Fujifilm chips: the secrets of the popularity of the most stylish cameras in the world | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Yes, the design of lens­es does not lag behind the design of “car­cass­es”. Pho­to: ifdesign.com

The most styl­ish cam­eras? Pho­tos on a fig­ure with a pic­ture like on a film? A bunch of cool inex­pen­sive glass­es? It’s all Fuji­film! Today we ana­lyze why we love cam­eras of this brand so much.

own way

Fuji­film is a unique com­pa­ny. As one of the flag­ship man­u­fac­tur­ers of film for cam­eras and cam­eras, it, unlike Kodak, suc­cess­ful­ly sur­vived the “dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion”, but at the same time it nev­er fol­lowed the ready-made solu­tions of the indus­try giants — Canon, Nikon and Sony. Per­haps this is the only com­pa­ny that has been able to pre­serve the “spir­it of ana­log pho­tog­ra­phy” and trans­fer it to the dig­i­tal world. Thanks to this, Fuji­film gained cult sta­tus and a loy­al fan base.

Fuji­film has always fol­lowed its own path, despite the ever-chang­ing trends around. At the same time, the com­pa­ny did not close itself in the “good old tra­di­tions”, but con­sis­tent­ly intro­duced inno­va­tions. Today, unlike oth­er Japan­ese cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers, Fuji has not put all its efforts into devel­op­ing a full-frame mir­ror­less sys­tem, cut­ting bud­gets for oth­er for­mats. Instead, she con­sis­tent­ly moves on her cho­sen course, with­out giv­ing her fans unpleas­ant sur­pris­es. For exam­ple, Canon has dis­con­tin­ued the M lens­es for its APS‑C mir­ror­less cam­eras.

Fuji­film is the only one of the big com­pa­nies that con­tin­ues to focus on APS‑C for­mat cam­eras (like the X‑T4), which are small­er and cheap­er than full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras. They are designed for the widest pos­si­ble range of con­sumers — they are used by both pho­tog­ra­phers and video­g­ra­phers, both ama­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als.

In par­al­lel, Fuji has been inno­vat­ing in medi­um for­mat (larg­er and more expen­sive than full frame mod­els) by devel­op­ing afford­able, mod­ern and easy to use medi­um for­mat cam­eras (like the GFX 50S). Here, the tar­get audi­ence is nar­row­er — pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers, for exam­ple, sports pho­tog­ra­phers, wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers, wildlife pho­tog­ra­phers, and so on.

Style

If you ask any “fujivod” to describe the com­pa­ny’s cam­eras in one word, in most cas­es you will prob­a­bly hear: “style”.

Fuji cam­eras inher­it the vin­tage look of film cam­eras, which remains rel­e­vant regard­less of any mod­ern trends. Don’t be sur­prised if some­one asks you on the street what year your cam­era is and how you man­aged to keep it in such great shape. And don’t let the retro look fool you, there’s a pow­er­ful mod­ern cam­era inside!

Per­haps the only brand that is not infe­ri­or to Fuji in style, in any mod­el, is Leica. Pho­to: www.fujixpassion.com/Albert Smith

Controls and ergonomics

The cam­eras don’t just look like ana­log mod­els, they retain the retro phi­los­o­phy of the con­trols. Even on base mod­els, you’ll find old-school rims and levers on the top bar.

The abil­i­ty to man­u­al­ly, using the wheels, adjust the main expo­sure para­me­ters (shut­ter speed, ISO, expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion plus aper­ture on the lens) is one of Fuji­film’s chips: not all com­pact cam­eras from oth­er brands give so much “man­u­al” con­trol. In addi­tion, all con­trols are tac­tile­ly pleas­ing, and man­u­al­ly adjust­ing the cam­era is a sep­a­rate kind of plea­sure. In addi­tion, such exer­cis­es devel­op the skills of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

At the same time, the mod­ern fill­ing of the cam­era allows you to set all para­me­ters to auto­mat­ic mode and not think about “man­u­al” con­trol. The engi­neers left enough room for cus­tomiza­tion and chang­ing the func­tions for the but­tons.

Fuji­film’s menu is log­i­cal, with­out obvi­ous jambs and intri­ca­cies (which some direct com­peti­tors from Sony, for exam­ple, a6400, do). The main thing is that the cam­era does not inter­fere with your shoot­ing — and this is very impor­tant!

The Fuji­film X‑T4 has all the nec­es­sary man­u­al set­tings on the top pan­el: ISO, shut­ter speed and expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion. Pho­to: camerajabber.com

And yes, one more item relat­ed to ergonom­ics. Fuji­film cam­eras are very com­pact! Despite the fill­ing at the lev­el of top-end full-frame mir­ror­less cam­eras, flag­ships like the Fuji­film X‑T4 are notice­ably small­er (600 grams ver­sus 700g for the Nikon Z II or 1kg for the Pana­son­ic Lumix DC-S1H), not to men­tion the “charged” kids like the X‑T30 . At the same time, not only the cam­eras them­selves are small­er, but also the lens­es: here you will not encounter such a prob­lem when you have to wind a huge lens onto a com­pact full-frame mir­ror­less cam­era, like the Sony a7C.

This, of course, by def­i­n­i­tion does not apply to medi­um for­mat mod­els, although for their frame size they remain quite sane dimen­sions. For exam­ple, the Fuji­film GFX 50S II weighs 900 grams, on par with some full-frame cam­eras.

Film simulation and finished JPEGs

If you want great shots right away, with­out long post-pro­cess­ing, then Fuji­film cam­eras are one of the best options on the mar­ket.

First, the cam­eras offer many of the favorite film mod­el­ing (or sim­u­la­tion) modes. Here, Fuji­film has prob­a­bly gone to great lengths to bring your shots clos­er to the “ana­log vibe” with­out requir­ing you to tin­ker with each shot. You sim­ply select the appro­pri­ate “film” and press the shut­ter.

And if the fin­ished pro­files of most oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers are no dif­fer­ent from the fil­ters on Insta­gram, Fuji real­ly comes out with a pic­ture very sim­i­lar to ana­log shots — warmer, more soul­ful and humane.

We will not ana­lyze all the mod­el­ing modes here, we just rec­om­mend try­ing Provia — a uni­ver­sal option for a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions due to good con­trast and bright col­ors. The charis­mat­ic Clas­sic Chrome will give your shot del­i­cate mut­ed col­ors and pleas­ing skin tones. With it, a beau­ti­ful shade of the sky is obtained.

For video film­ing, there is also a ready-made pro­file for a “cine” pic­ture — Eter­na. It is dis­tin­guished by reduced sat­u­ra­tion, which is con­ve­nient to work with dur­ing col­or cor­rec­tion, so the col­ors do not “jump out”. Adds cin­e­mat­ic smooth tonal gra­da­tion for high­lights and shad­ows — it pre­vents “clip­ping”.

Clas­sic Chrome in action. Pho­to: commons.wikimedia.org / Kristof­fer Trolle

There is anoth­er fea­ture that makes Fuji­film cam­eras so pop­u­lar. It’s their begin­ner friend­li­ness: Fuji’s stock shots (JPEG*) are very good. The pho­tos require almost no pro­cess­ing, are obtained imme­di­ate­ly with bright col­ors, excel­lent tonal range, good con­trast — a great option for all begin­ner pho­tog­ra­phers.

*in JPEG for­mat, the user receives ready-made pho­tos “processed” by the cam­era, in con­trast to the “raw” RAW for­mat, which is used for post-pro­cess­ing.

Fujifilm lenses

Any pho­tog­ra­ph­er knows that the cam­era itself is only half the bat­tle. Equal­ly impor­tant are lens­es, their qual­i­ty, price and avail­abil­i­ty. As we said above, all these years Fuji­film has not been scat­tered, cre­at­ing a bunch of dif­fer­ent sys­tems and mounts, but has con­cen­trat­ed on the most impor­tant thing. There­fore, the com­pa­ny has a huge selec­tion of spe­cial­ized APS‑C lens­es for all occa­sions and at rea­son­able prices. We have a ready-made guide to the best Fuji­film glass­es, so here we will lim­it our­selves to a cou­ple of per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions.

The super ver­sa­tile zoom Fuji­film XF 18–55mm f/2.8–4.0 R OIS LM is the best kit lens of all. It can eas­i­ly replace sev­er­al glass­es at once. Suit­able for both pho­to and video shoot­ing, so if you are going to buy a Fuji­film cam­era, do not be stingy and take it with this mod­el.

If you are not a fan of zooms and want to assem­ble the most com­pact kit, then Fuji­film primes are one of the best things in the world! Fast, with good optics and a stur­dy body, this is a cool option for street and por­trait shoot­ing. Prices are on the rise right now, but the Fuji­film XF 50mm f/2 or Fuji­film XF 35mm f/2 R remain with­in reach despite eco­nom­ic tur­moil.

The Fuji­non XF 35mm f/2 R is one of Fuji’s clas­sic fix­es for all occa­sions. Pho­to: lens-rumors.com

If you need a tele­pho­to lens, then the Fuji­film XF 50–140mm f / 2.8 R LM OIS WR will take a por­trait with beau­ti­ful bokeh, and in the park it will “reach out” to a squir­rel.

For Fuji­film, they cre­at­ed a good selec­tion of cheap, but high-qual­i­ty optics from Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers, pri­mar­i­ly Vil­trox and Laowa. There are also anti-cri­sis offers from 7Artisans.

More recent­ly, Sig­ma has also start­ed pro­duc­ing lens­es for Fuji­film X, start­ing with fast primes: Sig­ma 16mm, 30mm and 56mm f/1.4 DC DN.

Shooting with Fujifilm is cool

But most impor­tant­ly, shoot­ing with Fuji­film is very pleas­ant. It is dif­fi­cult to con­vey in the text how tac­tile­ly pleas­ant it is to hold these cam­eras in your hands, it is pleas­ant to turn the levers. And you just feel real­ly cool when you go to take a pic­ture with Fujik at the ready.

Do you want to take cool pho­tos for social net­works with­out too much trou­ble? Please — choose the film mode for your style, wind up a styl­ish fix and go out into the street! Want to make a vlog? Please turn on the Eter­na pro­file, screw on the 18–55mm sta­bi­lized zoom and shoot cool video. Do you want to shoot cool por­traits in the stu­dio? Please, put RAW+Jpeg, grab the Vil­trox AF 56mm f/1.4 and let’s go!

These cam­eras are very fun to take pho­tos and shoot videos, so you shoot more and more! Isn’t that what a cam­era is for?