Fujifilm X half – A few frames taken with a Camera From a World I Don’t Understand

This little thing is fun.

That’s the main takeaway — the key word that came up over and over again on a recent photo walk in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. The event was hosted by Ted’s Camera Stores and by Fujifilm, and five punters were given a Fuji X half for an hour to stroll the streets and take some photos, followed by an hour in a café over pizza and hot chocolate to warm up and talk cameras.

So – a bit of context about my images. Because it was a night walk and this little thing purported to have film sims I thought I’d see if I could bring a bit of a “Velvia at night” vibe, and hark back to a five frames I posted here in 2019. That was real Velvia 100 in a Nikon F4 and you can see those here.

I didn’t plan to write about the X half at the time, so I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to use identifiable photos — and I didn’t ask their ages or genders either — but my best guess is we were a fairly mixed group: three women in their late 20s to mid-30s, two guys (one 30ish, one around 60). There were also a couple of Ted’s staffers, a Fuji educator, and a social media person floating about. No one, I think, would be surprised that I’m writing this, or misrepresented by it. The tone of the walk was clear: this camera is about fun.

That’s really why I’m writing. I’d followed the launch of the Fuji X half, read the reviews, seen the hot takes. I’d watched the YouTube videos. And the internet has spoken. People are hammering the camera for its lack of features and high price — many of them, predictably, without ever having touched it.

But this is a camera that doesn’t make sense until you touch it. Until you shoot it. Until you’re in a social setting, passing it around, pointing it at something, or someone, and seeing what you get.

If you’re not into this camera — that’s fine. Walk away. But don’t form an opinion from the spec sheet. Use it. Or if you can’t, imagine for a moment that you’re not the intended audience. That’s what I had to do — and it’s what prompted me to write this.

Because even after using the camera, I don’t understand it. In fact, I think it comes from a place I can’t  understand. And I say that not as criticism but with genuine curiosity and humility. The Fuji X half, in my view, wasn’t made to impress the familiar demographic of camera enthusiasts — the Western, mostly middle-aged men who think their opinions are perhaps a little more valid than those with whom they disagree (of which, full disclosure, I am one). It feels like it’s from another cultural context entirely. Japan, obviously — and maybe South Korea. A place where visual culture is being created in ways that the old guard of photo culture doesn’t dictate anymore. Maybe it’s for the K-Pop generation. Maybe it’s for TikTok. Maybe it’s for a mode of visual communication that doesn’t care what aperture it’s shot at — or what that even means.

There are things about the camera that didn’t make sense to me. And that’s okay. Maybe that’s part of the point.

I could actually do a likes and dislikes about this camera, as I have some of each, but I figure as soon as I do that I’m negating my thesis that it’s not about the specs. No one talks about the handling of an Instamatic — they just use it to record moments, places, friends. And yes, you might ask, “But David, have you not heard of this newfangled thing called the smartphone?”

To which I reply: you weren’t paying attention. I said you need to use it before forming an opinion.

And that’s the most interesting thing I found about the Fuji X half camera — it was not any one feature or quirk, but the fact that it exists at all. That someone at Fujifilm — or some group of someones — greenlit the idea, shepherded it through the design and manufacturing process, and got it into the hands of people who are going to use it.

Whether it succeeds or fails in the market? I have no idea. But we’ll find out. And we’ll find out not by reading the comments section or arguing specs, but by seeing whether or not people are  carrying it around a year or so from now, pointing it at something that matters to them.