Fujifilm XT-5

I'm not a photographer, I've always enjoyed taking photos, but mostly my experience was on point and shoots (when I was younger, digital and film) and borrowed entry level DSLRs.

I take a lot of photos and videos with my phone, and iPhones have great cameras for photos and produce even better video. On my trips abroad, I would sometimes borrow my sister's now 10+ year old entry level Nikon D3300 with an 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 Tamron lens. It's a good camera especially for the price and the lens was also pretty good value for money I feel. It served me well when I borrowed it for some of my trips abroad.

But after my latest trip to Croatia, I finally got sick of using my phone for photos - the ergonomics are bad and you just don't have the reach, depth or resolution you can get on a proper dedicated camera. I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max, the camera system and image quality you can get is very impressive for the size of the sensor and lens, but there are inherent physical limitations.

So I decided I was finally going to buy a camera. I have been thinking about this for years, but could never quite justify it - but in that time I had been eyeing up various Sony mirrorless cameras. They're seemingly the big name in that segment of the industry and are very popular for good reason - they make excellent cameras. I also like their designs.

But to my surprise, when going deeper into my research, watching and reading countless reviews and looking for those that aligned with my preferences - Fujifilm cameras kept coming up more and more as a good match for me. My high level preferences centred around getting a strong stills camera with good ergonomics that provided me with good 'out of camera' photos - I want to get into editing my photos - but I also want a good baseline of straight out of camera images.

The Fujifilm cameras I began to circle in on were often praised for the following:

• Good ergonomics, the big chunky dials that allow you to easily and obviously control ISO, shutter speed and exposure compensation - amongst other controls - seemed like a great fit for me.
  • One of the many frustrations I've had with cameras I've used in the past is the ergonomics of changing these controls on the exposure triangle was annoying, so I didn't do it as much as I should have and ended up with worse photos as a result.
• Strong stills focused camera.
• Class leading straight-out-of-camera JPEGs
• Great colours and genuinely excellent film simulation modes.

A sentiment that was often repeated by reviewers or other professional photographers is that the characteristics of these certain Fujifilm cameras made photography more 'fun'.

As I mentioned, these all seemed to align to my preferences. I initially leaned towards some of the less expensive cameras, the Fujifilm XT-30 II or XT-50 - but against my better (financial) judgement, I got pulled towards the higher end Fujifilm XT-5 for a few reasons, such as weather sealing, substantially better battery, better display, dual SD card slots and a few more smaller upgrades.

The XT-50 does seem like an excellent camera for those which don't care about those upgrades though, because as far as actual image quality goes, in most scenarios it should be practically the same as the XT-5 just for a few hundred £ cheaper.

My impressions

Firstly, I want to make clear that this isn't a review. I'm not qualified to give any sort of informed opinion in this area. This is just my background and my impressions of a camera I bought. I'm not giving photo tests or samples.

I bought the camera with the new Fuji 16-50mm f2.8-4.5 weather resistant 'kit' lens. After reading and watching reviews, it did become clear that this isn't a 'kit' lens you often see from other manufacturers, typically at lower price points - but this is a legitimately pretty good lens regardless of the fact it's available in a bundle or not.

By itself, it costs £699. I don't know enough to know if this is worth the money - but in my experience of the lens so far it's:

• Lightweight
• Internal zoom (the lens does not extend when zooming, it always remains the same length)
• Weather resistant
• All around good performance.

The main downside and I'm not sure if this is a consequence of the internal zooming for this particular lens, but it not being able to hold the f2.8 aperture through to the longer focal length, unlike some competing lenses like the Sigma 18-50 f2.8.

I'm happy with the lens, but for my next, I am looking for something with a lot more reach and also something small and sharp that'll bring the profile of the camera down to make it easier to slip into a pocket. I'll be looking to rent something with long reach for my next trip to Iceland later this year.

Impressions of the camera itself? I love the feel, build and retro aesthetics of this thing. It feels absolutely solid, the metal top and bottom - the chunky and tactile dials. I wasn't sure what to expect, I was a bit worried it may feel cheaper than it looks - but it doesn't - in fact I feel like it feels even more premium than it appears. Does it feel more premium or better built than competing cameras? I don't know - I have nothing to compare it to.

I don't have the biggest hands, but the hand grip and feel of the camera is great. Always feels secure and the grip is just big enough - though maybe with bigger hands some might feel the need for a third party grip.

UX and usability are decent, camera menu systems still don't seem to be the best - but the physical controls (including the touch screen) are responsive, highly customisable and are in places that ergonomically make sense. I feel like I've been able to make sense of the customisation functionality to make the camera comfortable for me and suitable for my use cases quite easily.

The screen can be adjusted in 3 angles - most suited for photography use rather than video / vlogging. The previous generation model (XT-4) had a screen that could be flipped out and faced forwards, a feature popular with video makers - but supposedly reaction to the XT-4's design choices split opinion and Fuji decided to lean more into making this a photography focused camera rather than a do-it-all hybrid for the XT-5 and as such that went away. The LCD and electronic viewfinder seem good to me, sharp, high framerate, reliable.

As someone still very new to this world, the big physical controls for shutter speed, exposure compensation and iso are as good as I had hoped, and they've definitely helped me manually tune my settings better when I have felt the need to. So far, most of my day-to-day photography has been done in aperture priority mode - meaning iso and shutter speed are set in 'auto' and I just set my aperture manually depending on what I'm going for.

I have also been enjoying using the film simulation modes and also importing custom 'recipes'. Basically settings for your camera that build on top of the built in film simulation modes to create a more opinionated, stylised image. There's some great ones out there. My main problem is one I've always had here, and this is a personal failing rather than anything else, I want to take every photo in multiple modes just in case some look better than others.

I don't have the eye, skill or talent in photography to have that confidence to spot and determine what a certain shot would look best in. I do still take most photos in the baseline mode - but there are a bunch of shots that are elevated by some of the presets I have configured. This doesn't feel like your typical post processing, it's not miles off that, but the experience does feel deeper and richer - probably thanks to Fujifilm's much lauded 'colour science'.

Weight is fine and carrying it strapped to my hand doesn't feel too fatiguing even after doing it for much of the day. Battery life is also very good - but then I've never had a problem with battery life on other cameras in the past, I am constantly switching the camera on and off to take photos - rarely do I walk around with the camera powered on whilst looking for shots. I don't record long videos or lots of burst-mode / continuous shooting.

Speaking of which, one of the biggest pain points with this camera is its low buffer size. I was aware of this coming in - but if you're someone who takes lots of continuous fast shots, then this probably isn't the camera for you. Things like sports photography, you can quite quickly fill up the camera's buffer and then the shooting speed will be significantly reduced.

It's not really a use case for me, and any burst use cases I have - the camera does more than well enough for me - but in 'synthetic' tests I have done myself, I can easily get the camera to 'bog down'.

I have, in one of the two SD card slots, a fast 256GB Sabrent V60 SD card - I wanted to be able to record very high quality video without storage being a bottleneck. The other I have a cheaper Samsung SD card that I just have configured in overflow mode - when SD card 1 is full, it begins writing to SD card 2.

On the topic of video - it wasn't why I bought this camera but I still hoped for high quality video. It has delivered for me. It isn't as good as some other competing cameras, notably Sony, but I've been pleased with the results. Likewise with autofocus, Fujifilm lag behind some of their competitors here - but at least with the 4.0 firmware I'm running currently - it has been pretty good. Not perfect, but better than I expected and I feel like most of the time I miss a shot because I'm out of focus is because I have the wrong focus settings on and I miss a moment.

Again, Sony is well regarded for having brilliant autofocus capabilities - but other competitors like Canon and Nikon also appear to outclass Fuji here too. But as I said - in my experience - it's not in a bad place, it's pretty good.

Summary

I'm a tech enthusiast, and I think one of the reasons you see people like me (software engineers, computing / tech enthusiasts) also get into photography is because whilst it is, at its core, an art form - at least to create good photos you should treat it as such - it is at the intersection of art & technology.

Cameras interest me not just because I enjoy the process of going to places, experiencing things and taking photos whilst I'm there, but also because I like the technology.

This camera is the best thing I've bought in a while in terms of enjoyment and satisfaction. I enjoy picking it up and using it and it's giving me even more reason to just get out of the home and find something interesting to photograph. To get out and learn more to hopefully, one day, take a decent photo.

My Photos page will contain a few I've taken over the last week - most aren't really focused on showcasing the raw specs of the device and lens though.

Accessories

I haven't bought much for the camera, other than SD cards and a hand strap that is on a universal quick release system that can be used for neck straps. But I also have a previously bought shoulder strap that is attached to the camera via the tripod mount - something I found very useful when using my sister's DSLR in Iceland earlier this year.

The big main accessory I have bought though is the Peak Design Everyday Sling 3L. I wanted a small, comfortable, weatherproof bag that I could easily slip the camera in and out of when I didn't want to be wearing the camera directly around my neck.

I've been super impressed with the bag, it is a camera focused bag - I can fit the camera in with the lens attached and can quickly put it away and pull it back out again. The straps and weight distribution is great and the configurability of the bag is genuinely useful. The ability to strap things like tripods to the bottom of it is something I'm already using (even if I haven't really used the tripod much yet..) and being able to configure the straps to wear the bag in different ways gives me confidence I won't need another lightweight bag for a different scenario.

There's also enough space for me to add another decent size lens in, which as I mentioned, is the plan.