Fuji

I have had the opportunity to shoot with the Fuji X-E1 bodies and primes for the last few months. If you are not familiar with them, they are beautiful cameras. They remind me of the Contax G bodies that were around in the late 90's and early 00's. There are a few important differences. The Fuji's are digital and the Contax G1/G2 were film bodies. The Fuji bodes can focus properly (and have only improved with a number of firmware updates) and the Contax bodies could never focus properly. But what they have in common is that they are both very attractive cameras that feel great when you are using them.

What was heartbreaking about the Contax G1/G2 bodies was that they felt so great when you held them and shot with them, but then were crushed with the results when you would get film back with images horribly back focused or front focused. The Contax cameras were rangefinders, but they did not include any type of split-focus or other focus confirmation in the viewfinder so you had to hope that the autofocus was focusing on what you wanted it to... and more frequently than not, it didn't.

But back to the Fuji's... the more I use them, the more I have fallen in love with the X-E1's. They are small, quiet bodies with sharp lenses, and what comes out of them rivals the quality of my DSLR's, even at high ISO. I also find that when I use them, I am able to blend in much better as a guy with a small digital camera or two versus using the Canon DSLR's and the EF-L zooms or primes. They have become my "personal" cameras. I was able to take some time after a couple of shoots in Germany and put the Canon's away and wander a few cities in Germany using the X-E1's and had an amazing time of not only really good food, but had a blast shooting... Here are a couple of images from one of the trips. I will post more images soon.