If you want to bore the hell out of me, talk to me about gear. I’m definitely not a camera geek. There are a lot of people who spent a lot of time comparing specifications, reading camera reviews, zooming in to the pixel. Lots of people spend more time on the gear than on taking pictures. Call me old-fashioned or mad, but when I bought my camera with lenses, I went up to my local retailer, told him what I need the camera for and that I would like to have the best I could possibly afford. I got a Canon 7D with three brilliant lenses. When I decided to become a wedding photographer, I upgraded the camera to a 5D, but I never regretted handling it this way. No tedious study of camera reviews, etc. Less lifetime wasted.

I always have a camera with me. Since I was tired of carrying the heavy dslr equipment with me I decided that I need to get a more lightweight and smaller camera for my private pictures. I went for a Fujifilm X-20. It is beautiful. I just love the retro design of the Fujifilm X series. Yes, I am a visual person. But don’t blame a photographer for loving beauty. The headings of the camera reviews about the X series and the X-20 were promising (sorry, I usually don’t get any further than this). Of course, the X-20 is not a full substitution for my dslr, but I wanted to get something lightweight and small for a price I could afford. After all, it is pure luxury to get a new camera when you already got quite amazing equipment. So on my first holidays after I bought the X-20 I left my dslr at home and couldn’t have been happier. No bulky bag with heavy camera body and lenses hurting my back.

I believe that the more restricted you are with your equipment the more creative you get to try to overcome the restrictions and get decent pictures. The X-20 is a great camera, but it’s a compact with a limited zoom range and not comparable to my Canon EOS 5D. But the pictures I shot with the X-20 were the most creative I ever came up with so far and it is so much fun. Before I got the X-20 I hardly ever shot wide-angle pictures. Sometimes you are stuck in established patterns. So when I got the X-20 I experimented with its features. The X-20 has an ultra-macro mode in the wide-angle range. It was lots of fun and the quality regarding sharpness, colours and contrast is amazing. This camera is more or less the reason my pictures went viral a few months ago. My series “Nice Nosing You” was entirely shot with the X-20. This series got featured in magazines, newspapers and online worldwide, and even on “Good Morning America”.

AllGoodDogs-NiceNosingYou

I decided to upgrade, so I got myself a Fujifilm X-M1. I have it with me all the time. This way the series “Urban Dogscapes” came to live. I even use it in the studio now, as the sharpness in combination with the lenses (Fujinon 18mm 2.0, Fujinon 35mm 1.4 and Fujinon 55-200mm 3.5-4.8) is phantastic.

UrbanDogscapes-TheGuardian

For next year I plan to upgrade to a Fujifilm X-T1 (or any successor of the X-Pro 1, let’s see), which will then be used as my second camera at weddings and my backup camera for all client sessions.

Next month I will go on holidays and I will only take the X-M1 with me. It will be such a relief to have only a tiny camera bag with me.

It’s just a shame Fujifilm does a great job giving each and every camera features which make it unique. So you want them all and when you upgrade you have to keep all cameras, as the X-20 got the ultra-macro mode and the X-M1 got that great display, etc.

The X-20 and the X-M1 were a major boost in my photography and creativity, so you might officially call me a camera geek now; well, at least I’m a huge Fujifilm X fan now.

But here are some more examples of pictures I shot with my Fujifilm Xs:

WinterIsComing

EastOfKansas

AllGoodDogs-IsSheStillSleep

HerDistrict Nose ThePetMePaw