My good buddy professional photographer Matt Widgery was offering me some great advice on upgrading from my ancient Canon 20D dSLR (bought in 2005/6) to something a little more powerful and up to date. I was dithering about going full-frame and having to splash out loads of hard-earned cash on my snap-happy hobby. In the meantime, he’d got his hands on something new and intriguing from Fuji and kindly gave me a chance to test drive the mirrorless Fuji X Pro 1 digital…
This relatively lightweight camera looks and handles like one of those classic film cameras of the 1960s, so I had high hopes for it. The proof of the pudding, of course, is always in the snapping. So, in exchange for the loan Matt would get my thoughts and experiences with the camera down on video for his excellent and informative Youtube show. In the end, we took Rose along as our glamourous model and had her chasing a ball around a small patch of countryside in what (as of today) seems to have been the last day of blazing sun in the 2014 Indian Summer here in Cambridge. Meanwhile, I attempted to get to grips with the numerous wheels, levers and slippery buttons of the X-Pro-1 and to get a fast-moving and ebulliant yellow labrador in the frame and in focus. Matt and I then checked out the Velvia-esque pixels back at Bradley Towers.
Matt tells me that it took him a week of hard work to get to grips with the Fuji, but he loves it and I have to agree the photos he is taking with this camera are stunning. He concedes that it is a steep learning curve, even for a pro. For me, it’s perhaps a leap of faith too far from what I’ve been used to – a Canon dSLR – for the last ten years of my photography and I suspect that in the end I will inevitably opt for a more obvious, perhaps straightforward upgrade from the APS-C sensor of the 20D to a full-frame sensor in the form of the 6D or perhaps I don’t apply the austerity budget the rather more expensive 5D mark iii. But, then again, the question now arises: should I be patient and wait for the mark iv?