Fuji v FF Nikon, and GAS back to APS-C

Some rambling commences:

Andy Mumford published a nice video[0] about how he is entirely satisfied with the crop sensor and compared Fuji X-T1 against a full-frame Nikon rather favorably! He didn't quite get the image specifics entirely matched, but they matched quite well enough, and I was impressed alongside. Surely Fujifilm pics are all about mushy details with great color?

It's the Fuji curse: you pixel-peep when you have just taken the photos and now you editorialize and post-process your set. Nothing wrong with the pics but you see the flaws in close detail once. When you come back to the photos long after you've taken them, you're impressed and remembered them being much worse looking than they are. This time you've only seeing the overall picture, as it should be. I've seen this with my own photos and I remember a couple of threads here people lamenting about the same.

For context, I had and loved Fuji X100T for about 18 months. I wanted to experience other focal lengths so about a year ago I got a Fuji X-T1 + 35/1.4 + 18/2 but overall I didn't nearly prefer X-T1 to X100T, and I hardly used the newly bought system. Ended up selling the setup rather quickly into the spring. Back to Fuji X100T, what a wonderful all-rounder!

Then, last summer, I made the mistake of trying out a Leica Q, and fell instantly in love. It handles very nicely, has faster and more accurate autofocus, the images are out of this world when you pixel-peep, and I prefer the color out of it, for the most parts. I didn't upgrade to Q because of its FF sensor but I quickly grew to appreciate what it implies.

But Q is again a one-FL wonder and it's not without flaws. (It's big, while not huge, and I can't seem to hold it level when I'm doing zone-focused street photography on the waist level.) And the expenses of moving into something, say, Leica M! For an M body only you can get the Graphite X-Pro2 + 23/2 combo, 56/1.2, 35/1.4... nah, I probably don't have to tell you guys that Leica is expensive!

So right now there's also this Fuji cashback campaign going on, and you can get the graphite X-Pro2 + graphite 23/2 as a combo for €2k. Sounds plenty fine. It's giving me GAS to this other side (while I'm not at all sure I'd enjoy shooting interchangeable Fuji system this time either. Those plane shutters are sure noisy!)

So if we circle back to the theme of the video and consider these two things:

• Regardless of image quality, smaller sensor will gather less light than a large sensor. It means your shutter speeds will be slower and/or ISO levels will be higher the smaller your sensor is, keeping scenery and lens aperture the same. I'm a candid street photography kinda guy, and sometimes Fuji went to ISO 6400 happily, and I would have given it even faster shutter speeds if X100T allowed that (it maxes out at 1/125). Not that Fuji has bad ISO performance, this feels something I have to factor in.
• Fuji JPEGs are great, but after moving to Q, I went 100% raw shooter. I thought I wouldn't like postprocessing but turns out, I do. Cropping, straightening out horizonts, occasional push or burn. I live in linux and don't have access to the industry standard tools that have Fujifilm's official support. We have a remarkably fine tool called darktable, but given Fujifilm engineers haven't collaborated with the project I found out I couldn't really match my Fujifilm raws with Fujifilm JPEGs. A poorer noise suppression, annoying haloing when I push shadows, so on. These issues don't occur with Q raw images. I was told this could be about the software defaults such as base curve. I also lose access to Fujifilm's own film simulations, not that third-party presets in darktable are any bad.

I think I'd hate the fact that I can take an about perfect shot in JPEG but if there's cropping or exposure adjusting to be done, I'd have to do that on a raw image and suddenly lose classic chrome, well removed noise and so on.

By the way, do others have the same problem as I do, I have the biggest GAS in the darkest months of the year? It's a poor time to buy anything new either, because it's dark and everything has to be taken with high ISOs and so on. Yet when it starts to get brighter again, I can go out and shoot with my gear that I have on me, and the GAS is suddenly no more.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cbc6qJoyCM (26 min)