Spread the love
I still remember the hype when the Fujifilm X Pro 1 was launched and how I was stuck in an office at B&H Photo not being out there to play with it. This camera changed everything. I completed our review and even updated it. And I held onto this camera until late 2023 when I really needed money and sold it. This camera was, and still is, really great if you’ve got it in solid condition.
In 2021, the camera was nearly a decade old and I wrote about it. Upon re-reading that article, something reached into my heart and touched me deeply. I wrote that modern cameras have made us very lazy. Here’s the specific section:
For this blog post, I decided to use nothing else but the Fujifilm X Pro 1 for a week. And wow, what a culture shock. I was immediately brought back to a time way before COVID-19. Do you remember cameras before Face Detection? Do you remember when you had to really work to move the autofocus point? And more importantly, do you remember cameras that prioritized the center autofocus point? Well, the Fujifilm X Pro 1 is one of those cameras.
This sounds like business as usual if you’re a Leica M shooter.
With cameras like the Fujifilm X Pro 3 and XT4, it’s easy to point, focus, and shoot. It’s bound to work to get a face in focus. But the Fujifilm X Pro 1 didn’t have face detection or eye detection: you had to move the focusing point. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t get good photos though. In fact, I still shoot pretty much the same amount that I used to. Back then, I used to use the center focus point and get the photos I liked. These days, I let the camera find the face and I get the shot I want in less than five frames.
The Fujifilm X Pro 1 is from an era before cameras started to get really smart with detection settings and all. With cameras like this, you can load new film profiles. Understand that I don’t mean film simulations from Fujifilm. Instead, you can set your own things up. So I ended up making it shoot like Kodak Portra NC.
As it is, this camera is from an era where I feel the image quality was the most film-like. Everything looked like lower resolution scans. On top of that, there’s the hybrid viewfinder with optical and electronic settings. When the camera was released, it rivals many DSLRs for high ISO output and colors because of the design of the X Trans sensor. But as time as gone on, the X Trans sensor hasn’t really aged all that well.
Because people want this camera, the price has gone back up.
Granted, many photographers are still waiting for the X Pro 4. But I think that it’s been way too long. And as it is, APS-c cameras are treated like such disposable products.
Would I still buy it? Only for a good price and only if you’re really yearning for that look.
