While I do own and greatly enjoy a Fuji XT-2, it's that camera's smaller cousin, the XT-20, that ends up traveling with me a lot more often. And not just on trips--pretty much everywhere. The XT-2 is a much more capable camera, but the XT-20 has more than enough power for most people's needs. It's also smaller than the XT-2 and at half the price, I'm a LOT less worried about losing, dropping, or banging it up. Plenty of in-depth reviews have been written these cameras and their features, so I'll just stick with my personal experience (as a sometimes pro, sometimes hobbyist shooter) walking around NYC this past weekend.
My Fujifilm XT-20 and 27mm "pancake" lens. Photo taken with my iPhone 6.
Mini-boat lake in Central Park.
On this short overnight stay in NYC, I chose to add another limitation: I only brought one lens. I mean, what is the point of having small, mirrorless camera if you end up dragging another ten pounds in lenses around with you?
The lens I chose is the 27mm F2.8 "pancake"--so called because it's the smallest, thinnest lens in Fuji's X-mount line. I obviously chose it because it's small and I was traveling light (duh!) but there was also another reason: I have not yet managed to get the hang of the thing. The lens receives much praise in reviews, but whenever I used it I just found myself taking it off and slapping on any number of other lenses in my bag. I figured that if I was completely forced to use it in a place where great photo opportunities are everywhere, I would either learn to love the little bugger or decide to trade it in.
The "Bubble Man" in Central Park. (Yes I gave him a few bucks :)
One factor I absolutely love about this setup is that nobody knows that you are taking professional grade photos with such a small camera. (We can debate what "professional grade" means, but the resolution, dynamic range, clarity, frame rate, and many other factors all out-perform the cell phones and most consumer cameras that everpresent nowadays.) When you see someone shooting with a big black brick of a DSLR attached to mondo-sized lens, people tend to notice and behave differently. Security may ask if you are taking "professional" photos and ask you to sign a waver. Parents with kids might look at you funny. None of these were issues with the XT-20/27mm lens setup. And yet the photos it produces are every bit as usable as those from a full-frame DSLR. It's not fair, but it is what it is.
String and vocal ensemble taking advantage of the acoustics in a Central Park underpass.
It was a nice sunny day in NYC with a few clouds here and there. Perfect weather for photos. I found myself using the bracketing setting on the camera, which I have set to take 3 frames at one stop apart. I uploaded everything to Google Photos, it finds the sets of bracketed photos and merges them together to create a single HDR composition. (Meaning "High Dynamic Range," HDR photos is a topic for a whole other post.) It's not always perfect, and you see strange artifacts here and there, but it saves hours of messing around in Photoshop, so it's hard to complain. At least you get a good idea of what the HDR version of the photo looks like and can decide if you want to spend the time to take it to the next level.
Buildings reflected into a small lake in Central Park.
All of these photos were taken last Friday-Saturday and taken as-is out of Google Photos after it did its thing to create the HDR versions. Does that still count as #NoFilter these days? You tell me.
This whole style of shooting is new to me. Usually, I'm in tight quarters indoors with low light. In those cases, I like a fast prime lens fully open and work hard to nail the focus with a very narrow depth of field. Not so with these photos. I was shooting at F8 or higher, which makes it a lot easer to keep the subject sharp. There's less separation between fore and background than I would typically like, but those are the trade offs.
I enjoyed being forced to use a different setup and shoot under different conditions that I usually do. It's easy to get into a rut and I needed a change to force me to look at things differently. I'd highly recommend doing this every once in a while. It's good for your brain.
Chandeliers in Grand Central Station
You can judge the results for yourself, but I was quite happy with the images I was able to produce with only the 27mm pancake attached to the XT-20. My big problem with the 27mm was that I had grown so accustomed to Fuji's excellent 23mm F2 lens that the slightly different--but not different enough--view kept throwing me off. I would size up a scene and lift my camera to my eye expecting a 23mm view and then having to step back to get everything into the frame. Outdoors, in the wide-open spaces of Central Park and canyon-like avenues of the big city, this was much less of a problem. In fact, I came to appreciate the little extra touch of zoom the 27mm gave me over the 23mm.
Lincoln Center.
Am I in love with this setup? Quite possibly. Yes, I did occasionally wish I could go wider or zoom in a bit, but not as often as you would think. I like working with limitations, but did not find the fixed 27mm view to be terribly limiting in the end. Attached to Fuji's XT-20, it made for a very formidable, yet perfectly innocent-looking rig.
Possibly the most photographed sculpture of all time.
What is your go-to, low-profile travel rig? Have you ever tried this setup? Let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear what you all are using!
All photos by Glenn Ricci / 