I’ve been reading the early reviews on the revolutionary Fujifilm GFX 100 camera body, one of the most spectacularly capable and forward-looking products ever released since the dawn of digital photography roughly 20 years ago.  It has caused me to reflect back on my journey as a longtime Fujifilm shooter.

I remember the beginnings, which were oh, so different.

As I have noted before, on this site, I have a strange penchant for underdogs.  I must unconsciously seek out quirky and unconventional products, that are outside the mainstream.  In the 1990s, when everybody else was buying BMWs, I bought a Subaru SVX, a strange looking but lovely four-wheel-drive coupe.  My newest barbecue pit, a Hasty Bake, a charcoal cooker that is been made in roughly the same form since 1947.  I persist in using my Gravely G Series garden tractor, a stout design from the 1960s, rather than a more modern design from John Deere, or Kubota. 

And I’m a Fujifilm shooter.

I first became interested in the brand round about 2002.  At that point as a former film shooter I had been dabbling with a variety of point and shoot digital cameras, finally graduating to the Olympus E10/20 series. These sort of looked like digital SLRs, but had a fixed lens and a smaller sensor.  As I had some Nikon lenses, I was looking for a body with the Nikon F mount.  In my price range, that meant either a Nikon D100 or this weird camera from Fujifilm, called the S2 pro. 

The Nikon and the Fujifilm were based on a Nikon film body, the N 80 prosumer SLR. The D 100 was a fairly well-integrated product much like modern designs with good performance for the times. The Fujifilm, however, was a weird sort of hybrid, which many reviewers referred to as a “frankencamera” as the digital side of the camera, was obviously grafted to the mechanical parts in a much cruder way.

This manifested for instance, in the need for two types of batteries, a CR 44 to power the body functions, and two AA batteries, for the digital side.  The camera was slower and did not focus as well as its Nikon competition.  And it used weird memory cards.  But much like today, it offered an unusual sensor, with a diagonal rather than a square grid pattern, then offered higher resolution and better low light performance than the conventional sensor in the Nikon.  Plus, even then, Fujifilm color science was better.

Needless to say, given my proclivities, I bought the Fujifilm.  And I have never looked back.

I followed that camera with the S3 Pro and S5 pro bodies.  In each case, the integration and sensors of the camera improved, but the performance was always a step behind the mainstream SLRs, in terms of functionality and at times, resolution. 

Eventually, when Fujifilm stopped making DSLRs, I drifted over to Nikon digital bodies.  I still have a D800E that serves me well when I need it.

Then, in 2011, I acquired my first X100.  Once again, it had wonderful picture quality, but now a beautiful design, and a gorgeous lens, but was slow, with unreliable autofocus.  This remained a pattern for many years with subsequent camera offerings including the X Pro 1 and XT1, both of which did not perform at a level of their immediate competition.  Happily, these cameras were improved significantly over time due to Fujifilm’s continual firmware updates.

But over time, this penchant for releasing immature cameras is changing.  I think it’s clear that the last round of product offerings, the XT3 in particular, for the first time are seen as a highly competitive, if not clearly superior products compared for instance, to the Sony, and Nikon equivalents.

Enter the GTX 100.  Now we have a product that literally leapfrogs, over its competition, offering huge resolution (100 megapixels), in a beautifully designed professional level body.  It is the first medium format camera with image stabilization, as well as video features that rival anything in this format.  Now the body is quite expensive, too rich for my blood, at $10,000. However its nearest competitor, the Hasselblad H6D-100c is $28,000 for essentially the same (though non-stabilized) sensor without talking about very expensive Hasselblad glass.   The Fujifilm GFX lens line is also very high quality but proportionally priced.  One can buy a very nice Fujifilm GFX 100 body and lens collection for significantly less than the price of the Hasselblad body alone.

It’s so much fun, as one who remembers the bad old days of weird Fujifilm cameras, to see the brand emerge as a major mainstream force in the industry.

I think we’re finally done with “frankencameras”.

In my previous article: The Bleak Times of Year , I attempted to discuss the difficulties of shooting landscapes in our Appalachian late fall season.

 I neglected to discuss another strategy to obtain interesting images (though I  did, I believe, post an example of this strategy as the article’s original header image).

As it fall drifts into winter, the air gets colder… and drier, as the atmosphere at lower temperatures cannot hold as much moisture as when it is warmer. 

The “crisp fall air” has a striking effect at dawn at dusk, producing colorful, vivid sunrises and sunsets. Given the shorter daylight hours, they tend to occur at times more convenient for us sometimes lazy photographers . Add ice, or fall snow, and the effect is even more striking.

 I t goes without saying that you need to steady the camera in the kind of low light situations presented at the very beginning, and end of the day. Tripods are the usual answer, but I have used diverse solutions.

One morning on the Monday of after American Thanksgiving  I sat in my tree stand in the crisp pre-dawn stillness, waiting for the sun to rise and hopefully, a trophy buck to wander within rifle range. It was very cold that morning, and I remember hoping that the small amount of coffee in my thermos would be enough to keep me warm until the our break at lunch.

There are many different kinds of trophies however: I watched as the skies slowly brightened over a nearby ridge: the clear air and complex cloud patterns conspired to create a spectacular display that caused even the most ardent hunters in our group to lose focus on the task at hand, and gaze at the sky. 

In those days good gear took up a lot of space in my backpack. I had only a very modest Nikon point-and shoot camera with me which I sat on the top rail of my hunting stand,  and released the shutter with the self timer, to avoid camera shake.

Shooting horizon and sky in the low light period between day and night, you need to focus carefully, mindful of the fine filigree of leafless branches often silhouetted against the sky. You need to keep the ISOs low to avoid noise in the shadows.

This gives you something to do for the short run.

Soon the holiday decorations will be put out, the winter snow will fall, and the world will become visually interesting again.

Until then, if the earth’s scenery is dull and lifeless, shoot the sky.