Wednesday 30th of March 2016
For this penultimate week, I decided to bend the rules a little, in that I actually used my X100 all week instead of the X-E1 and 35/1.4, thus foregoing the ‘one camera’ and ‘one lens’ aspects entirely. Not even the same focal length.
But man have I missed the X100. I sent it to my brother months ago since he wanted to see if that 35mm-e field of view suited him before buying the equivalent lens for his Panasonic m4:3 camera.
Yeah the X100 has its downsides: the EVF is kinda grainy, and freezes briefly when you autofocus, and the AF point selection button is on the left side in an awkward place, but everything else is just lovely: the lens, the solid feel of the camera, even the whole-stop aperture ring. It’s a real classic, and nothing about it makes me want to upgrade to an X100S or T.
Probably the only thing that could sway me away from the X100 is if Fuji introduced a suitably compact XF 23mm lens (probably an f/2 – the current f/1.4 is too big to work as a replacement for the X100 when mounted on an X-E1). Perhaps then I could have my perfect lens set: 14, 23 and 60mm; in the meantime I guess I could just take the X100 along with my X-E1.
It certainly took a bit of getting used to the 35mm-e view again after so long at 50mm-e; if nothing else, this project has made me comfortable and instinctive enough with the 50 view that it no longer feels constraining the way it did at the start. I know what it can do now, where I need to stand, and so forth.
The only wrinkle here is my new printer, and how large (19×13 inch) prints affect perception of field of view. This is something I noticed a while ago, where thumbnail-sized pictures make the field of view look wider than it is. It’ll be interesting to see if this works in the other direction – whether a large print has a ‘telephotoing’ effect, making a 35mm-e lens look more like a 50mm-e. No doubt viewing distance has an influence too: holding such a picture in your hands makes it look bigger than seeing it on the wall from across the room. Much experimentation to be done!
Anyway, pictures:
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