One Year After Leaving Full Frame and Shooting Weddings with Fujifilm X-T3 – Did it Work?

Fujifilm for Weddings

Reggie Ballesteros switched from full frame to Fujiiflm APS-C, and after one year of work, he sums up his experience in a 34 minutes long video (see below).

His camera of choice is the Fujifilm X-T3 (now with big savings)

Down below a summary:

• 1 year of professional wedding and portrait photography as well as personal photography (family life, travel, youtube content creation etc)
• he is extremely happy with the X-T3
• X-T3 has high image quality and very powerful video capabilities in a small and compact package
• it fits all his needs
• his professional clients are very happy with the images
• his wedding photography colleagues don’t even realize that he switched from full frame to APS-C
• he does not regret switching to X-T3
• but if he could go back and had to take a decision again, for wedding photography, he’d proably go Nikon Z6, because so he could use all the Nikon glass he invested into over the years
• but he ended up with X-T3, to be able to condense personal and professional camera system into 1 system. X-T3 checked all boxes. Great video, great image quality, great allrounder
• low light autofocus: single AF is very quick. But continuous AF just isn’t there yet. Best way to counteract this is to use AF-C in single point mode and then overshoot a bit, so you make sure you get keepers amongst the many images
• low light image quality (ISO noise, dynamic range): there is a bit more read noise in X-T3 compared to full frame. The grain on Fujifilm cameras is more aesthetically pleasing, closer to film grain, but full frame just still a bit cleaner and you have more flexibility in post with full frame without introducing noise. So try to get it more right in camera with Fujifilm, so you don’t have to do too much exposure changes in post
• only issue he has not yet fixed, is shooting subjects in church that are far away and you can’t get too close, and you have to have high ISO. He shoots primes, but he is thinking to get the XF50-140 to mitigate lens. It’s better choice than using the 90mm and cropping in
• Lightroom vs Capture One: he won’t switch to Capture One, becaue he is familiar with Lightroom and he is very happy with image quality
• never had issues with lock-ups
• Fujinon lenses have better build quality than more expensive Nikon lenses he had in the past
• he loves using the EVF. He gets settings more right in camera
• 100% phase detection AF is great
• he likes tilt LCD screen and that it tilts in the 3rd way, the portrait mode
• Fujifilm lens selection is lovely, nothing but praise in terms of image quality and he loves having aperture ring
• battery life is not good. Not a dealbreaker, but he wishes for better battery life
• he wishes the X-T3 would have still 24MP. More megapixel introduce more noise and make readout slower
• he wishes for a firmware update with faster low light and continuous autofocus
• lack of user custom modes
• for travels and family: small and lightweight. Compact camera with perfect balance between image quality and video capabilities is very cool
• 1 camera to do it all
• camera is really fun to use
• great JPEGs
• great price: Fujifilm offers flagship performance for less price point than full frame Sony, Nikon or Canon
• he likes to be part of the Fujifilm community, but he does not like how polarized the Fujifilm community is about things that don’t matter if you like the final images, such as Lightroom or Capture One, IBIS or not etc.
• he hasn’t found a way to switch quickly between video and stills. There is the movie silent mode, but not best solution. He’d like a video shutter angle priority mode
• face and eye detection not yet good enough to trust it for professional work. Better use AF-S and pick the point
• he now uses Godox
• he hopes Fujifilm X-T4 does not increase resolution. Actually he hopes Fujifilm reduces resolution a little bit for better low light performance. And make a better battery
• he hopes the XF50mm f/1.0 has faster AF than the XF56/1.2, since the DOF should be pretty similar
• as a professional photographer, he is willing to accept larger lenses to get shallower DOF
• he hopes Fujifilm updates older lenses with improved AF, more silent and faster and improved IQ

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