My New Fuji XT-5 for Pet Portraits

My dog Chloe gets her portraits done with a Fuji XT-5

A couple months ago my wife, who is certifiably smarter than me, said something along the lines of “Let’s go to Albania for a bike tour next summer!” I was all, “Ok?” My usual portrait and wedding photography equipment is Canon mirrorless cameras with some hefty lenses; the amazing 28-70mm f2 and the good enough 70-200mm f2.8. This system works really well for weddings and portraits here in Bend, but it’s not super fun to travel with. It’s my go-to gear for wedding and portrait work. The amazing 28-70 weighs three pounds all by itself. It just doesn’t inspire me to do pictures on my own. I don’t WANT to keep it handy.

Just before switching over to mirrorless I wanted a small and fun camera to keep handy. Enter the pretty good Fuji X100V. I didn’t really understand the strengths of the electronic viewfinder (EVF) for doing photography and the X100V has a little switch to go from regular see through to EVF. I almost never used the see through. The EVF changed everything. So for my work I ended up selling all my beloved Nikon gear and going with the Canon because the autofocus was way better at the time.

I learned how to do professional photography with Nikons. First as a photojournalist in school at SF State, then as a newspaper photographer in Iowa and here in Bend, then as a wedding and portrait photographer in Bend. It was fun learning how to be a photographer and fun using my Nikon stuff. My final two lenses for work were the amazing 28mm f1.4 on one camera and the truly spectacular 105mm f1.4 lens on the other body. It was fun doing pictures with these. The Canons have always been for work. I’ve tried using them for fun but they just aren’t that fun for some reason. Everything on them works better than any camera that I’ve ever used. The autofocus has a brain of its own. The lenses are sharper. The cameras are mostly straightforward to work with in a snap. I’m just never inspired to go out and do pictures with them.

Enter the Fuji X100V.

This camera was fun to use. It’s small, has really good autofocus, easy to keep handy. It has some downsides however. One was it sometimes would freeze up and stop working. Another was the lens isn’t as sharp as I need a lens to be. It would get sharp at around f4, but that kills the f2 advantage. Plus there’s some physics involved with AP-C sensors. They’re smaller than full-sized sensors. The physics is the smaller size increases the f stop number by about a stop. So an f2 lens is now an f2.8 lens for the blurry backgrounds. So if you’re shooting at f4 to get a sharp picture it’s really f5.6. So why spend a pile of money on an f5.6 lens?

So I’ve been trying to use the Canon’s for my personal and travel photography. But they’re work machines for me. They just aren’t fun to use. I don’t know how that is possible. They have lightning fast autofocus that works really well in low light, the lenses are sharper than any zoom lenses I’ve ever used. The bodies themselves are lightweight. It’s just at newspaper photojournalism and now for wedding and portrait photography I’ve only used them for work.

A couple months ago my buddy in Chicago, Jose, who inspired me to get into newspaper photography way back in the day, bought a Leica Q2 for his own personal and travel photography. An awesome small camera capable of doing amazing pictures. I was tempted by the camera, turned off by the price. So being the curious person, I started reading about as many cameras as possible. My favorite focal length for an all-in-one lens has always been a fast 35mm.

Canon was out immediately after looking at a couple reviews of the new 35mm f1.4. It clunks and is clunky. Plus the pictures were underwhelming on the samples I saw. The problem seems to be they’re trying to make a lens capable of doing both video AND photography. Kind of like the Subaru’s with the open pickup style back half. So now I’m supposed to buy an expensive underperforming lens to go with my fabulous bodies?

Nikon? They’re awesome, but do I want two pro systems in the house? Because money is growing on trees here?

Sony? They new Sony’s are really cool rigs. I was almost going to go with that.

But after doing all this research I finally sat down and wrote down what was the single most important reason for thinking about getting something smaller and easier to travel with and use for my own self.

It had to be fun.

Enter the Fuji XT-5 with its buttons and dials, small size, and very importantly its ability to switch film looks. I was tempted to go with the XT-50 and maybe should have, but the XT-5 had everything I wanted. It has the ability to swap lenses. Fuji has an amazing 35mm lens in the 23mm f1.4 lens. Plus you can load pictures into the phone really fast. You can’t do this with the Canon app. The Canon app half the time won’t even work.

We did a road-trip to Glacier as part of Mary’s original plan to do a gravel bike race in Whitefish and I brought the Fuji. It was totally fun. I had fun again doing pictures of everyone. It came on hikes. To the lake. In the RV. Sitting around. To restaurants.

It was so much fun that earlier this week I splurged and bought the Fuji 90mm f2 lens. It’s a 135mm equivalent and did this picture of Chloe yesterday. I was doing the TMax 3200 custom setting. Doing custom settings really slows down the ability of the camera to record pictures, so I’ll have to figure that out.

Plus I discovered the dials on top of the camera have switches just underneath them my fingers kept accidentally switching. So I started using the dials on the front and back of the camera for ISO and shutter speed. Thus the reason why the XT-50 might have been a great choice.

Now to find some projects to start shooting with this really fun camera setup.