One Year With a Delightful New Friend

So here we are in 2024 - almost half way through the month. It’s pretty mad how fast the time goes! 

 I hope everyone reading this had a great new year celebrating the day we can finally get our shiny new diaries out of the cupboard. 

 At the beginning of 2023, with two trips abroad booked in the diary, I started to question what camera I would take on these trips. I don’t know a single photographer that has just the one camera that they shoot with. I have my chosen body and its back-ups for commmercial work and a few for the hobby side, two of which I’ve had passed down to me from older family members. 

I was looking for a fixed lens camera, one where I didn’t have to think about what lenses to bring with me, and, most importantly, the weight of it all. I think any photographer can agree that when you are working with muliple lenses all day and you’re going on holiday, you just want to switch off. The thought of carrying the weight around all day for a week or so isn’t particularly appealing.

One year ago today, I welcomed the Fujifilm X100V into my camera family.

Soon after obtaining it, I only then realised that it was THE viral camera to own in 2023. 

Genuinely, I did not have a clue that this camera was so sought after only after. I only discovered this after I started to look through the hashtag for it on instagram and TikTok. Fujifilm had stopped production of the camera because they could not keep up with demand. That is incredible. It’s insane to think it’s still in high demand to this day and they’re still only able to trickle out bare minimal stock for their suppliers. I can totally see why though. 

When I went to Tokyo, Japan, in 2017, I most certainly took my DLSR and three lenses! That was my top bucket-list location to visit and I was not going to fly all of that way for the first time without my beloved kit.  

But since that trip, the desire to carry a heavy body and a few heavy lenses around has become less and less, and in the various trips I managed to do between then and 2023 (with pretty much nothing during the Covid years!), I found myself carrying the camera around in my bag but not taking it out much. Sometimes I left it behind at the accommodation because my shoulders were sore. It started to feel like a bit of a chore and that really did upset me. 

The DSLR had entered the tool phase in its partnership with me. It was my work tool, not the pro and hobby buddy it once was before working on my business full-time. 

The X100V was brought to my attention somehow in late 2021. Reading of a compact, fixed lens camera that has the lovely nostalgic feel of a 1950s film camera (I adore film photography) shooting for pure joy and fun at its core, and one that has made people discover the wonderful world of photography, and may others to fall back in love with the medium all over again. That was an impressive statement and one that had me hooked on excitement for. I didn’t realise the camera had launched a few years prior to my discovery. With the price tag it is still strongly holding on to, you really would think that this was a brand new launch. I bought mine second hand, from a man who had only bought it to use at his daughter’s wedding, hardly used, 300 shots on the shutter count and a load of accessories with it at a bargain price. 

I can 100% happily say that this camera was the best thing that came into my personal life in 2023, it is BEAUTIFUL. 

There are no photos on my website currently that were shot with it, but there are plenty over on my personal photography Instagram @KatieHoweySnaps if you fancied seeing what I get up to with this little, beautiful and wonderful, companion.