At the start of this year (2015) I spent a few weeks overseas in Southeast Asia. I was moist with anticipation at the thought of shooting some pictures in the jungles of Borneo. The only issue I had was that I couldn't decide what of my heavy canon gear to take.

Let me lay it out for you..

• 5D Mkiii camera body: Almost 1kg for the body only + battery
• 24-70 2.8L ii lens: Approx. 800 grams
• 17-40 4L lens: Approx. 500 grams

That's well over two kilograms, before even taking into consideration spare batteries, chargers, camera bags, lens hoods, etc. 

Aside from bulk of all this gear taking up valuable suitcase space, it is really heavy. To have to carry that stuff on my shoulders walking through a jungle or down Orchard street in Singapore would really kill my vibe.  My total luggage for the 3 weeks was <10kg so 2-3kg on camera gear is ridiculous.

The decision was simple - I need a smaller camera. Classic me, if there's no solution buy something else. To be fair, I'd been looking at the X100s for ages and they'd recently dropped a lot in price so it was a good (enough) excuse.

My first thoughts on the camera.

When I first picked it up, I was in love with the way it looked but not the way it handled. The rangefinder style eyepiece is not quite accurate to the picture that you think you are taking, but you quickly learn to use the compensation or otherwise turn on the EVF. Also the grip did feel really strange in my (relatively speaking) big hands. Being an SLR shooter I did find the manual controls strange at first but after about a week I could fiddle with it comfortably without asking the google machine. 

The sickest things about it.

• Electronic view finder is seriously great. Especially for manual focus. I'm a dodo when it comes to manually focusing a DSLR, I'm not sure why but I can just never get it quite right. The EVF int he fuji though will pop up this super zoomed portion of your frame as soon as you grab the focus ring in manual mode. You will nail it every time even if your brain is out of focus.
• Lowlight performance for a crop sensor is outstanding. I've shot it all the way up to 6400 and for what it is, it's excellent. There is noticeable grain in the images but I actually find it quite charming. With a little bit of post production it's really pleasing to the eye.
• Battery life is by no means awesome but definitely way better than I expected. Over the course of a few of days in Kalimantan I shot a whole card worth of RAW images (~500) on one battery. I only own one spare and I've never felt I needed another. 
• My absolute favourite thing about it the x100s is that is has a leaf shutter that technically will sync a flash at any speed. Not only that, it has a 3 stop ND filter built in that you can turn on and off. If you're not into strobes, what all this basically means is that your hotshoe canon or nikon speedlight is effectively as powerful as a much bigger studio light. You can shoot in hard sunlight with your small flash and get a large degree of control. 

• I've noticed that people want to be in photos where they would shy away from an SLR. Being the only photographer amongst my friends, they aren't used to being in front of the lens. The 5D tends to frighten people where as I find my friends running over to be in photos. It's more of a "I can't wait to see these photos on facebook later" as opposed to "I'm not a model, I don't want my photo taken".
• Aesthetics: damn this thing is beautiful. People who know nothing about fuji or photography in general think it's a 35mm camera. I like that about it. To the outside world it makes it seem less somewhat threatening. As if they think"this person, is making something beautiful" instead of "this guy is going home to masturbate over people he's stalked with his long lens". Which leads me to another point..
• It can be used like a point and shoot which I adore. It's nice to have something with a real piece of glass and nice sensor to just take snapshots. Sipping a few beers with your mates, and passing the camera around is something that just wouldn't happen with the bigger bodies. You can hand it to someone else, and they can take a great picture for you. This is a huge bonus if you're travelling alone. As a DSLR user you will more than likely have your custom functions set to your needs. That's awesome and I'm the same but it does make it really hard for someone else to use even if they are familiar with the hardware.

The Fuji however is pretty easy to use for the dumbest of dumb idiots. The autofocus is accurate 90% of the time and the metering system works great too. Of course you can customise it and shoot manual like most of us will but the 'A' setting with the exposure compensation works pretty damn well.

Drawbacks.

• The focus is not lightning fast like the 5d3 but it doesn't have to be. For what it does it's fantastic. Life pictures. Social documentation, people, lifestyle stuff; excellent. Landscapes, less good but not too bad either. 
• The focal length is fixed, Duh. But what I mean is that the lens is not interchangeable. It's 23mm f/2 which makes it a 35mm equivalent sort of deal.  Don't get me wrong, the lens is great even the focal length is tops. Not too wide, not too long. But it still is a bit limiting. It's a good limitation though, come to think of it. If Fuji had a set of beautiful lenses for the x100 series, I would want them all and probably have to eat dogfood for a while. IF there was a true wide angle for this camera, I would own it for sure and probably shoot all of my band promos on it. 

Dumb things I've done

Probably the best way I learn is to just do it. You jump in, make mistakes and work it out as you go. The downside is you do a lot of dumb things. The worst of these was shooting almost my entire three week holiday with the built in ND filter activated. It's not a huge issue, the low light performance is pretty good and I like to think I'm competent enough to work around that but damn, what a balls up. I was constantly wondering why the settings were so much different to what I would normally shoot with my SLR. 500-1000 iso in broad daylight is not normal, but I was still getting to know the camera and too stupid to realise.

In the end I was really happy with the photos regardless and a little more grain isn't going to make or break the pictures. Similar to the ND filter I did find myself accidentally leaving manual focus on or shooting in macro mode accidentally.

It's purely because i've never been a software guy. I've always liked to change settings with a dial or button often with my eye to the eyepiece. Anyway you live and you learn and I reckon I've packed about 6 months worth of shooting and mistakes into my first few weeks so it's become almost second nature to me now.

Summary

The x100s is a killerrrrrrrrr piece of tech. If you're like me and enjoy using something smaller in a point and shoot sort of way, you'll dig it too. That's what it basically is, far from a pro body it's a beefy point and shoot that works well in the dark and gives you lovely Raw files to edit.

Anytime that I'm not working, you will find this guy over my left shoulder.