural field of view but slightly wider people commonly refer to the 35 millimeter and the 50 millimeter full frame equivalents as similar or closest to the human eye particularly I personally prefer the 35 millimeter equivalent because it's slightly wider than the 50 equivalent and you can add a little bit of context and there's a little bit more periphery so it makes a little more sense in my brain and the way I process and see the world that it's perfect for me some other people prefer different focal lengths as well though but this is a very natural field of view that allows you to add context to your subject without getting too wide but it also allows you to focus on subjects and stay in that whole Zone without getting too close up you know what I mean so things it's good for let me kind of just list out a few it's good for things like street photography portrait photography where you have environmental context or even if you want to get a little bit closer it's good for landscape photography because you can you know really capture the scene if you want to get close up on a mountain peak or something like that unfortunately you're not going to be able to do it with this type of lens but that's what I'm saying it's not meant to be for those purposes anyways another big part of what I like this camera for is for everyday moments like taking pictures of your family friends and stuff like that where you are kind of focusing on candids and really capturing the moment of what you guys are doing now Beauty in its Simplicity if that makes sense and the reason why it's so good at that is because this camera is really really fast with the updated lens and whatever the autofocus speed is really good especially for single point autofocus and it's very accurate and quick I don't think you need much more faster autofocus than this all you really need to do is turn on the camera click and then turn it off I find myself saving a lot of battery in those scenarios because I can just hold carry the camera around and when you're used to the camera enough you can really take advantage of the opportunities you see in the frame or whatever you're doing to take a picture and then just putting the camera down because you don't really need much more than that you don't need to take time to fix the focus the focus is already good you don't need to take much time to fix the framing if you're used to and use this camera enough you can just really pick up point and shoot which is really what this camera is good and intended for it's weather sealed like I mentioned before so you can take it pretty much wherever it's good as a travel camera and an everyday camera you can go to the beach you can go up in the mountains it's perfect for travel it has great performance at up to 6400 ISO I don't go much further than that personally because I've noticed some kind of reduction in image quality if I push it past that but 6400 ISO at f2 with minimal noise is able to get you amazing shots at night time so you don't have to be worried about the low light performance of this camera whether you'd be limited by F2 because you also have that built-in flash that has pretty good accuracy when it comes to autofocus and sync speeds another thing about the flash that I forgot to mention was that I didn't shoot a lot of flash photography before I got this camera I prefer to have some sort of light source when I'm taking nighttime photography but I realize the usefulness of The Flash in situations where there just isn't any live Source or the light source is too dark and how well it worked so it's made me appreciate flash photography a lot more over the time it has an ND filter built-in ND filter so you can use it in bright daylight because a lot of the times I'll find myself in scenarios where I'm outside you know at 12 p.m 1 pm the sun is shining bright especially in California so the ND filter really really helps a lot with that and you don't have to worry about carrying an extra filter to attach to it it also has a built-in Optical viewfinder we're getting into a lot of features and specifications of the camera but I think this is important to get why this camera is so good the Dual viewfinder is really good because you can use the electronic viewfinder when it's hard to see when it's bright outside but you can also use the optical viewfinder when you want a more natural experience and to see like what's coming into the shot peripheral wise when you're using the camera and it's also kind of just a fun thing to play around with it has a flush tilt screen that is built into the body most people don't even realize that that screen is tilting out because it's very unobtrusive and it's hard to notice and I think that's one of the best parts about this camera is that it's very compact it's not too small but it's almost like it's the perfect size basically what I'm getting at is this camera is a super specialized camera that is good to be used in all sorts of scenarios it's well-rounded in the sense that it's versatile in daytime to night time in landscape to Portrait but its focused to be super specialized for the 35 millimeter equivalent so the lens is a caveat for many many people but that's what I'm saying is that if the 35 millimeter equivalent is what you're looking for this camera is made to be used in all sorts of scenarios so it's sacrificing one part for another part and I think this is a worthy trade-off because it allows this camera to be so small so portable and allows it to have all these other built-in features that you otherwise would not get if you had an interchangeable lens system so I feel as if a lot of people judge this camera for what it's not intended for it's outside of its use case scenario you can't expect this camera to be really good at telephoto shots or you can't judge this camera for not being wide enough then you're just judging it on the focal length and not so much the camera itself this camera is meant to be the perfect 35 millimeter equivalent camera in that sense so another few aspects because I don't want to just praise this camera after using it for so long is that there are some aspects about this camera that it's not not good at or it can be improved upon We Know video is a great aspect of this camera because it has High video specs but I've noticed the autofocus isn't perfect much like some Sony's cameras you might have to stop up to F4 to be able to get better video autofocus or you might just have to use manual focus entirely which can be a little bit of a workaround or an annoyance because sometimes the autofocus wall is fast and it's accurate it will hunt in between a lot of different shots because it was made more for photography I think I think the autofocus in this lens in this camera is very primed for single point acquisition and then taking the shot but not holding that acquisition for a extended period of time so the autofocus is great for photo it's not as good for video in my personal opinion but there are workarounds that you can do so let's move a little bit into possible improvements because it has been a little while since this camera has been out in my personal opinion Fujifilm really hit the nail with this camera they did everything that we wanted everything we needed for the x100v and it's really really going to be hard to beat this camera with a newly updated version so I don't honestly think we're going to see a new version for a while maybe at least another year or two particularly because there's nothing wrong with this camera and there's no real major improvements to this camera so if they did release a new version without giving it the proper time to for technology to advance and for features to advance then you would just really be building a second version of this camera it can be welcome it's not really needed at this moment in time possible improvements that Fujifilm could work on or I think they might be working on is better video specs because you know every camera could use better video specs 4K 6D 10 bit better video autofocus like I mentioned isn't necessary not really but something they could look at adding Ibis to the camera can really well round out this camera as almost the perfect hybrid camera because although the video is good video can still be shaky if you're not careful and it might force you to use this camera more as a b-roll camera with its slow-mo capabilities as opposed to a a-roll camera this camera could also be improved with its flash because although The Flash has really good sync speeds and it's very accurate at some times I'll find myself missing Focus if it's just too dark so you could improve that possibly by adding a better hit rate for the autofocus during flash performance so you guys can tell right now I'm kind of nitpicking the qualities of this camera because there isn't much for me to poke at it's really already a solid camera and any improvements in the camera's capabilities are kind of minor most of these things are things you wouldn't need but would be welcome improvements and I don't see any of these things as being necessary for the x100v to be your everyday carry another crazy idea would kind of be a dual hinge tilt out screen because this camera has a tilt up screen and this is my preferred method of shooting because I don't think this camera fits into the style of vlogging so much so you don't need to fully articulating screen and if you added a fully articulating screen to this camera I think it would suffer because of that I wouldn't want to see a fully articulated screen I think the tilt screen is perfect but if you're able to add kind of a dual hinge where the camera screen is able to flip out forward to the side but also be able to keep that flush tilting screen I think that would be a welcome Improvement because you could use it but you can also not use it if you don't want to use it and it doesn't hinder the capability of or the usability of what you like this camera for to begin with you know what I mean so just an idea don't know if that's even possible but I think that would be crazy if you could build a dual hinge kind of flip out screen like that on the x100v so the next part I want to talk about is a bit on the lens because I have seen comments where people would say I would prefer the X100 be had a 28 millimeter lens or a 40 equivalent lens or things like that and it's understandable because we all have different preferred focal lengths and some of us prefer the 28 millimeter equivalent as opposed to the 35 and so on and so forth but personally I'll give my thoughts on why I think the 35 millimeter equivalent lens is the perfect choice for this camera and that's because I think it's versatile enough to be used in a lot of scenarios if you back up you can use it as if it were a 28 millimeter lens if you step up you can use it as if it were a 50 equivalent lens or 40 equivalent lens and of course I know the compression it's it's a bit different and what you prefer and how you shoot might be different but I think this is what Fuji had to choose as a compromise between all of those things you know what I mean it's as versatile as can be because if you go too wide like a 28 millimeter then it's hard for that camera to start acting like a 50 millimeter similarly if you went too close like a 50 millimeter it's hard for that camera to act like a 28 millimeter you know what I mean so I think 35 is a little bit of that sweet spot it's a bit of compromise for people who want a more specialized lens or an X100 version with a 28 millimeter but I think this was the best they could do and I think it's perfect for what they kind of intended to be as just the perfect everyday camera and the camera that you can have on you with all times because if you're willing to have this camera on you at all times chances are you're going to use it more you're going to take more pictures and you're going to get the most out of it and but of course if you wanted a different focal length there are the wcl and the TCL options I haven't tried those myself but I've heard a lot of good things about them so the only problem is they add a little bit of bulk so we'll get into kind of final thoughts here before we wrap this up and this is the final question that I think most people would ask anyways in that's who is this camera for because you really don't understand the camera until you start to use it for an extended period of time what's so good about this camera and the X100 line in general is that it's very versatile from a lot of people such as consumers to prosumers to professionals alike because the standard of quality that this camera the images that come out of this camera are really really solid they're workable you can use them for print and other things but the camera is also just small nice and compact so you can just carry it around as just an accessory or whatever if you wanted to just I don't know go to a coffee shop or go out and do your errands or whatever and potentially take some pictures an interesting note I want to make is that this camera still is the camera that I get the most Compliments are asked about because it really has a nice design aesthetic to it and a lot of people think it's a film camera but it's kind of a modern film camera The Perfect Blend between the two because of the film simulations and the also the aesthetic and whatnot but the digital capabilities which is something I like about it so much as well every day someone seems to be like oh I like your camo it's not like I'm fishing for compliments I'm saying it's just what I've observed but you can also use this camera for professional work like weddings and things like that so it's a hard answer and I think it's best answered by asking who this camera is not good for and I really I think this camera is not good for anyone who doesn't like the 35 millimeter equivalent if you don't like the 35 millimeter equivalent you're best off not buying the x100v and really I think that's it if you enjoy the focal length you'll have no other problems with the other capabilities of the camera they work well and they're they do as they're intended to do anyways if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to leave them down below if you have any thoughts or things on the camera yourself please share your experiences on this camera and what you've experienced with using it long term I'd also like to mention that I do have an updated print shop now I have a few more prints now available for sale that are available on my Etsy my website and my Instagram shop I do all the printing myself I pick out the paper and make sure they're right for each image so if you guys are interested feel free to check those out down below I appreciate all the support but yeah anyways that kind of wraps up my long-term review of the x100v hopefully it was cohesive enough and hopefully I covered all the points I want to cover yeah thank you guys as always for watching I'll see you guys in another video peace

Channel: ᴀɴᴅʀᴇ

Views: 64,292

Keywords: fujifilm x100v, x100v review, fuji x100v, fujifilm x100v review, fujifilm x100v camera, fujifilm x100v video, is the x100v worth it, is the fujifilm x100v worth it, fujifilm x100v long term review, are fujifilm cameras worth it, x100v fuji, fujifilm x100v accessories, fujifilm long term review, x100v long term review, x100v flash photography, x100v film simulations, fujifilm film simulations, x100v street photography, x100v flash, x100v settings, x100f, andre pel photography

Id: rn3IJIVXgTo

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022