June 17th, 2024

two cameras

I took the Ricoh GR IIIX and the FujiFilm X-T5 with the XF33/F1.4 with me to San Francisco. I meant to do most of my shooting with the Ricoh, and the Fuji was along for insurance and last-minute changes of plan that might make it a better pick.

Monochrome .. a person in silhouette makes their way along an internal balcony in a hotel

As much as I wanted to, I really didn't like shooting with the Ricoh. Lining up a shot through a touch screen, especially in bright light, isn't ideal. I liked some pictures I got, but I often struggled to make out the display, and because I wear polarized sunglasses I found that tilting the camera to portrait orientation meant the rear LCD would black out.

Monochrome mist and clouds and shadows on skyscrapers.

I thought the Ricoh would be easier for unobtrusive street shooting: It is super small, and with snap focus you don't lose any time to lining up autofocus, but in practice ... well ... I don't have enough practice with the feature. So I ended up holding a camera about a foot in front of my face for longer than I'd like to tap the focus area and get the shot.

Young parents struggle with a young child taking his time to settle into his bicycle seat.

I have a lot more practice with a viewfinder, so shooting felt more fluid and it felt more discrete because I felt like I was moving faster. At the same time, the 33mm/f1.4 is a chunky lens, so the X-T5 felt like a pretty big rig to have along, especially as we took long walks around wherever we were, through neighborhoods we didn't know very well.

A young girl in pink walks into a hair salon on a Chinatown street.

With the X-T5, I ended up missing fewer shots, shot with more confidence, and felt a little more discrete. If I could have changed one thing, it would have been to bring along the 27mm/F2.8 pancake just to help the camera rest flat against my side instead of having that 6" of lens and hood poking out of the body and sticking out from my side as we walked around.

Well, if I could have changed one thing about the cameras I actually had with me, it probably would have been to leave those two at home and just bring along my X100V, which is simply my favorite travel camera and would have done everything except provide IBIS for better night time shooting. The Ricoh isn't so much smaller that it's worth the ergonomic tradeoffs to me.

I really cannot wait to get that X100VI, though.