Fujifilm X-T1 first hands-on impressions!

Fujifilm X-T1

I was so lucky to get to testdrive the new Fujifilm X-T1 almost a week prior to its launch. And all the rumours and leaks this time really tickled my spine. Because it sounded great! I actually felt nervous and excited when I was led down into the basement through a door with a keypad lock. There I met some smiling and clearly proud Fujifilm employees that handed me a brand new Fujifilm X-T1, and a pre-production 56mm f/1.2. And where Nikon Df just felt completely wrong and not at all ergonomic, the X-T1 fitted perfectly in my hands. A relatively small and lightweight camerahouse, but very solid with

good ergonomics. Excellent dials, wheel and controls, and the layout of the buttons was just great! And it even comes with 6 (yes six!) custom buttons that you can configure yourself! How about that!! And the way it balanced with the 56mm, just perfect. Not a bad first impression at all! And I have to mention the quality of the 56mm lens. A more solid and smooth piece of optic is rare. We’re talking extreme quality and feeling here, like Leica!

And I could go on forever with things like a tiltscreen (could come in handy as I love shooting low), weather sealed magnesium housing and other goodies.

Bad...?

One of the last rumours I heard before I met the guys from Fujifilm, was that the X-T1 only had an electronic viewfinder (EVF), and no optival viewfinder (OVF)...! To make things clear, I hate electronic viewfinders! They lag, stutters, and neither resolution nor color fidelity have come close to what you see through an optical viewfinder.And I really don’t wanna waste my time composing and rearranging a chaotic world by looking at a half-bad digital rendition of it. I’m spoiled. I come from a world with Hasselblad 6x6 medium format cameras (with film, if anyone remember that), where a fantastic viewfined nearly reproduced the world in glorious 3D. And when I went completely digital in 2005, there was only one alternative for me. The all digital medium format Hasselblad H1D. One of the best things about it was the viewfinder. It was looking through a large living room window. With a panorama view! Fantastic! And when I a few years later went from Hasselblad to Nikon fullframe, the viewfinder was one of the most important things for me. Not that the Nikon D3x or D3s viewfinder could compete with Hasselblads, but for a DSLR it was good enough to make me happy. And on every single camera I have looked through since, the viewfinder have been of big importance to me.

But I was caught completely off guard with the X-T1. I just kept repeating ”shit shit shit this is so damn good” innside of me! No lag. No stutter. A sharp image. Completely smooth and nice. Plus good colors. And it actually took me some time to realize it was an electronic image I was looking at in the viewfinder. A bit embarrasing, but I had to ask the good people from Fujifilm if it was optic or electronic. And the fact that you can change and configure the viewfinder. Ohhh... Nice one! Beeing able to have a split screen image with both the image and a zoomed image with focus peaking is just so cool! Could it be more cooler and efficient! And when you hold the camera in a vertical position, all the information in the display flips around as well. Very cool! So to make myself crystal clear, I love electronic viewfinders! At least this one...

Focusing

And talking about focusing. The autofocus was unusually fast and snappy. Not once in that awful fluorescent light did the autofocus miss. Spot on every time. Fast and precise. And manual focus together with the split screen function was a dream. Moving the focus area around was also way more smooth and easier than I had expected, and that is an important thing in order to use a camera efficiently.

Speed

I didn’t try the shooting speed of the X-T1, but 8 frames pr second with continous focus is just awsome. Not that I have the need for that kind of shooting speeds in my job, but it’s just great that Fujifilm made this camera fast enough to be used for heavy action as well. And generally speaking, this camera feels fast and snappy in every way. Surprisingly fast!

Going vertical

And while I was drooling and shooting, the kind folks from Fujifilm handed me another X-T1, this one with the new vertical battery grip. 

Grips like that are perfect for me! Shooting vertical shots without a grip, having to hold my right elbow high up, gives me tendonitis very easily. And since I shoot a lot of verticals for covers and full magazine pages, I have to have a camera with a vertical grip. 

The X-T1 with the vertical grip was perhaps even better balanced than without. And it was still a light camera.

Colors

Another thing that surprised me, was that even in that dreadful fluorescent light, the X-T1 delivered beautiful colors, especially the skin tones. I know that both Nikon, Hasselblad and others really struggle under those kind of lighting conditions. The best my Nikons cameras would have managed in that room, would have been a lottery ticket full of guesswork of bad colors and skin tones. The X-T1 is a solid proof that Fujifilm have 80 years of experience with film, and they really know and understand color. It’s that easy, and that difficult. It would take some manual work on the rawfiles from my Nikon cameras to come close to what the X-T1 delivered straight to the memory card.

The Considered Approach

My way of working is not the run-and.gun type of method, shooting from the hip and hoping that something hits. But I feel that most cameras are built to be just that. Shooting machines to fill up memory cards, and hoping that maybe one frame is a good one. But the only sure thing about shooting lots of pictures is that you get lots of pictures. X-T1 is also a very fast camera. But it invites you in to a different kind of shooting approach. Because some cameras, have soul, and invites you in to what I like to call ”The Considered Approach to Photography”. Hasselblad 6x6 cameras had it. Rolleiflex had it. The digital Hasselblad medium format camera I owned had it. And the X-T1 has it. They make you slow down and think about your pictures. Not just snapping away and taking pictures. But making pictures. And I think that adds value and dimension to the pictures.

Size matters

In many ways, I feel I have gone the opposite way of many other photographers. Most photographers I know of always seem to want bigger and more. Bigger image sensors. More megapixels. And more kilos to lug around. I’m so tired of that. Big. I have owned so many kilos of ”the worlds best equipment” throught the years, that it actually kills the inspiration. I get sick and tired of having to carry around more and heavier equipment. So after lots of long and hard discussions with myself, I have agreed upon doing things lighter, better and more efficient. I don’t want to fool my clients into believing that I deliver better pictures just because I’m killing myself with heavy equipment. Equipment is just a tool. The ideas and the visual language come from me. Not from even more kilos of equipment. That’s why the X-T1 feels like the right way forward for me.

But, but, but...

...there has to be something negative about this camera, right? Because the perfect camera hasn’t yet appeared, and probably never will, since we constantly change and redefine our wants and our needs. Well, the X-T1 is pretty close. I only got a short testdrive, but what I didn’t like is the flash sync speed of only 1/180 second. I’m spoiled with Hasselblads that synced up to 1/800 second, and that opened up for exciting visual possibilities. Even my Nikons with their 1/250 second flash sync speed isn’t quite where I’d want them to be, but I had hoped the X-T1 at least matched the Nikons.

The X-T1 rumours also said that it might have two memory card slots, but I think it only had one. Correct me if I’m wrong. Too bad, as I really would have liked two slots, so you could have overflow on card number two, or backup.

So now what?

That’s what I’m thinking as well... The Fujifilm X-T1 hits the stores very soon, and so does the exciting 56mm f/1.2 as well. I think 2014 will be an exciting year when it comes to equipment, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the X-T1 ends up beeing my new working tool. Next on my list is evaluatimng all my existing equipment, and finding out what I need for future work. Exciting and necessary!

What is sure, is that the X-T1 has taken us a big step forward and in the right direction when it comes to the evolution of cameras.

PS! None of the pictures in this blogpost are mine, and all of the mare © Fujifilm.