It doesn't have to be either or

Hello friends,

Welcome back to another episode of rants and GAS support 🤷. Let’s just get to it.

I’ve been thinking about shooting some digital again. Mostly to fill a few holes that I still want to experiment that film photography doesn’t provide me with.

One of them is a camera with native X-Pan crop. The X-Pan itself literally costs as much as my old ass beat up car, so that’s definitely out of the question. There’s not really any good option really but going digital. I actually found something pretty interesting, will elaborate down later I guess.

But that led me to this little conundrum: I’ve been going deep into the film photography hole again. Will this conflict with my words, my thoughts, and my “identity”?

And I guess the answer is no, duh.

It doesn’t have to be either or. I don’t have to get married to one medium. I can just shoot both.

I guess I was worried that changing my “niche” would “alienate” my “audience”. Then I realized that that’s dumb. For once, there’s like 20 of you here, and literally no one would care about my existence and what I do (no hard feelings!).

Really though, I should just do what feels right to me and my journey.

Here’s something that film photography has helped me see in myself though: I really like post processing (with a caveat)!

I started home-scanning my film lately and invert them myself with Negative Lab Pro… and I’m blown away at the flexibility I can get from my negatives. I really love fine-tuning them to my liking!

Btw, I made a new youtube video about these Wolfen film stocks, which I’ve been loving the look lately. Check it out! (or don’t, what do I care 🥲)

I think it’s just that the overwhelming lack of directions that came from a RAW file that puts me off. I get pulled in every way possible, and it crippled my creativity.

Creativity really do come from limitations! Without limitations, the brain gets overwhelmed with choices. I guess that’s what Fujifilm sims did for me, even though I kinda grew apart from the look. I seemed to get much better results with them.

Oh and another thing is, I really should stop pretending that I can make digital look like film. Especially now that I’m shooting film again.

Attempts at mimicking film like adding grain and halations and such just look kinda cheap to me now.

I do love the look of film, and I’ll shoot film to get that look. If and when I shoot digital again, I want those to have their own look as well. Digital can definitely look nice, and I think the X-Pan look should work much better with digital.

So here’s the brass tacks of my plan.

What I want

I want something with a built in X-Pan crop, preferably with some good color profiles, which I’ll mostly base my edits from. Good low light too (most of the time I just can’t shoot anything handheld low light with film really). And the more lightweight and pocketable the better.

I’ve been cropping a lot to 16:9 lately too with my film photos. Seemed like I’m very much drawn to the wide aspect ratio looks.

Surely Fujifilm could have added the ratio to their APS-C cameras, especially the 40mps ones like the X-T50 I used to have. But alas, they seemed to have abandoned doing firmware updates that actually add things to your stuff too.

Side rant: it kinda feels like Fujifilm is just catering to making new shiny things that plays well with social media hype these days. Like the film sims dial. Like the X-Half. I have shot film and I have shot Fujifilm, and I found that thing just way too tiktoky gimmicky all style no substance. It’s that faux film winder that irks me the most. It doesn’t actually wind anything mechanically, so it’s literally has no mechanical goodness feeling from film cameras and is just a toy. For like 900 bucks, all you really get in the end is a tiny 1 inch sensor plastic camera that doesn’t shoot RAW. I guess that’s how much (or how little) Fujifilm thinks of kids these days. 

I guess that really reinforce the importance of not basing your whole identify on anything, definitely not a company. And I speak that as someone who liked and used Fujifilm cameras for a hot minute. It definitely feels like a “cult” sometimes.

Anyways, here’s the camera I’m planning to get. It’s just happened to be so perfect for what I have in mind that my GAS are burning so damn hard. 

Promise you won’t tell anyone 😏. I definitely have a lot of reach and I don’t want to inflate the price before I can get one 😏. Oh and it’s the price of an X-Half 😏.

Here, let me sell you the idea some more for the sake of it: A large sensor camera, with variable in camera aspect ratios, built in digital crop, beautiful in camera color profiles, great low light performance, albeit with no IBIS. And it’s oh so portable and maybe pocketable even. It’s basically a Fuji GFX 100RF if you really think about it, but like 1/5th the cost 😏.

Here goes: The Sigma FP/FP L

Yup, Sigma made a Sigma BF once already 6 years ago, with better controls, optional evf, just without the whole aluminum body thing. And it’s very cheap these days on used markets.

It’s crazy how many of the boxes I want are checked with this little thing. And it’s not even expensive either. Cheaper than the Fuji stuff I used to own even ($1500 X-T50 yep yep). Check out local marketplaces and used cameras seller though. It’s most likely way more expensive on amazon. Definitely click my affiliate links though 😏.

I’m seeing the fp selling for like $700-800 on the used market right now. I plan to get the Brightin Star 28mm f2.8 pancake for like $250 to go with it (used too, of course. I never buy new things anymore). Maybe I’ll spring for the fpL, aka the 60 megapixels version, and then it’s really a full frame GFX100RF alternative in a package that fits in my pocket.

I’m planning to just adapt vintage lenses to this camera for the most part anyways, so the lack of lenses doesn’t bother me at all. I have a full set of Canon FDs to adapt over here 😏. I really like the smaller M mount lenses though. Maybe I’ll just get a Voigtlander 21mm and a 50mm, and these 3 lenses would be basically the “XPan trio focal lengths” that were made for the XPan. And then who knows maybe one day when a bag of money falls on my head I’ll get a film or digital M mount body to go with it 🤤 (probably film though, this sigma camera is basically a digital M mount camera anyways).

The last few months I’ve also realized that lenses really do contribute a “hidden” something to the photos. In the Fuji system I always seemed to like the photos I shoot with the 35mm f1.4 the most. Sometimes it kinda felt like to me that modern lenses have traded “good looking photos” for “clinical perfection”.

Oh and the color profiles on the Sigma FP are definitely top tier. I’d say they are even ahead of the Fujifilm offerings, and I speak that as someone who love Fujifilm film sims.

The best way I can describe the look of color profiles of the Sigma FP from what I’ve seen is… It’s very “mature” looking. It’s nice, but understated and classy. Really displays what modern digital photography is capable of. Here’s a look archive I found from a fellow photographer (which makes and uses Fuji and Ricoh film sims too, so I guess he’s quite a bit ahead of me 🤷). Powder Blue is the best “cold” look on digital I’ve seen so far, as it seemed very easy to make a “colder look” look ugly and cheap for some reasons. Meanwhile if you just add a bit of warmth to your photos, it would look like a million bucks pretty often.

There, I just shared by biggest photography life hack 😏

Some of you do know that I love Classic Negative and Eterna a lot. Eterna is low key the best profile Fujifilm has to offer, imho. But the other stuff was kinda hit and miss for me. In comparison I think Sigma has pretty much nailed all the color profiles built in their cameras.

I’ve learn that you can definitely do everything jpeg on this camera. There’s a ton of options (contrast curves, profile strength, sharpness, etc). But I plan to just shoot RAW with the color profiles applied, and then I can apply the matching profile in post and edit them further, as I’ve talked about earlier about how I like editing my photos. 

I think working with the confines of the colors that a camera gives me is a good compromise for my self-diagnosed ADHD ass brain, so… yeah.

I’m hunting on a good deal for the camera on my marketplace, and then maybe I’ll pounce on one and we’ll see what happens.

Anyways, that’s all for me today. Thank you for reading through my rants and my GAS episode 🤷

Until next time,
Peter.

As always, subscribe to the newsletter to see more mediocre photos. Check out my Instagram/Threads if you’re into that shit.

Please share this newsletter to your photography friends if you like what I have to say. I wouldn’t know what that feels like because I don’t have friends, but maybe you do 🤷.

I hope I can grow this thing, whatever this is, to something more sustainable, so I can have more time doing more art 🤷. Especially now that I’m back to the path of lighting money up on fire anytime I fire a shot 🙏👌.

Disclaimer: Some links in the post might be affiliate links. You know the drill. Oh and please click them links. Costs you nothing and I’ll make a few cents here and there when you purchase anything from Amazon 🥲 .