Fujifilm X-T5
A brief review of the X-T5 and 56mm f/1.2
Brian Cohoe
4/26/20262 min read
I understand the cult following of the Fujifilm series. I had been seeing people rant and rave about them for years. Been fooled by people who posted pictures they took online and I immediately thought it was film. And the form factor is appealing. It is so nice to have powerful camera than can fit into my hoodie pocket and doesn't weigh a tonne.
First off, the film emulation. I have never liked OEM creative options from Nikon and Sony. It's why I shoot RAW, so I can edit them after the fact. But Fujifilm recipes and simulations, when you find one you like out of the camera, they are so good. I ended up using Vivid Velvia for the time that I had borrowed it. With Sony - which I am most familiar with in creative modes - if you shoot in a creative mode in RAW, it still is a plain raw file under the creative mode. So when you open it in your editing software of choice, the creative mode can fall off. That doesn't happen with Fuji's RAF files. The film recipe you use is the one you get, JPG or RAW. There is more detail saved in the RAW, so I still do recommend shooting that way so if you need to do edits, you can.
This is more of a gripe with mirrorless cameras as a whole over Fuji; however, they are an offender of having a long delay from playback to shooting. I go to use the viewfinder after I have been pixel peeping, I have to double press the shutter before I get to live view. Coming from DSLRs, where you are already looking straight down the lens, you can go right to firing with no delay. The X-T5 menu, while well laid out, is painful to go through. When in a submenu, if you scroll up past 1, you circle to the next main menu at the bottom. I don't know how many times I found myself in the wrong menu, expecting to loop, and didn't.
While I was in those menus, I was looking to find priority modes. While I am sure it is obvious now, it wasn't when I had the camera in hand. To pick priority modes, say shutter priority, the lens has to be in 'A', and the ISO on 'A' as well. Same for aperture, have the lens set to whatever you want with the physical control ring (more of this please, I love having a physical aperture ring on the lens), shutter speed on 'A'. It is intuitive once I figured that out and I do like how you don't have to change the priorities in a menu.
All in all... if I were in the market for a new camera, I'd put up with the weird menu cycling and slow response to start shooting to have great colours right out of the compact camera. It has two SD cards in a world where most dual card cameras today require two different formats (Nikon ZF has a micro-SD and full size SD). The dials are well laid out - the locking dials are amazing - and it fits dang near anywhere. Plus the wonderful community of people who make and share film recipes. Maybe one day, I will switch.