My Great Disappointment: An Open Letter to Fuji

Now that I have been shoot­ing with the 5D Mark III for a few days, peo­ple have started ask­ing me about the Fuji Xpro-1 again–am I excited about it, when am I expect­ing it, etc. etc. I was excited about the cam­era. Really, really excited. More excited for it than even for the new 5D, if you can believe it. But then I started to hear things about it, and the release date got pushed back, and the 5D Mark III was announced. My enthu­si­asm faded. And this is why…

Dear Fuji-folks,

Let me start by say­ing that you make great prod­ucts, both dig­i­tal and ana­log. I have enjoyed your films in the past, and your sen­sors have been inno­v­a­tive and clever. The x100 was incred­i­bly promis­ing, and the Xpro-1… well, it got me more excited than any other cam­era I have ever heard about ever. Like ever ever. You promised the image qual­ity of a 5D Mark II in a cam­era the size of a Leica M9. It looks hip, it looks pur­pose­ful, and it’s light. You announced three great prime lenses to launch with your cam­era, and you pitched it to folks like me–wedding shoot­ers, pros, advanced ama­teurs, seri­ous enthu­si­asts. What­ever labels you want to apply, you pitched the Xpro-1 to peo­ple who are seri­ous about image-making, and want cam­eras that can act as exten­sions of cre­ative will.

I can’t do clunky, I can’t do quirky, I can’t do frus­trat­ing, no mat­ter how good the final prod­uct is. Yes, I real­ize that ANYTHING I use is lightyears eas­ier to use than what my fore­fa­thers used, but this is now and the pho­to­graphic land­scape has changed. The expec­ta­tions have changed. The game has changed, and con­tin­ues to change. We are writ­ing the new his­tory of pho­tog­ra­phy, defin­ing it through our images, explor­ing new bound­aries and push­ing new lim­its. It is an excit­ing time, to be sure.

My ques­tion is sim­ple: why do you cre­ate a prod­uct that is so extra­or­di­nar­ily promis­ing, and then crip­ple it with a fatal flaw? What is that flaw? Well, it’s your aut­o­fo­cus. I don’t even have the cam­era, you’re think­ing right now, ready to tell me how I can’t pos­si­bly know. But here’s the thing: if it’s slow enough to cre­ate doubt, it’s prob­a­bly too slow. And if it were JUST the aut­o­fo­cus, I might say okay, Fuji, your prod­uct isn’t per­fect, but it’s an incred­i­bly cheap and com­pet­i­tive alter­na­tive to a Leica, and so I’ll just use it like a Leica and focus man­u­ally. I’ll go all purist and change the way I shoot. I value light­ness that much. I am so, so, so incred­i­bly tired of car­ry­ing 20+ pounds of cam­era gear around on my shoul­ders and back for wed­dings. So tired. Seriously.

BUT! You’ve crip­pled the man­ual focus too! It’s not damped, mechan­i­cal, pre­cise. It’s clumsy, elec­tronic, slow. You’ve put this fan­tas­tic cam­era in limbo, nei­ther awful nor great. But you promised great. You promised that you’d taken the time with this cam­era (6 years of devel­op­ment, I think?). The shape, the lenses, the sen­sor, the build, the price. They all promise qual­ity, seri­ous­ness, pur­pose­ful­ness. You pitched this cam­era to me, Fuji. Do you hear that? Every­thing about this cam­era speaks directly to me–I am the per­fect cus­tomer for this cam­era. But I’m telling you I’ve can­celled my order, and I have a competitor’s wares in my sights. Are you lis­ten­ing, Fuji? Because I’m giv­ing you some mar­ket­ing feed­back here.

For casual shoot­ers, this cam­era may well be all that they’d hoped. But for those of us who earn money from their pho­tog­ra­phy some­times, or all the time, we need to be able to trust our equip­ment. We need to know it will work, we need to know that it won’t strug­gle to focus. At a dif­fer­ent price point, or pitched to a dif­fer­ent audi­ence, the Xpro-1 might be per­fect. It will be pop­u­lar, I’m sure, because of all the peo­ple who will put up with its quirks. But remem­ber, there are some of your per­fect cus­tomers who will be buy­ing some­thing else because you didn’t pay atten­tion to some of the things that mat­ter most.

I will con­tinue to lug around my 5D Mark III and my 1D Mark III because in spite of their size, they are mar­velous tools. I can trust them, I know they will work. And in place of the Xpro-1, which I’d orig­i­nally hoped could replace my Canons alto­gether, I will be look­ing at the likes of the Olym­pus OM-D, EP-3, or Pana­sonic GX1. They have the lenses, and even though their image qual­ity isn’t quite as good, it’s good enough. You see, they are pitch­ing to the right audi­ence and deliv­er­ing on their promises. I don’t need bleed­ing edge image qual­ity out of an OM-D if I have a 5D3 also. And I can have both because Olym­pus is cheaper, and there are even cheaper alter­na­tives. Also, they have a wide range of lenses to suit my needs. They have a more com­plete sys­tem, and a more com­plete ecosys­tem. They bal­ance size and qual­ity, fea­tures and price.

Fuji, I hope that you are lis­ten­ing. I have a size­able invest­ment in Canon and its 35mm DSLR sys­tem. I would gladly/happily/instantly drop it for some­thing that could promise 90% of the per­for­mance in a smaller, lighter, more dis­creet pack­age. I’m seri­ous. The price isn’t even the decid­ing fac­tor. But it HAS to work WITH me, Fuji, not AGAINST. I shouldn’t have to adapt to it, find workarounds, what­ever. In this class, it’s gotta be classy.

If you’re lis­ten­ing, and you can address these things, you’ll gain a cus­tomer. I’d bet you’d have even MORE peo­ple lin­ing up. You could be a seri­ous con­tender. Until then, I’ll keep mar­veling at all the amaz­ing choices we have today, all the mar­velous pho­to­graphic machines we have at our dis­posal. We are mak­ing his­tory, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.