Fuji X100
I don't need another camera. I know this. I have three other cameras. This camera would do little that my Nikon D7000 doesn't already do. It offers no size advantage over my Panasonic DMC-LX3. My Nikon F-801 shoots actual 35mm film and I keep a 50mm f1.4 lens on there all of the time, giving it that "natural" perspective. I am not a professional photographer on assignment in the Sahara. National Geographic has not contacted me with interest in my work, pushing paper bags filled with cash on me at some lunch rendezvous. I am not a fashion photographer. I have never shot a single professional frame in my life. I am not wealthy. I know this. I know this.
But I long for a new camera. I find myself looking at it online, reading reviews, justifying the costs, favoring features that this camera barely bests my other cameras in, ignoring its faults, making myself promises about how I would take even better care of this one than any other. I'm like Gollum.
A good friend, and even better photographer, once told me to, "Buy the camera that makes you feel cool. If you feel cool then you'll shoot more often and better." I know that this camera will make me feel cool. I mean, just look at it, classic rangefinder design. It both captures and emanates cool. What woman would not undress in front of its lens...? But it's expensive.
The total cost of the camera and memory card and extended warranty and tax is around $1600. I might have mentioned that this figure meshes perfectly with my expected tax return for this year. Not sure if I had mentioned that already, or not. Something to think about.
The camera has problems too. One of the main issues is that there's no easy (cheap) way to put a lens filter on it. The glass is nearly flush with the rim of the lens. One small mistake would ruin the camera forever. Fuji sells an adapter but it's also expensive ($140). There are workarounds but none that are all that great. It would mean always using a modified lens hood or rigging a filter ring and an UV filter together to allow for macro focusing, a feature I often use. What to do...
I fell asleep with the full Pink Moon shining on my face through the blinds, a guaranteed cause of madness, I'm told. Perhaps that is what has happened to me. I have been bit by the bug. Most of my wants in life are relatively meager; books and music, wine and food. Cameras are my only interest that carry a difficult price tag. Even computers do not do for me what they do for others. I like them, and I'm happy to have a powerful computer, but I wasn't unhappy with a lesser one. But I look at camera review websites like its pornography. I'm almost naked now as I write this.
Perhaps this is just more of the mid-life crisis I've been going through. I am yearning for cool objects because I don't feel as cool as I once did. But if there's a solution that's as easy as buying a cool new camera, then why not?
Who among you would want me to feel anything less than cool, right?
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