Reunited with an old friend
When I bought my first camera we still had rolls of film and I knew nothing about apertures. Point, shoot and wind on. Esther, my wife, used to have a Minolta. I do not think I had a camera of my own at all, but I made photographs in my head of what I saw. The Canon 350D rings a faint bell. I think that was my first digital camera. 8 megapixels, a maximum ISO of 1600 and certainly no touchscreen.
I took holiday snaps with a 70-300mm lens I would never buy now. Many compact cameras later along came a Sony DSC-RX100M4, which let me do a great deal more. Until I really started going into photography properly.
At the end of 2020 I bought a Fujifilm X-T3. That was the camera that lit all sorts of photographic fires in me. I had just handed in my notice at my previous job and wanted to change everything. That Fujifilm did it. Through that camera and its little brother, the Fujifilm X100V, I went into photography with both feet. Street photography, portraits and behind the scenes.
And yet the X-T3 and I were only friends for a short while. Because the term full frame appealed to me enormously, in October 2021 I very deliberately traded my Fujifilm for a Sony α7R IV. Sonys are fantastic. Beautiful glass, a million billion possibilities and that terribly lovely monochrome creative style, as Sony calls it. But the street photographer in me could not get used to it. Not that I did not give it a chance. I wandered London for three days with that fine 40mm F2.5 on my new Sony α7 IV during the day. It simply did not fit me. We never became real friends, we never built a bond.
Last month (2023, ed.) I received my new Fujifilm X-T5. As though a lost friend had come home. It is not at all that the camera is better, or the lens, or the APS-C format. We have been reunited too briefly for that. No, I think a brand mostly has to suit you. You have to be taken with the brand, the company and the marketing. You have to feel at home among the other photographers who use it. Certainly if you are as obsessive about photography as I am.
It is about community. Perhaps it is my marketing background, but I am right in the middle of that Fujifilm audience. If it says Fujifilm on it, you can sell it to me. I am not writing this to sing Fujifilm’s praises, although it is a fantastic camera brand. With the dials on top and that lovely retro look. There I go anyway, sorry. Nor am I writing it as an open application for a position as a Fujifilm X-Photographer (although I do believe you should speak your dreams out loud). I am writing it because photography is so much more than a camera or a camera brand.
If you are busy with photography day in, day out, then you have to make sure you surround yourself with people and things you enjoy. That motivate you. Things that make you enthusiastic and that you can keep talking about with enthusiasm. You have to make sure the fire you have never goes out, and that you use the right fuel for it.
Before anyone makes the joke: I am not saying you should throw certain brands into the fire. Not at all. If Olympus suits you (and the Micro Four Thirds system), or Nikon (with that fine shutter sound), then become good friends with that camera. Lose yourself in it, and get to know your friend as well as you can. Build a bond. The X-T5 reminds me of an old verse by Toon Hermans: “Only when you have someone who laughs with you and cries with you can you say: I have a friend.” We are going to have fine adventures, my Fujifilm and I.
This article first appeared in Focus Magazine (the best photography magazine in the Netherlands), for which I wrote a column in every issue in 2023 and 2024.