An old digital camera

A conceptual and not very technical review of the Fujifilm X100

I recently bought a new camera. To call it “new” is not really correct because it is actually a 10 years old digital camera, which, in technological terms, is practically a geological era. To give you an idea of how little it is technically capable, suffice it to say that any cell phone — even the cheapest — has a sensor that would humiliate its one, not to mention its features in terms of computational photography: they simply don’t exist.
In truth, by buying it I did something more than acquire a piece of historical memory. I didn’t have and I have never had any ambition to be a collector: I look at old cameras with interest but I have no desire to own or use them.

What I wanted — and I realised it later — was to return to the zero degree of photography. Not in an absolute sense but in a relative sense: in the digital world, a camera that is 10 years old (it’s from 2011) is almost at the origin of digital photography, although it has existed for at least 10 years.
I bought a Fuji X100 and did just fine.

Perhaps my decision is even more incomprehensible when you consider what this camera is.
- It has a sensor of just over 12 megapixels
- It’s slow
- It has an awkwardly defined display
- It has very few custom configurations
- It has few film simulations (for those who do not know, Fujifilm cameras are famous for presets that simulate analog films)
- It has a buffer (the time it takes to transfer images from the sensor to the card, in other words, the time when it is busy doing other things and you can only shoot, but not seeing the pictures you have taken) of biblical length
- has a lens that, when it is fully open, has little definition and a lot of softness (to put it elegantly)
- It has an undersized battery
- It takes a while to start up
- It is perfect for street photography (from 10 years ago)
Yet from the first shot I took with it I knew I would fall in love with it, and so I did.

A question of character

The X100 doesn’t do much to put you at ease, but that’s just an impression. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful and reminiscent of a film camera from long ago. Its design has been so successful that subsequent versions (four more have come out: the X100S, X100T, X100F and X100V — the letters indicate the numbering, S for “second”, T for “third” and so on) haven’t changed much. It’s handy, it’s durable, it has a solid metal body that surprisingly doesn’t weigh much, it’s small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. Also because — and this is perhaps its most interesting aspect — it has a 27mm fixed lens which, when converted, allows you to shoot as if you were shooting with a 35mm. Fixed optics means no zoom, no possibility of changing lenses, a very dry and minimal set-up: there is everything you could possibly need for street photography and nothing you could possibly want. And it also means a very small thickness, which makes it very unobtrusive.
What do you get when you take away from a camera everything we have become accustomed to over the years? You go back to the zero degree of photography: there is only what is necessary, and that’s it.

Back to the roots

The camera is a box with a hole that contains something photosensitive inside. That’s what it’s all about, even if the X100 is definitely more advanced than a shoebox with a hole in it.
What I mean is that photographing with it gave me a chance to get back to the premise.

What is photography in the end? Technically, it is the act of composing an image within a frame, impressing a film or digital sensor after opening the shutter and letting the light in.
Conceptually and philosophically, however, it means doing a precise thing in a present moment. It means, precisely, being present.

Mobile photography — blessings be upon us — has lowered the threshold of attention that we devote to the shot. It has made us much lazier. We frame and shoot: no matter how bad we may have done it, the algorithm will correct the shot giving us back an almost perfect image, certainly acceptable. With cell phones it’s really hard to take a crappy or wrong picture.

With cameras — at least until they will not be filled with algorithms for computational photography (and I think it will happen very soon) — it is more difficult to get beautiful images like those taken by cell phones, because the image they return is the one that impressed the sensor, with very few software interventions, if none.
With ten year old cameras like the X100, it’s even more difficult to get photos that are comparable to perfect cell phone photos. So what makes me prefer it? What happens during and after, that is, the act of shooting and the shot itself.

See, compose, shoot. Looking, only after

Photography — at least the spontaneous one, made up of the things you notice along the street or at home without having planned any — in the end is this: paying attention to reality, seeing another reality under its veil, collecting it with a shot. And then look at it again, at a different time. This sequence was obvious decades ago when only films existed: before reviewing the outcome of the shots one had to wait days, sometimes weeks, waiting for the lab to develop them.

Digital photography has distorted our relationship with time: we can immediately see what we took a few moments before and, consequently, in the present we are still living we can relive a past that has just happened. These portions of the evolution of photography are often little considered, but it is reasonable to think that our mind has been affected by them, positively or negatively.

Those who have been accustomed to photographing with film have always had a certain relationship with their shots: the mind knew how to place them in a certain temporal context composed of the present in which the shot was taken and a future in which we could relive the past, looking back at it. Now these three dimensions are one and the same: perfectly flattened in digital time that is now and here and simultaneously past, present and future.

Photographing with the X100 brought me back to that temporal structure: the dimensions of time articulated in past, present and future. And it re-established the magic of photography that allows you to reactivate the past in the future while it is happening in the present. To use it I have to be present and attentive, and I will see later the picture I took, in a few hours or a few days, when it has become past.
How is this possible since the X100 is still a digital camera? In truth, you could use it like all other similar cameras, that is, taking pictures and then looking compulsively at what you have photographed, but it is so unresponsive and has such a poorly defined display that you prefer to postpone everything until later. You review them on the computer, quietly, when you feel like downloading them. Because of course there’s no wifi and you can’t watch them on your phone either.

If I had to find its greatest merit I would say that it has the power to slow down time, making you feel its gravity. And it’s not a drag, it’s not unpleasant at all: it’s not a slowed down time, but it’s the correct flow of time.

If I had to finally compare it to something, I would say it’s like a notebook. Not in the sense that it serves to jot down things (visual) or otherwise. Rather in the sense that the act of annotating (photographing) requires time and concentration. Often cell phone photography is compared to visual annotation, but photography done with the X100 (and this also applies to many other cameras of those years) is more meditative, more participatory. When you write by hand on a notebook you are doing just that, you are doing it over time and with time, taking the time to do it. Photographing with an X100 means concentrating on doing it, as if you were drawing an image: you turn it on, check the parameters, compose the frame, focus, shoot. There is a story in every shot and it is not only the one that appears within the frame, but it is also the story of the person who took it, of that fragment of life in which you decided to take it out of your pocket, remove the lens cap, turn it on, check times and apertures, look into the viewfinder (which can also be optical and not only digital, but I would go on too long talking about it), compose and shoot.

What comes out is no longer the flattened and perfect time of the shot revised by a cell phone algorithm, but a more dilated, more indefinite, more imprecise and more impressionistic time.
More human and more real, in the end.