My mistress Fuji

Review in progress

A little over two years ago I started a passionate affair with the Fuji X100. At the time people thought I was naive and told me that it was just a summer fling, nothing serious.  

After a while I listened an came to my senses, moved on and got "a real camera" a traded my Nikon D5000 for a full frame D610 and forgot about the Fuji for a while. But I kept it and after some time started using it as a everyday camera the way I had intended to.

But it was not the same after the D610, I mesmerized by the full frame sensor and became something some people would refer to as a "bokeh-whore". 

After some time I found myself a student of photography at Fridhemsfolkhögskola and one day we had to sit in a circle and tell one another how they normally shoot and give an assignment based on the opposite.

I realized that I had let the camera start to control the way I made pictures. I felt that it was the the gear that made me a good photographer. 

In a desperate attempt to take back the art I started shooting film. This let my brain get away from things of little or no importance to the final image. It was liberating for a time but ultimately I  found my self in another soul crushing creative rot. I had a tough few months filled with depression, anxiety and very little photography. 

Not sure what this has to do with me getting a Fuji X-T1 but let's roll with it, I'll get there eventually.

 I think the Fuji gets me to a place between analog and digital photography. It gets out of my way the same way my old film cameras do. It does not feel like a camera more like an extension of my eye.  

In my opinion the camera is rather important.  I'm not talking about megapixels, sensors and fps but the way it puts you in the right frame of mind. 

Of course my Nikon camera is better on paper and it lets me do some incredible things, but it is a large, heavy, the opposite of discrete and quite a boring piece of gear to be honest. Everyone has a DSLR these days and "My uncle has one of those" is not a good conversation starter with a subject.

At the core of all this bullshit it's just me trying to reinvent myself. I'm probably going about it all wrong but I like gear and I am suffering from G.A.S (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) at the moment. The camera acts like a carrot for me, getting my to work on new projects and revisit old ones like this terrible blog situation for example.