Why everyone needs a camera, and which one you should get. | Fuji X100V

Apr 18

Stepping in to the role of family photographer can feel overwhelming. It’s not always easy taking pictures of people who are self conscious, don’t like social media, or just plain don’t want to be photographed. I would encourage you to take the pictures anyway.

My family has learned a lot since January when Kyle had the accident that left him paralyzed, and now with my Dad and Step-Grandpa’s passing, but the primary lesson is that life is short and precious. All that I have to look back on now are the images that I captured while they were earthside, and man am I glad that I did.

Recently was Easter, and I brought my Fujifilm X100V to our annual family Easter gathering. We do a competition where everyone dyes a dozen eggs and cracks them against our competitors eggs until there’s one egg left standing. It’s a major family tradition for us, there’s a trophy and everything!

I love the Fuji X100V because it’s small, it has digital zoom, on camera flash and built in presets to make my photos look stylized without having to even touch Lightroom. This camera also has a built in ND filter if it’s too bright which is amazing! I frequently bring my iPhone > SD card reader so people can grab the photos right off the card after the event. I carry this thing easily in my bag or backpack and it’s just one more step to pull it out as opposed to my phone.

I shoot in full manual mode, meaning I control the shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings all separately, but you could choose to shoot in aperture priority mode if you’re a novice user.

Here’s a cheat sheet for manual settings if you want to get started on your DSLR or jump in to the world of Fujifilm.

ISO: 100 in broad daylight. The higher you go, the brighter your image will be, but it will also make it grainy once you get up past the 3200-6400 mark.

Shutter Speed: 1/160 is as low as you want to go to make sure it’s not blurry. If you’re out in the sun and your aperture is low, this can go as high as it needs to. The x100V will mix out around 1/2000 so you may need to raise your aperture some to compensate.

Aperture: The lower this number is, the more background blur you will get. The X100V has a minimum aperture of F/2, which is amazing for such a compact, fixed lens camera! The higher you go, the darker it will get as well as the more will be in focus.

Here are a few of my images from yesterday.