My love-affair with Fuji

To start things off I better explain this post's title, specify that I am a happily married heterosexual man and that Fuji is not some fling, but in fact an inanimate object.  To be specific, a camera.  To muddy the waters a bit, now that I've clarified them, I might add that I have been an amateur photographer (in the sense of loving photography, not that I'm not as good as any pro out there) for 30 years.  Having started when I was around twelve years old means that I grew up with photography, and I started firmly placed in the film world, developing my black and white negatives and prints, and sometime from 2000 onwards embraced the digital revolution.  As with the stages of man, one grows within photography, starting as a neophyte with a hand-me down camera and then slowly progressing up the "equipment" ladder as resources, techniques improve and as far as one's economic position can accomodate our camera lust.  Ken Rockwell has a nice write-up about photographers and their 7 stages.  Most of us have progressed through some or all of these stages, and although it's satire, there is more than a grain of truth in there.
As much as I've enjoyed photography, the taking of photographs, printing and showing my prints, I've also been attracted to the cameras as objects. VERY attracted.  They satisfy my manual nature, of wanting to touch and control things, discover complicated machines and make them do my bidding.  Back in the day by wallet dictated my camera of choice, which became a Canon (in part because my father also had a Canon rangefinder).  I slowly progressed up the lens path, trading in the dreadful kit lens for a more expensive and more versatile zoom do-it-all, and quite honestly took some of the best travel pics I've taken with that combo.  But then the body didn't come up to scratch, and I upgraded that.  The next body, also a Canon, was joined by a few lenses, as now the lens became my limiting factor. I took some other good pictures as well, but generally spent more than was wise on my lenses, and eventually another body change was required, as I felt my abilities were hampered by my equipment (all false, but it's nice to have all the bells and whistles).  Next body was an Eos3, a fully professional camera demanding great lenses.  My kit got bigger, heavier, more numerous, and still I tried lenses and swapped them for other models, in the perpetual search for perfect camera and lens.  But this was 2000 and film was in the space of a few years completely engulfed by digital.  The revolution took place so quickly that I didn't even manage to off-load my film gear.. or maybe didn't want to.  Within this photographer also lies a collector of objects.
So after playing around with a digicam from work (An Olympus 2020..) I decided to take the plunge and buy my first DSLR, a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera.  My Canon 10D was wonderful, as well as wonderfully frustrating.  It allowed me instant feedback, improving my photography more in 6 months than I had improved in the previous 18 years.  I was astounded at this 6mp camera and the results it could produce, and some of my best digital photography comes from this period.  A whole new learning curve was forced upon me, as everything that was analogue now became digital.  New PC, new storage device, a proper photo printer.  The internet was my haven for information on getting everything to work properly, but in general I began spending more and more time behind a computer and less actually taking pictures or printing them.   In time the 10D became old, and the new new was a 20D. More pixels, faster, more capable.  But somehow Canon had sown its own seeds of distruction when it started an upgrade philosophy that would eventually turn me away from them.  With one hand Canon gave (more pixels, faster, more responsive) but with the other it also took away (moving things around, removing features, making the camera uglier)..  I couldn't understand it.  If one builds on a previous masterpiece, surely one must keep all the good bits?  Not in their book.  And as each new geneation came out, I began "skipping" them, finding less and less to justify the next camera, except perhaps more pixels.  But hadn't my 10D with 6mp already given me A1 size prints!?  Something was happening.  Canon wasn't satisfying me, was actually annoying me, and giving me a hobbled tool to work with.  Was there no-one else who could help?
Enter stage left NIKON.  Nikon was the bad boy of the camera world.  Previously the pro's choice, until in the 80's Canon brought in their AF lenses which had motors in their lenses, Nikon couldn't keep up and everone moved.  Then came digital and Canon was innovating faster and faster and Nikon it seemed couldn't keep up.  Canon had full frame.. Affordable full frame.  The 5D had arrived.  Maybe my prayers had been answered.. Alas no.  The 5D was an amazing camera and at 12mp more than enough for my needs or wants.  But in true Canon style the camera was hobbled, so as not to compete with it's more expensive pro bodies.  Still, image quality was fantastic, the camera had enough controls to ensure I was able to expand on my picture-taking repertoire, and being full-frame meant wide-angle shots were really good.  My first work in Xefina was largely shot on this camera, beginning a documentation of  the sea and wind erosion of this former military outpost.  Sadly my 5D died one day when it took a swim in salt water.  There I was, a dead full-frame camera, a less than satisfying user experience, and Nikon, who had been impressing me with their ergonomics, their no-nonsense attitude to upgrades, and their willingness to play catch-up with Canon finally unveiled their full frame option, the D700!!  These seemed to be a true professional camera.  I was hobbling along on my old 40D (an intermediate camera, to keep me going while I divested from my substantial lens investment). As I sold off my lenses and accessories, I could finally move camp to Nikon.  It was a momentous occasion, akin to leaving your first job for a really fantastic new prospect.  Nikon was the IN thing.  And the D700 did not disappoint.  Some years went by, and the camera was mostly at my side, continuing my work on Xefina with a succession of wide-angle lenses including the fabulous 14-24 f2.8, a truly amazing wide angle performer (do you see a pattern here?).  But time wears on and development goes on, and one always ends up craving for more resolution, especially as more and more photographs just end up on a computer screen where you can endlessly zoom in to the pixel level, in so-called pixel-peeping!
And so the D700, after 4 years of faithful service, was finally let go, to make room for the "pro-sumer" D600, a step down in terms of features and body, but a major step up in terms of image quality.. I could see individual eyelashes now! But even so, along with the D700 I lost a certain love for all things Nikon.  It seemed like Nikon was now imitating Canon, but not in a good way.  Cameras were getting uglier.  Bits that were compatible before now had to be separately bought, like the battery grips for cameras.. I was seeing a re-run of the Canon debacle.. What to do, what to do..

Enter stage right FUJIFILM..  I've had a long fascination for Fuji, when they made the Hasselblad X-Pan rangefinder cameras, and more recently their digital offerings seemed to have taken the photography world by storm. Many were singing Fuji's praises, and many of these were non-traditional photographers.  Still, this was all happening from Afrar, while I was saftely coocooned in my Nikon world. But now that I felt dissatisfied and started looking around more intently, I saw a fantastic machine, and one day whilst browsing E-Bay, found something totally unexpected.  I found an adapter ring for my old Canon rangefinder lenses.  And not just any adapter.  But one for the famous Canon 50mm f0.95 dream lens.. A lens that let in 4 more times the light that the human eye can see.  A lens that Canon only made in the thousands, because of the extreme cost of production, and never went back to make.  Even in its SLR days, they only managed a 50mm f1.0 lens, notoriously difficult to focus.  So now, after 60 years that my father bought these lenses, I would be able to shoot them again.  I didn't think twice.  Fuji was for me. Or rather, I did have to think.. which body - they had 2 - the X-Pro1 and the X-E1 (the Japanese playfully refer to it as the Sexy one..).  As I wanted a camera to use my old lenses, I chose the one with the better TTL digital viewfinder. And I have to say I'm not disappointed.  Actually, that sounds pretty lame. I am ABSOLUTELY AMAZED.. I am back to manual focusing lenses, and having the time of my life, shooting in near dark, limited to 50mm and 85mm fields of view, but absolutely enjoying the limit and the wonder at each image as it pops up momentarily on the little view-finder screen.  Sure, it's not as fast as my Nikon.  Not as flexible with lenses.  Few features.  Video is difficult. Some commands are annoying and the camera so small that I inadvertantly press a button while shooting that I shouldn't.  But all that disappears once I think about the picture I want to make, or take, or catch.  I'm not so worried or enamoured by the retro styling or any of that.  What I do enjoy is the simplicity of the tool, the fact that with a minimum investment I'm using 60 year old lenses, and truly taking some amazing pictures, and ENJOYING the whole process.  I spend less time on the PC now (except in writing this blog) than before...  Hopefully a new exhibition will be in the making soon...

Some interesting sayings related to cycling... In English and Italian.

Training is like fighting with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.
Greg Henderson

Ride to where you ride.
Anonymous

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

Muhammad Ali 

Good is something you do, not something you talk about. Some medals are pinned to your soul, not your jacket.

Gino Bartali

Nel corso dell’ultimo conflitto mondiale con encomiabile spirito cristiano e preclara virtù civica, collaborò con una struttura clandestina che diede ospitalità ed assistenza ai perseguitati politici e a quanti sfuggirono ai rastrellamenti nazifascisti in Toscana, riuscendo a salvare circa 800 cittadini ebrei.
Motivazione della Medaglia d’oro al merito civile alla memoria conferita a Gino Bartali il 25 aprile 2006

Mi è capitato più volte di dirlo. Io tifoso di Coppi, mi sono innamorato di Bartali. Del Bartali, diciamo così, vecchio, che guidava la sua macchina, facendo migliaia di chilometri, e dovunque si fermasse, a Belluno o a Capo Passero, creava un magico convegno. “C’è Bartali, c’è Bartali”. E nella folla non c’erano solo uomini maturi che si erano cibati della sua epopea, ma anche ragazzini che, non so come, lo conoscevano e lo adulavano come si fa con un nonno. Dopo Sandro Pertini non c’è stato un italiano popolare a amato come Gino.  

Candido Cannavò

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

Ernest Hemingway

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. 

Elizabeth West 

Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There's something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

It never gets easier, you just go faster. 

Greg LeMond

When my legs hurt, I say: "Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do!"

Jens Voigt

  

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride my bike

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride it where I like

Queen

I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs. ~ Lance Armstrong - 2005

 

The cyclist creates everything from almost nothing, becoming the most energy-efficient of all... animals and machines and, as such, has a [genuine] ability to challenge the entire value system of a society.... The bicycle may be too cheap, too available, too healthy, too independent and too equitable for its own good. In an age of excess it is minimal and has the subversive potential to make people happy in an economy fuelled by consumer discontent.

Jim McGurn

If I had a dollar for every time somebody yelled, 'dopé, dopé,' I'd be a rich man.  

Lance Armstrong

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with? 

Lance Armstrong

Quando la strada sale non ti puoi nascondere.

Eddy Merckx

 

Il ciclismo è come l'amore: vince chi fugge. 

Ambrogio Morelli

 

La Montagna é solo per pochi. 

Marco Pantani

Tu giovane, che stai salendo la breve strada del successo, ricorda sempre una cosa sola: se lo sport non è scuola di umanità non vale nulla, e la prima lezione di questa grande scuola è quella dell’amicizia vera e leale fra te e coloro che ti aiutano. Non solo per interesse.

Gino Bartali

Il ciclismo è lo sport più popolare perché non si paga il biglietto.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

 

Corridore: non tollera ombre sulla propria ombra. 

Elias Canetti

Per un corridore il momento più esaltante non è quando si taglia il traguardo da vincitori. E’ invece quello della decisione, di quando si decide di scattare, di quando si decide di andare avanti e continuare anche se il traguardo è lontano. 

Fausto Coppi