South Africa With The Fujifilm X100F

It has been quiet on this blog.

It has been very quiet on this blog!

It has been too quiet on this blog!!!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I will soon start a new assignment in South Africa for my day job. And the preparations for that, including already going on a business trip to Johannesburg for about two weeks, was not good for the progress of this blog. Preparing for visa application, traveling, intensively talking with the local team, takes time. A lot of time. And to be honest, during the evenings I was too tired to spend any time on the blog. Overcoming jet-lag from a 14-hour direct flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg is challenging for me.

Going on assignment this time around will be with a new approach: the family and dogs stay at home in the US, and no plans for safaris or other 'vacation' trips in-country. It also will mean a new challenge for my photography: my intent is to move more towards street and documentary photography, which I then will use as a basis for my Haiku, PicTales, and Essays.

A new challenge, which - of course - asks for a new tool (Noooo, this has nothing to do with GAS...).

Although I still love my Fujifilm X-Pro1, I wanted something even more compact. At the same time, I love the OVF/EVF combination of the X-Pro1 and wanted to have something similar in my new camera.

This more or less automatically led me to the Fujifilm X100F.

Although this fourth iteration of Fujifilm's X100 camera is already two years on the market, it still is a great camera that for me ticks all the boxes:

• it has a reasonably compact body (slightly smaller than the X-Pro cameras, and the pancake-like lens really makes a difference);

• it has the OVF/EVF combo (and some more);

• it has Fujifilm's magic sensor, with great film simulation modes (including the very popular Acros black and white film simulation);

• it is a great unobtrusive camera for street and documentary photography.

The camera has a fixed 23mm (35mm full frame equivalent) lens. This could be considered a restriction but truth said, I only have two lenses for the X-Pro1 (the 18mm and 35mm) and I am pretty well used to shoot with only one focal length for a prolonged time. It actually will mean that I really need to work on my composition, which is a benefit from a learning and improvement point of view.

The fact that the X100F does not have interchangeable lenses makes it actually easier: no choice to make. And traveling light by design!

Since this camera has been on the market since 2017, there are already numerous reviews available, like those from Shark & Palm, Frederik Trovatten, and Samuel L. Streetlife. These reviews actually are triggering the thought that I maybe could start using JPEGs straight out of the camera.

Below are some first shots I made after purchasing the camera (side-by-side comparisons of the raw files and straight-out-of-camera jpegs), which made me very happy.

This is going to be fun!