Quick short thoughts from my hammock

It was love at first sight: finally, the gods colluded together to create the perfect camera body! They named it X-H1. It had everything for it: 4k video, decadent slow-mo, fantastic sensor, great autofocus, the best shutter sound on the market (under $2k), a great ergonomics and speed. I praised this camera for it’s awesomeness: and hear me out, it is still a tremendous value and package that will cover 99% of most people’s need.

But. For the 1%… for the one that wants THE BEST and nothing less, the X-H1 isn’t “it”. The Canon 1Dx Mark II would sadly be it (Nikon D5 doesn’t offer 120p slowmo). Yes, you get what you pay for I suppose. Make no mistake: I am not fan of spending money on gear…I love bargain and good value items. The X-H1 seemed like a helluva deal.

I could buy 4 more bodies for the price of ONE 1Dx mark ii. Anyway. Pardon the format of this review: I am writing it on my iPad, comfortably settled into a hammock near the beach, still slightly hungover from yesterday’s party with local Brazilians people. I am not too far away from Fortaleza, right at the North East point of Brazil.

I left Montreal a month ago to keep travelling around the world with my Jeep. I decided to explore the rest of Brazil this time.

I got three cameras with me: the Fuji X-H1, the XE1 and the Canon 1D Mark IV. In hindsight, I should have also got a 1Dx but oh well.

The Canon 1D is 10 years old, yet it feels like new. The X-H1 is three months old: it won’t survive another decade, that’s for sure.

Some quick thoughts:

• I never had so much dust on a sensor! The X-H1 really is a dust magnet. Unreal.

• The knob to change drive mode is super hard to turn now. Unsure why.

• The camera now appears to stay awake even when the bluetooth is off. It’s like it tries to send photos but… the auto-transfer is turned off

• the eye-cup more or less degraded to the point of needing replacement. I simply removed it.

Now, it is all minor, except that Fuji claimed to target professionals with the X-H1. It is supposed to be the flagship of their line-up. Will it survive French Guiana and Suriname? Africa? Mongolia? Time will tell.

Fuji launched this product at around $3k CAD in 2018. It does not match Nikon D300/D8xx/D500 build quality. It is vastly superior to the D750, D600, D5xxx, D3xxx, maybe somewhere between a D7500 and D500 quality.

No, I don’t feel confident in the Fuji anymore, unlike my good old x-pro2. It might not be the rugged camera for professionals that Fuji intended to target, but maybe more for prosumers. Which is fine. It’s too bad that Fuji killed their X-Pro series with the X-Pro3: it would have been the ultimate travel camera, if it wouldn’t have been for a terrible screen design (cannot be used to vlog). The X-Pro2 was more rugged than the X-H1.

I will give more updates as the trip goes on!

JP

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