There is a certain excitement for a photography nerd when there’s new gear around - although in my case the new gear I’ve acquired in the last few year has been OLD gear - in the shape of analog cameras. Last year I got myself a Kiev 60 medium format camera and that was a fun piece of (to me) new old tech to have a go at, shooting those lovely large 6 x 6 cm negatives. I’ve enjoyed exploring 135 format film photography too with various cameras. However, I’ve been feeling that my 2011 Canon 600D DSLR has been used less and less, because the low-light capabilities felt lacking. Also, the size of it was beginning to be a problem for my more and more achy hands (which is a bit ironic, given that when I got that Canon camera I felt I needed to add a battery grip to let my hands grab it properly).
Artistic or just the photographer fumbling the exposure? I don’t know….
Anywho…I dug deep in my accumulated gear savings budget two weeks ago and acquired a Fujifilm XT-3 with an 18-55 mm lens. I’ve never shot Fujifilm or any mirrorless before, but I must say that after only a few outings with it I absolutely enjoy it. The images in this post are from my very, very first (and short) stroll through the Triangeln train station in Malmö trying the camera out. I shot these using the Acros film simulation on the camera and I did like seeing the scene live in black and white in the viewfinder (which isn’t possible on a DSLR) when I chose that film simulation.
It was a very wet day, so the station was a nice reprieve from all the rain!
The sales guy at the camera store asked if I wanted some accessories for the camera, like a battery grip or other things, and while I do consider getting certain things I am going to hold off on that until I’ve gotten a lot more usage out of the machine I have right now. There is no reason to bury myself in gear making the camera bulkier, when the smaller size was one of the reasons I got the new camera in the first place!
The architecture of this station is always impressive when you see the geodesic dome above!
There’s a multitude of customization options on this new supercomputer in camera form, but I haven’t sunk my teeth into that yet, for now I am enjoying the factory settings. I’ve also not yet opened the manuals…which I suppose is typical male behavior…who needs manuals when you can explore and discover things on your own? Granted it will take four times as long, but it’ll be MY discoveries dammit! All jokes aside, I will of course look through the manual to understand all the capabilities of the camera, because I want to be able to use it to its full capacity to get the shots that I both want and didn’t think I could get with my old setup.
I must say that I am impressed that the camera managed to get anything usable in the very low light.