In this video I talk about why I went back on my decision to switch to Fujifilm, why I sold all my kit and especially why I went back to Sony full-frame and vintage lenses.
And this also means I’ll start doing vintage lens reviews again.
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Thanks for sharing your raw experiences with Fuji, it’s not something commonly seen with youtubers (especially those trying to get sponsorships).
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That’s because I’m not doing this to get sponsorhips and on the subject of that, the only sponsorships I would accept would be those that allowed me to speak about what I want, when I want and how I want.
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Sorry to hear it didn’t work out on the Fuji side of things, but I’m ever so pleased to hear you’ll be reviewing vintage lenses again — I missed those videos, and I’m so much looking forward to seeing them again. 
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Enjoyed your video! No nonsense stuff.
Really like seeing the everyday Romanian life in your photos too. Thanks
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Sounds like a seriously missed “kaizen” continuous improvement opportunity for Fuji to sort out these kinds of reliability issues. It’s nuts that these kinds of problems span models. Which tells me Fuji isn’t really working the continuous improvement mantra all that hard in parts procurement and manufacturing.
Keep up the great work. I feel you have a good eye for things around you.
Indeed they seem to really be missing the mark a lot at least as far as quality control. And it’s a shame because they’re pretty cameras, with great ergonomics that make beautiful images.
It also seems like it’s not only me. Here’s what someone said in the comments.
Just in the middle of watching it now (sorry; I’ve been soooo busy).
Half-way through, and I already feel your pain. As a fellow ‘street photographer,’ anything less than a fully operational shutter release would spell disaster for me.
Odly enough, the shutter on my little X-T10 has been going strong for almost ten years; however, there is a caveat to this: my camera did go into Fujifilm for a repair back in the early days on three seperate occasions (two of them for ‘known issues,’ and once due to my own stupid misshap); the point is, the shutter (along with many other components) was also replaced (as fuji just swapped out the entire top of the camera to fix the issues, it seems).
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I’ve had an X-Pro2 with a defective shutter button as well. The repair was relatively painless and affordable, though. I think I payed less than €200, and they sent me a loaner for the (long) duration of the repair.
My other Fujis (X-E3, X-T2, X-T3, X-T5) worked fine. I suppose the X-T3 got too wet once and failed to start. It was fine after drying.
My Ricoh GR III also had to go in for repairs once, but was serviced quickly and cheaply. I dropped it, though, so the defect was my own fault. A Nikon D3000 I dropped no longer auto-focused afterwards. A D7000 worked fine.
All things considered, I didn’t see much cause for concern with Fuji’s quality control in my run so far. But your experience sure sounds bad. From what I’ve heard, the threading in the shutter button is quite fragile, and many people kill their shutter by screwing something in too tightly. I also bet that most people aren’t as considerate as you are when selling used gear, and may not report small defects.
When I looked into buying the X-T5, I also considered switching to a different system instead. But at the end of the day, I like Fuji, and wouldn’t enjoy testing myself through a whole new lens ecosystem just to end up in a similar place as before with a new brand logo in the front. It took me several years to figure out which Fuji lenses I liked and why. Repeating that process on a new mount sounds daunting.
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I seriously doubt you’re the only one who’s experienced problems with Fuji unreliability. I read in 2022 someone in the US filed a class action lawsuit against Fuji over reliability issues (X-Pro3?), but apparently the case was dismissed in 2024. I’m not sure the person who filed the lawsuit did enough research and data gathering.
Just checked the shutter count on a 10 year old Sony A6000 body and it’s now over 125,000 clicks. So at least as far as the shutter is concerned it looks like Sony is doing well. Yes, I know, one single little data point - though I also have a NEX-7 with nearly 60,000 releases on the clock. The A7 (orig) bodies are have are really low shutter count and they reliably do everything I demand of them. My Sony cameras just work. Simple as that.
For those people who shoot color or for some reason like Fuji BW "Look"s there are plenty of sRBG CLUTs and G’Mic convertible 3D cube files out there. Just read the Readme on how to use them and the “Look” is applicable to any properly Color Managed sensor output. A person can make their Sony images look exactly like Fuji, if that’s what they really wanted.
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I’d be curious to know what mine is. No idea how to find out, or if it’s even possible to do so.
There’s really no way to know for sure with a lot of Fuji cameras because they do this thing when their internal battery drains (it happened often with my xt3) that they reset to factory settings. And when that happens, the shutter count they right into the exif is reset to 0.
I know because I’ve seen it happen. Once when I was changing batteries, I mistakenly put in an empty one and turned the camera on. That drained the internal battery completely and when I put in a full battery the camera reset to factory settings. Then I checked the shutter count and it was 1.
FWIW you can either open up a file with an exif viewer or upload an image to How to find the Shutter Count on my Fujifilm?
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Thanks, @zerosapte. I had no clue that the shutter count was written to the exif (I rarely bother to look at it for my own images) – one really does learn something new everyday.
Ah… just noticed from the link that my model desn’t actually do so. 
I own an X-S10 and X-T5. The first X-S10 I bought was faulty straight out of the box, so I just returned it and got a new one. Not really had any problems with that camera since, although I hardly ever use it now and will probably sell it. With my X-T5, I’ve had a couple of issues: it’s “crashed” a couple of times, and I need to power it off and on again; and a recent problem is that the official Fuji battery was saying 2 bars of life left in it when the camera just flashed the low battery warning and then shot off. I’m not sure if it’s a faulty battery yet, or whether the camera was at fault, or maybe it was just a one-off freak thing. I need to see if it happens again.
Anyway, none of the issues have so far made me want to switch systems, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the reliability over the coming years. The other thing is that I don’t have any experience with any other manufacturer other than Canon, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference. Cameras are small computers these days, so I expect a certain amount of glitchiness from time to time. Is there a manufacturer out there that everyone seems to be in agreement that they’re incredibly reliable? Someone always seems to be complaining about a certain brand for some reason.
Incidentally, I find a similar issue in the GPU space. Some people seem to have horrible experiences with AMD, but I’ve been using them for over 20 years and never really had many problems. It would be nice to have independent data on things like this to see who are the most reliable manufacturers. Maybe Which? in the UK and Consumer Reports in the US do this kind of thing?
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