A year with the Fuji X-E1 | Nils Pickert
It’s nearly a year ago I bougt the Fuji X-E1. I took about 11.000 photos with it in the last year, so it’s time for a resumee how it is working.
Before I mostly took photos with a Canon 50Dwith a couple of lenses, namely a Sigma 10–20, a Canon 17−55÷2.8, a 50/1.8 and a 70−200÷2.8. The 70–200 mostly stayed at home because it was too heavy. The rest was carried around every holiday, using mostly the 17–55, sometimes the 10–20. The camera is great, the lenses are good, but it is heavy stuff and being past 30 it got on my back. So I decided to try the Fuji X-E1 and only the 18-55mm Kit lens for a start. It was supposed to become a light travel camera, used when I did not want to carry the heavy machinery. It turned out to be the best camera I have used since the days of film. I immedeately liked the way you set up stuff: there is a time dial, aperture is set via a dial at the lense and that’s it. Auto ISO or just fixed ISO is selected via the easily accessible Q-Menu. The settings you change are all included in the Q-Menu, accessible with a simple key press. In the beginning Autofocus was slow. Painfully slow. And then the firmware updates came in. Kai-Zen at it’s finest, Fuji seems to really care about the customers who already bought a camera. New firmware for the lenses, new firmware for the camera. And each time it improved something, not only some new feature nobody needed. Except one thing (the beep at the last update) everything improved with an update. In the meantime the Kit Lens has been joined by the 14/2.8 from Fuji and by an older Canon FD 55/1.2 with an adapter. I sometimes miss a telephoto lens and started thinking about the 50–200 from Fuji. But on the other hand, I rarely use a tele. The X-E1 has been with me in a lot of situations I would not have carried the Canon gear. Using only the kit lens covers about 90% of my photography needs. The wide angle is nice, but with the panorama function most of the time you do not even need a wide angle……
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