#085: Fujifilm XF10 And A Long Weekend.
A long weekend in KL.
It was the end of May, and we had an extra-long weekend because of two public holidays coming together. The majority of Malaysians had Monday and Tuesday off from work. Que long snarling traffic heading out of KL, and packed hotels at vacation destinations everywhere. The city centre was quieter but equally packed with out-of-towners, and the hotel we ended up staying in for our staycation was also full. It was a last-minute decision to stay in the city because we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic on the highways heading out. It turned out to be a good decision, as expected: massive crawls getting anywhere outside the city. We all had four days off, so I can’t blame the people for trying their luck getting out of town.
The hotel stay was, as always, predictable with the kids. A prerequisite is that there must be a swimming pool, and this time, they got lucky as there was also a bathtub in the room. We did get to venture into the city park with a little water park as part of it, which the kids enjoyed for a whole 30 minutes before getting bored. “No water slides” was the deal breaker. We then had dinner with friends with kids of the same age group, one night in the Chinatown area at RexKL, and the second at a small Italian restaurant in the city area.
So on this long weekend, knowing that the kids will drain all my attention, I decided to let the trusty Nikon ZF have a break, and instead I ventured out with a camera I haven't touched in over two years. The Fujifilm XF10. It had been shelved away ever since I got the Nikon, and it only came to my attention recently, as there has been a boom in interest in older point-and-shoot cameras. The XF10 isn’t just an ordinary point-and-shoot camera; it has an amazing sensor on it and takes some great images. It just doesn't have the focusing mechanism that would have made it a great camera. It’s tiny, easy to use, and not obtrusive, making it easier to take snapshots, but the autofocusing is atrocious. It takes forever to lock in focus and also to regain focus after pointing it at a different subject.
Granted, most of Fujifilm's cameras have gotten a lot better over the years, but this particular system from this generation of cameras was really bad at focusing. Even my Fujifilm X100S was slow (I still loved it to death), but this XF10 seems even slower now compared to the newer Nikon. Taking photos with it was fun because of its size, but looking back at so many missed-focus shots, it just made it harder to appreciate. Part of it was user error, as I hadn’t used it in so long that I forgot to change some settings. In particular, to set a decent minimum shutter speed alongside the auto ISO setting. But even after correcting for it, the experience was always a little underwhelming.
Looking back at past blog posts, I remembered that I had not shot with this camera since a trip to Penang in 2023. So it was nice to give it another run out after all this time.
The photos below are a collection of shots over the 4-day long weekend, as I snuck in a few shots in between “taking a break with the kids”. I did get to go out on my own on Tuesday morning, and just as it turned out, my luck with the weather ran out, and it was an overcast and wet morning. But this gave me the excuse to intentionally slow the shutter down to take some moving/panning shots.
Enjoy this small collection of shots with the Fujifilm XF10 over the long weekend. It might be the last time I use this camera, as I might as well sell it while the demand for these cameras is still high.
Cheers.
