Scenes Seen/A Short Work Road Trip: FUJIFILM X100VI.

Subtitle: Gimmicks, hype, supply issue driven price gouging, and instathreadface darling pixie dust set aside it is a solid performer.

Here I will cut and paste from earlier posts on this camera.

What is it not?

Let me be clear before I proceed. This is not some magical device that will transform my photography. Nope. At the end of the day? It is just a camera. What transpires once it is in my hands is largely up to me. That is largely why I stopped looking at sample images from other folks. I pretty much take the same photos no matter what camera I use. Where the camera comes into play is determining, based on the tech, compactness for a daily carry, and features involved, how many images I successfully capture.

That sorted, moving on.

The camera in question:

FUJIFILM X100VI: Unobtanium Obtained. Part 1 – The Arrival.

As usual, just going about my day and snapping pics. I.E. The exact use case intended for this camera.

Enough of that.

The mission for the day.

A road trip.

Until I soon retire, my day gig is herding cats. Aka a Project Manager. Specifically an IT Project Manager… for a hospital system that sprawls across the state.

I mostly work remote, even for go-lives, but when it makes sense I like to leg it to the site in question. Currently in the midst of a multi-year system rollout, and the first of this year’s wave was going live. Five sites went live last year. So this makes site six of eleven all in. A bit of a journey at just over two hours. And as luck would have it, they were so efficient with the go-live that replacing major devices throughout the hospital took less time than it did for me to drive there. So I legged it back home in time for my afternoon meetings.

Here are the pics I took along the way.

Thoughts.

Bluster, gimmicks, and hype set aside, this camera is a versatile performer. There is no perfect camera, but with this last X100 I think Fujifilm has stumbled upon a formula that includes all my favorite elements from other cameras I like.

Sony’s competent AF, IBIS, and EVF.
A built in flash I like having, that none of my other cameras have. Allows for some fun pics I would have needed to carry a flash for with other cameras.

A leaf shutter that allows flash sync up to 1/4000s is a unique feature. I look forward to playing around with that, especially with more powerful on camera flashes and off camera flash.
While not as small as a GR I did fit it in my front trouser pocket… (That sounds off, but I will ignore this and go on.)… when it was time to stop taking pictures and sing this last Saturday. That is something I tried and failed to do with the A7CII and a remaster slim lens.
Feels good in hand like my Leica did. I really like the knurled texture and metal moving bits.
40MP is proving to be a near-perfect fixed lens resolution compromise. Plenty of detail, so crop modes are actually useful in a pinch in place of a zoom lens.

So you get Pixie dust stuff I actually use occasionally, like the ACROS film simulation, that when combined with a digital crop allowed me to fake a 69mm focal length with 10MP JPEG image in a pinch like this.

All with a quick flick of a Q menu setting and a spin of the focus dial that acts like a fake zoom ring when using AF. Could I have cropped later? Yes. Certainly. But it was nice to have available.

Then, with another quick flick of a Q menu setting and two dial spin I was set up for my on-the-go captures on the long drive home through the sticks.