**A Review of the Fujifilm X-III: A Camera that Delivers**

As a photographer, I've been on the lookout for a camera that offers exceptional image quality and access to a wide range of lenses without breaking the bank. The Fujifilm X-III has been a game-changer in my search, offering a compact design that still packs a punch when it comes to image quality. In this article, I'll delve into my experience with the X-III, highlighting both its strengths and weaknesses.

**Toggling Between Shutter Modes**

One of my favorite features on the X-III is its ability to toggle between using the mechanical shutter or an electronic shutter. This feature has been a lifesaver when trying to minimize camera noise, which can be a major issue in certain situations. By switching to the electronic shutter, I'm able to capture images without any audible noise, making it ideal for situations where discretion is key. The X-III also allows me to quickly switch between these modes, thanks to its intuitive interface.

**Minor Complaints**

While the X-III has far exceeded my expectations in many areas, there are a few minor complaints that I'd like to address. One of these is the swipe function on the touchscreen, which can be confusing and often leads to unexpected behavior. For example, when I'm trying to access certain menu options, swiping from the right tends to bring up the autofocus menu instead. While it's easy enough to turn this feature off, it's still a bit frustrating.

**The Grip: A Necessary Upgrade**

Another minor complaint is the optional grip, which provides additional stability and support for the camera. I highly recommend using the grip, especially if you plan on using the camera for extended periods or shooting in harsh conditions. However, the reason I didn't buy it is because Fuji chose not to include it as a standard feature in the camera's design. This means that if you don't have the grip, your tripod attachment will not be centered under the lens, which can make panoramic shots and stitching more difficult.

**A Cool Feature: ARCA Swiss Compatibility**

One of the features I was excited about when I first started using the X-III is its compatibility with ARCA Swiss tripod mounts. The grip has these clever little wings that hang out and allow you to attach an ARCA Swiss mount, which is a game-changer for photographers who want to use this type of mount.

**A Different Approach to Camera Design**

One thing that sets the X-III apart from other camera manufacturers is its approach to design. Rather than creating flagship models with all the bells and whistles, Fujifilm has taken a different approach by offering a range of designs at different price points. This means that photographers can choose a model that meets their needs and budget, rather than feeling forced into buying a more expensive flagship model. I think this is a refreshing change in the camera industry, and it's definitely made the X-III an attractive option for me.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I've been thoroughly impressed with the Fujifilm X-III, and I think it's an incredible value for the money. The image quality is exceptional, and the range of lenses available to pair with this camera is unparalleled. While there are a few minor complaints about the design and some features that could be improved, these are easily outweighed by the benefits of using this camera. If you're in the market for a new camera, I highly recommend checking out the X-III – I think it's definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh come on you knew this was coming yeah deeper pixels mmm that's a lot of magnets moving around in a very small space if you want one of these free shipping until February 12th I'll put a link in the show description so I want to come full circle in this video and talk about Fujifilm now if you followed the channel for a while you know that last year I was able to borrow the X t2 and the X Pro 2 both of which I was extremely impressed with and I really have a high regard for what Fujifilm are doing and I was trying to decide which way I wanted to go in that system and around that time I guess well by the time we got to October I had an opportunity to work with phase one and then Hasselblad came along so I've kind of been off in this medium format territory for a while but I wanted to come back and talk about Fujifilm as I finally decided actually not to go with either one of those cameras I ended up going with the new X III and there's a couple reasons why and I want to talk about the X III because I'm really actually very impressed with this camera and here's the deal with Fuji what brought me to the whole system was I was really impressed with the ergonomics and the attention that was given to the user experience in the design and I did several videos on that and I was really impressed with it what ended up keeping me with the Fuji system were one the lens quality the lenses are amazing that are available for these cameras and to the x-trans sensor along with the processor and the image quality that you get out these is absolutely outstanding and so that's what I want to talk about a little bit in this video but first I want to give a quick shout-out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com you need a website you need a place to put your stuff and so whether you're building a website a portfolio or even an online store Squarespace have you covered it's an all-in-one solution for building beautiful websites drag-and-drop interface it's as easy as dragging and dropping a folder of images and you too can build a website so go check out the free trial and if you decide you want to go with Squarespace I can save you 10% on your order by using offer code AOP on checkout once again that offer code is a o P and want to give a special shout-out and thanks to the folks at Squarespace for sponsoring another episode of the art of photography so let's talk about the xe3 so I was very lucky enough to borrow both of the top-of-the-line Fuji cameras the X t2 the X Pro - I loved the XT - it was incredible the X Pro - I liked even more and I really liked the rangefinder influenced design that it had and this real retro look in fact I got grilled in the video when I called it a rangefinder and I know it's not actually a rangefinder but the viewfinder in there is amazing the fact that you have several different modes whether you want to just use a straight through optical viewfinder or whether you want the EVF displayed on there or there's this third mode where you can actually dial in and focus on specific things I thought it was really impressive and the deal with the X Pro twos that's really what I was leaning towards but I found as I was using the camera that I wasn't actually using any of the options on that viewfinder as cool as they were they were really more kind of just to show people how impressive it was then something was really practical from me at least and so I liked that camera but it was a little big and then the X III was announced and that's why I ended up going with this because you do lose some of the dials on the top but you get them back in other ways because it's very customizable I'll talk about it in a second the other thing that this has going for is this camera is way under $1000 and so it's a lot less than the other two cameras that I got to borrow and when I mentioned that I came to Fuji for kind of the awesome user interface and the feel of them I ended up staying for the image quality and also those lenses and I thought it would be a smarter idea for me to put my money into lenses then into the body itself so that's kind of what ended up making the decision for me so the X III is kind of a little brother no-frills version of the X Pro - the layout changes slightly but it is highly customizable you do lose the groovy viewfinder options and the viewfinder on the X III is smaller you also lose weather sealing and it is single card slot only but you do gain a touch screen which is very useful it is slightly better autofocus any faster burst rate and most important the price is well under what you see with the X Pro - the main thing that I wanted out of a Fuji system was to have something that was small fairly compact and easy to carry around because I wanted to use the system mainly for candids for street photography I want it to be a small enough camera that I would be inclined to have it with me and the ex3 has delivered on all accounts it's been absolutely fantastic I don't find myself using the electronic viewfinder use the screen on the back most of the time but the autofocus is outstanding now the speed of the autofocus will vary depending on what lens you're using but in my experience I found it to be very accurate and a lot of that is due to the fact that they are now using contrast and phase hybrid to autofocus system in here and it is absolutely outstanding so I want to talk for a second about how I have the X III setup because as I mentioned earlier you do have fewer dials than you do on the X t2 or the X Pro tool but you still have access to everything now one thing I want to say before I get into this if you're not familiar with the Fuji system most cameras have a mode selection dial so you can go to program mode aperture priority shutter priority X III in fact all the fuji cameras work differently in fact on the aperture collar on the lens you'll see that there is an a mode that's what I'm in right now if I want to dial in the actual aperture if I want to go to f-16 or f11 I just dial it in and now all of a sudden I'm in aperture priority mode so you don't go flip a dial to get into that mode you just grab whatever it is you want to control and you do it from there likewise that can also change the stutter speed setting out of automatic and I can actually dial in the shutter speed so now the ISO is still being compensated for but basically whatever you want to start changing you just grab it and go and it's one thing I really really love about Fuji cameras now you do have some missing dials on here but there are and I'll show you here there are two smaller dials there's one on the front here and there's also one on the back back here and you can actually customize those in program to different things so right now I have it set where I can control ISO options from the front switch and it also pushes in if you want to dig deeper into the menu and from the back I do my shutter speed and one thing that's really cool about this camera is I ended up as I mentioned I wanted to use this for street photography for candid shots just something that's real easy to carry around and it performed excellently for that I also did some traveling a couple months ago and I used this for some landscape shops and I was really blown away I've had a lot of experience this year shooting on medium format cameras and the resolution that they provide now when you consider Fuji they're only making aps-c sized sensors the X Tran is amazing and I really love what the x-trans is able to do you get a ton of resolution even for an aps-c size sensor it's still 24 megapixels so you have enough resolution and the detail that I'm getting on these images is amazing now one thing I want to show you about landscape shots that I thought was very cool hang on I need my filter system here gradient filter alright so neutral density filter gradient neutral density we are slowing down the exposure considerably now why would you use this well there was one shot in particular where I was shooting over this pond on one of the clouds to have a slight blur and I wanted the water to kind of just iced over I didn't want to see ripples in and I wanted to have that really glassy effect so that's why you use neutral density filters and results any much slower shutter speed in fact sometimes you want like a five-minute shutter speed or like a two minute or depending on how much neutral density you've got on here how much you want to slow that motion down so here's the cool thing about the X III I'm gonna take the shutter dial and I'm gonna move this clear over to T so when older film cameras T's was this time mode and basically you would press the shutter release once to open the shutter and press it again to close and you can even use a cable release if you didn't want to move the camera well what's really cool as this allows you to manually set the shutter speed to a long exposure and let me show you alright so what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to use the back dial to control my shutter speed and when you start moving this over here 6.5 seconds 13 seconds 30 seconds 50 seconds here's four minutes it's going up in increments of stop but it's also giving you an electronic preview on the back now all it's doing inside the cameras it's using substituting a really high gain setting just for your preview just so you can see what your exposure is gonna sort of look like and it's surprisingly accurate sometimes it's off a little bit but you can totally adjust that with the second shot anyway then once I pressed the shutter speed it will start the countdown timer I'll show you and we're at four minutes 3:59 and it just counts it down until the exposures finished that's how you can do really long landscape photography with this another thing that's very cool is you do have a function switch up here that you can assign to various things how I have this set up in the way I like to work since I do use this camera mostly for candid shooting is sometimes you were in sensitive situations where you don't want the camera to make any noise at all and so I like to be able to toggle between using the mechanical shutter or an electronic shutter which use with caution that's video into itself but anyway when I press this I know if you can see it on here I'm actually able to toggle between those modes and so I can just go straight over the electronic shutter and that way when I make an exposure no noise at all and you can switch right back to mechanical shutter quick and easy so there are a few complaints that I have on the X III and these are all very minor but they're still frustrating just the same now one thing is very cool is that Fujifilm have given you a touch screen so when you want to autofocus you can just touch a point it'll go super easy to use you can also use the joystick to toggle around English super easy what I don't like is they have given you these swipe functions so the whole idea is that if I swipe from the right I'm able to kind of bring up this little submenu for my film simulation so when I swipe to the right that's what's supposed to do what I found is in reality is that you swipe and it's just moving the autofocus or if I'm in an image playback it'll swipe over when I'm trying to go to the next image anyway there's too much going on on the screen it's not very big and I think that's just kind of cumbersome and how that's done these aren't functions I use a lot anyway and you can turn those off but that is a minor complaint that I have second minor complaint is this you guys will notice that I am using the optional grip on here which I actually do recommend it's not a difficult camera to hold but the grip does give you a little extra stability in there now the reason I actually bought the grip is you will notice where the tripod socket where the grip attaches it's not right under the lens so that means if you don't have the grip your tripod attachment will not be under the lens so if you're trying to do any kind of panoramic stuff where you're gonna stitch late or anything like that forget it so you actually do need the grip the problem with the grip is that it's another hundred and thirty dollars so why can't you just build it into the camera anyway one cool thing about the grip though is you may have noticed that I'm not using a tripod adapter because the grip has these little wings that hang out and it is ARCA Swiss compatible so if you use an ARCA Swiss tripod mount all you have to do is pop it on there and swing it in so that is kind of cool but anyway I just kind of wish they didn't ask you to spend another hundred and thirty dollars on that when it should probably just be included and up the price or whatever so we don't know it just becomes something to complain about so all in all I've been really happy with the X III and what I wanted was something that was smaller than the XT to the X pro two but still had the same image quality and access to the same lenses and it's exactly what this delivers in fact I might even say it's got of course but seriously this brings me back to a point that I've made that I've been very frustrated with over the last couple years with camera manufacturers in camera design in general now a lot of camera companies will come out and they will have some kind of flagship model and then they release models underneath that are missing features that are not found on the flagship model and essentially what they're doing is they're protecting the top of the line they want you to spend the money on the flagship I don't get the sense that Fuji you're doing that at all I think what foods you're doing is they're supplying different designs for different price points for different approaches to photography what's actually going to fulfill your needs as a photographer which is really important in modern camera design not protecting something at the top of the lineup and so hats off to Fuji you don't have all the dials and stuff that you do on say the X Pro - but the whole idea is this is a smaller camera and they do have workarounds for stuff that you might be missing with physical dials and so anyway it's I think it's an incredible value for the money and like I said it's allowed me to kind of put my finances into actually buying lenses for this thing which is really one of the key points with Fuji is you have the image quality and a lot of that has to do with the extra sensor the processor and then the lenses that they make are absolutely outstanding so anyway that's about all I got today if you guys have any questions please leave a comment below I want to hear from you I will see you guys in the next video until then later\n"