Last week, looking through my camera archives for old pictures of the house, I was struck by how many good pictures I got out of a point-and-shoot Canon G3 for so many years. If I go back through and look at the sequential file numbers I’m sure I’d learn that I erased a fair bit of them on camera, but the technical and aesthetic quality of what I was getting is really kind of astonishing. I kind of feel like either the modern cameras I’ve been using are almost a step behind, or my skills have atrophied in proportion to the larger number of shots I’ve taken over the years.

I have a perfectly functional Nikon D7000 is sitting on my shelf. I’ve made a decent investment in Nikon glass and accessories in the last six years, and it’s all treated me very well. But every time I use the Canon gear at work I love their color space and picture quality more and more. You may have read about this here in previous posts.

Instead of having gear that’s sitting on my shelf depreciating, I’ve decided to sell my D7000 to fund the purchase of a higher-level Fuji. The rationale is thus: I’ve got a complete Canon kit at work I can use if I need full-frame gear, but the reality is that I don’t lug a full size DSLR to and from work every day. I’ve enjoyed having the X-E1 as my travel camera because it’s small and powerful, but I’d like to upgrade to something with a pro-level focus and shutter speed, and built in WiFi.

Traveling to London next week, I’m renting a Canon 6D body for work and a Fuji X-T1 for myself. This will also be a test run to see if they’re worth buying. Each of them are the latest generation in their respective ecosystems: They both feature Wifi, more focus points, faster shutter speed, better image processing, and in the case of the 6D, built-in GPS. The X-T1 also has a tilt screen, which makes shooting at odd angles much easier.

I got the X-T1 on Thursday and I’ve been playing around with it a little, and I’m already impressed. I’ll write more on this after I’ve used them both in the field.