Why I love fujifilm

Dennis wrote:

There are little things I like about specific features or even specific available lenses in every brand. When I first encountered Fujifilm (X-T1) I was taken with:

1. apparent build quality of the camera and the lenses I tried - nice, old school, silky smooth controls and lack of cheap plastics
2. aperture rings and body controls

Years have passed; I finally scratched my Fujifilm itch with an X-T30 and 18-55, but decided I didn't care for the retro controls any more (too many years of PASM since my early SLR days) and ended up with an X-S10. (I might enjoy the retro controls more on a bigger body - don't know). Anyway, what I mostly appreciate about Fuji now:

1. apparent build quality - still there, though I haven't seen the XC lenses or entry level bodies.

I had an XT100 and not to want to yuck anyone's yums as they say but it felt so cheap and awful!  So they don't 'always' make a great feeling camera

2. no-nonsense dedication to building a competent, capable APS-C system. They provided basic necessities before getting into exotics and they offer a few different body styles. While medium format competes for their resources, Fuji can develop both without worrying about one cannabalizing sales from the other. To me, the only options I would consider for a new system would be Olympus, Fuji or FF (any of the big three).

Smaller things I appreciate are:

3. the jpeg quality (I always shot raw only, but now shoot raw+jpeg and tend to just tuck the raws aside "just in case").

Same to an extent.  Summer shooting in good light and black and white I can rely on the JPegs and just tweak white balance, levels, and curves, and a small smart sharpen in Photoshop and not be able to dig any better out of the raw files.  I appreciate this as it saves me time.  To be fair the same goes for Contemporary Canon 24mp APC (not the 18mp sensor no way) and Panasonic m43 I owned.

I recently broke with my JPEG only mission however whilst shooting Winchester Cathedral.  Too much wide contrast between shadow and HL in any given scene, the RAW files ended up being much more flexible.  But that;s tough conditions.  Also night street.  But yeah for good light no qualms at all

4. some of the little touches in the system like bracketing options (including film emulations and focus bracketing) and the cool red display for night photography (not sure how effective it is, but great idea).

There are things I like about Olympus and Sony/Nikon FF, too, so time will tell which I end up with for the long haul, but so far, I'm enjoying my little Fuji kit.

- Dennis
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