The Nikon Zf firmware 2.0 update is quite literally why I bought my own Nikon Zf. If you’re unfamiliar, firmware 2.0 is what introduced what we now refer to as Nikon recipes. This opened up the camera to essentially be able to create imaging profiles similar to Fujifilm’s film simulations or recipes.

Film grain was the last separation between Fujifilm’s offering and what Nikon Recipes were capable of. In this article we’ll cover how the film grain is implemented, if it works with recipes or not, how pleasing the results are, and why I think it might be better than Fujifilm.

For most of my photography career, I’ve only ever owned between 16-35mm and 70-200+mm. In the past year I’ve been dabbling in the world of more portable cameras utilizing prime lenses, typically between 35mm and 40mm. When I decided to go on a photography trip with only a single camera and lens, I really wanted a bit more versatility than the Fujifilm XF 23mm f2.8 that came with the Fujifilm X-E5. Thus I hesitantly picked up the Fujifilm XF 16-55mm f2.8 II, my first ever mid-range lens for photography. These are my first impressions with the lens.

Photography isn’t really known for being an inexpensive hobby or profession. Sometimes that can be a huge barrier to entry for anyone looking at picking up their first camera to start learning photography. As of writing this, the least expensive new camera and lens (that’s been released in the last 5 years) is the Canon R100 which costs over $600. While that camera is mostly capable, we can stretch a lot less money for even better results.

As technology has improved over the years, it means there are actually quite a lot of very sufficient cameras out there collecting dust. Everyone has moved to mirrorless technology which leaves used DSLR cameras and lenses sinking lower and lower in price. Simply put: there has never been a cheaper and easier time to start photography.

Every year I take the new iPhone Pro model and compare it to my Canon R5. This is my 5th year in a row conducting this comparison, and over those years I’ve been extremely impressed and sometimes disappointed. This year I was hopeful to see an improvement on the new Telephoto lens but as you’ll see from the images, it is not all about a stat sheet. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves and also you can download a few of the raws I’ve taken this year to explore them yourself.

I was lucky enough to get delivery of my Fujifilm X-E5 plus the Fujifilm XF 23mm f2.8 right as it came out thanks to B&H. I’ve had a chance to spend a full day using the camera, thus giving me a really good first impressions of the camera. Normally I wouldn’t talk about a camera after only using it for a single day but considering how similar (nearly identical) this camera is to the Fujifilm X100VI, I feel more at ease giving you my thoughts. To summarize: I really wanted to love this camera but there are a few design choices that leave me questioning if they actually used the camera before manufacturing it.