The wait is over. The Fuji X Pro 2 is here and in my hands! While I am bummed it didn’t arrive before the event, Frostbike, that I shot last week with a rented Olympus Pen F, it is here now. I am so thankful for my friends at National Camera Exchange. They had one ready for me at the store on the morning of release date. I sold my full Olympus OMD EM1 kit and was ready. With camera in hand I hit the country this weekend.

I was fortunate to have handled a prototype at an event here in Minnesota so I had an idea, but the production camera just seemed more refined and finished. I’m super pleased with all of it. The build. The handling. The joystick. The OVF/EVF. The focus speed. No camera is perfect. I lost my settings when I corrected my incorrect date settings and others are reporting this as well. We’ll see how that goes. Also, the shutter button, especially with a soft release seems a bit fiddly and loose.  But, still pleased and  I will share more about the good and bad as I use it more, but honestly, this is one very refined photographers camera.

I was hoping that my first outing on the bike with this camera brought clear skies and a beautiful sunrise so I could test the colors. Instead, I got overcast, cold, windy and icy. I made do with shooting RAW + Jpeg Normal switching from Acros to Classic Chrome, both with “weak” grain setting. I threw a Velvia in there to really pop the colors on a close up of my bike. I haven’t processed any RAW images yet so all of these are shared as jpeg.  I brought only the 23 f1.4 and the 90 f2 with me.  For those curious why I have a picture of my espresso machine, it’s because we all know that any good bike ride starts with a fresh espresso!

Overall, pleased is an understatement. I have shot the X Pro 1 on and off for years and the last 6 months it has been my primary camera. Despite how much I love(d) the X Pro 1, after one outing with this camera, I can’t imagine going back and shooting it.

More to come as I have two trips in March that will really put the X Pro 2 to test.

Click on the images below for slideshow.

I aslo wanted to share one last, special image with you. This past weekend I received a special gift from my friend Shuji. He visited from Japan and brought me this whisky glass with Mount Fuji in the base of the glass. I finished the evening off with a taste. It was shot with Arcos, ISO6400 with the incredible, little 35mm f2.