So, I tripped, fell over and sold all my camera gear.
Well, not quite, just the Canon 5D Mark III and the lenses I had be using for several years... Just before we went into full level 4 lockdown here in New Zealand, I had finally set my sights on getting myself back into the Fuji system once again. Alos just before we went into Lockdown, Fuji announced the X-T4 with an April (lol) release. With the announced improvements coming in the X-T4 I knew there would definitely be some X-T3s coming on the market. Long story short, once we came out of lockdown, the Canon gear all sold pretty quick and I got my hands on my ideal Fuji kit moving forwards.
So! Up first we have the Fuji X-T3:
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This guy has a 26 megapixel sensor (Up from 22 in the 5D) and a bunch of “quality of life” improvements over the old Canon - most exciting of which is the tilt screen. My old destroyed tired knees will be thanking me! While the sensor is a smaller APS-C size compared to the older but bigger 35mm (“Full frame”), sensor in the 5D - I felt the ISO performance of the more modern sensor is now probably on par or better than the 2012 spec canon job. It’s a much smaller body to lug around and has some impressive video features on top of the stills.
Now onto the lenses. Before I get to these i’ll talk about the Canon lenses I sold off in favour of this kit and then rationalize my choice in Fuji equivalents.
The Canon Kit:
Sigma 24mm f/1.4 (Wide angle for Landscapes)
Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM (Standard lens for shooting products, food, knives etc)
Canon 85mm f/1.8 (portrait lens, also handy for food and knives)
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 (Bazooka for wildlife, and motorsport)
So, now the Fuji Stuff. Here we have ton factor in a 1.5x crop due to the smaller sensor size of the Fuji. This is what I mean by “equivalent” next to the focal length as it would have the same field of view as the equivalent focal length due to the crop factor.
Fuji 16mm f/1.4 WR (24mm equiv - landscapes and astro)
Fuji 35mm f/2 WR (50mm equiv - products, food knives etc)
Fuji 56mm f/1.2 (Portraits, food, knives etc)
Now you’ll notice that I no longer have a bazooka equivalent. Sadly in order to get the preferred wide and portrait lenses, I had to sacrifice having a tele zoom. That said, I don’t shoot motorsport or wildlife all that often and rarely used the 70-200 for landscapes (though it is handy for that sometimes) so I was happy to forgo having an equivalent or something in the more telephoto end of the spectrum for the time being. \
Both the 16mm and 35mm are WR lenses which means weather resistant. The body itself also being weather resistant means a bit of rain won’t mean I rush to cram all the gear back into the bag and hightailing it back to the car.
Ideally Id have something in the ultrawide category, and the 10-24mm was tempting having owned one back in the day when I had a Fuji X-T1, but the temptation of a weather resistant f/1.4 16mm was too much. Not sure i’d bother with it now, but instead i’ll add Fujis 8-16mm f/2.8 to the wishlist for ultrawide angle goodness. I wont be holding my breath though because its a $3k+ lens. The other lens on the wishlist is Fujis 50-140mm f/2.8 (a 70-200mm equiv) as a “would be nice to have’ lens (also $3k+), that said I’d be pretty happy with the 90mm f/2 (135mm equiv) instead.
I have expensive hobbies :(
