I finally got a new camera! Well Matt got me a new camera for my birthday… and I’m so excited about it! I’ve been using my pretty bulky Nikon D3100 DSLR for about six or seven years and thought I was finally ready for something a little more portable. Plus… my dog, Moose, knocked over my Nikon a few months ago and now it can barely autofocus. So, there’s also that.
Wondering what I chose? Check it out.
I chose the Fujifilm XT100 mostly because it was within my price range. I very strictly wanted to stay under $1000, even under $800 if I could. I don’t make money from my blog, and I take pictures and share because it’s something I’m really passionate about – but I want to continue to grow and improve and that requires using more quality tools. That being said, I can only invest so much in myself and my projects, and $600 seemed like a fair jump for a new camera. I also got the $50 3yr protection on the camera. I wanted to challenge myself to take my camera out and about with me more often, and that means it could definitely get broken easily… I wanted to peace of mind that I didn’t have to worry about breaking something so expensive.
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What I was looking for: I wanted something that would be: under $1000 that could shoot 35mm (good for street photography and Instagram,) has a detachable lens so I could switch it out in the future, has good autofocus with an LED screen so it’d be easy for Matt to shoot photos for me, the ability to transfer photos to my phone with WiFi or Bluetooth, some kind of flip screen if I decided on doing any vlogging, and it needed to be compact. That’s all. I decided on the Fujifilm because it met all these requirements, and I really love the texture of photos that come from a Fujifilm. It’s grainy and moody, and everything I was looking for. The film simulation feature is really great for this.
What I’m loving: I love that it’s really forgiving. It’s a great camera for beginners because the settings aren’t too advanced. You learn how to adjust the ISO, you can control the white balance from the main settings buttons, and you can tap the LED screen to autofocus like you do on your phone. It’s really great for quick shots.
I love the compact body and the knobs at the top of this camera, makes everything really easy to access especially if you’re not looking to get too manual.
This shoots beautiful product shots. It makes me really excited to see my photos after shooting product content for my skincare instagram.
What I’m not loving: the camera does not seem to be the best for video, luckily I didn’t buy it for video and I already have a DSLR for filming any video. If you’re looking at this camera for it’s video feature I’d recommend looking at Sony over Fujifilm.
Sport mode/moving images – this is not the camera for anything moving. Even when I turn off the long exposure I still can’t get clean, still images. It has a hard time stabilizing, and though I like the dreamy blur of the product images I take it’s really hard to, for example, take pictures of my dog on a walk – still trying to figure out how to work with it for this.
The only other thing that I’ve come across that I’m not a huge fan of is how saturated the images are if you don’t play around with the white balance and neutralize the colors with the film simulation option or in your editing process. It kind of reminds me of Samsung phones as opposed to iPhones – if you look at the color quality it’s super over-saturated. Not my favorite, but I’m sure if I go all out with the film simulation option it’ll feel like an old kodak image so it may work out in the long run.
What I still need to figure out: I’m not the most advanced photographer so I don’t know how to change all the manual settings, not that there are a ton, but I still need to learn how to get more comfortable playing around with the settings. I also need to figure out how to shoot better in low light situations. There’s easy access to the ISO to allow more light in, but I don’t get the oomph I’m looking for like when I shoot in direct sunlight with natural shadows.
I’d definitely recommend this for someone that’s not too serious about photography, but enjoys fujifilm’s slight grainy images. If you’re just looking for good quality images, don’t really care about taking videos, and like an aesthetically pleasing camera then this is for you.
© all photos are my own
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