New X-E5
2026 Feb 1
This isn’t so much an exhaustive review as it is my own 1st impressions of an entirely new-to-me camera format.
Some background:
Doing proper architectural photography requires tilt-and-shift lenses. Not a lot of choices available, but for me that means Canon’s TSE 24 and 17mm lenses. And tilt-and-shift lenses require full-frame cameras.
Full-frame cameras are not small. Yeah, they’re not 12 lb. view camera big, or even DSLR big. (true, Sonys and Nikons are both smaller than Canon...) And although you can find small lenses to fit, even with the tiny RF 28mm f/2.8 attached, your R5 ain’t gonna be ‘pocketable’.
Big is fine. But more and more I’m liking ‘street’ photography and I’m wanting be able to carry an actual camera with me (as opposed to a phone-camera) while riding a bike. For the former — big professional looking cameras held to the eye ‘paparazzi style’ cause people to duck and hide. For the latter — 4lbs. of camera is just too much to drag up a mountain road. Getting my own self to the top is challenge enough.
And yeah, travel photos.
So a new purpose-built compact camera has become increasingly attractive. After researching obsessively for a lot of weeks I finally pulled the trigger on a Fujifilm X-E5. I’ll spare you the list of contenders.
First the positive:
This is a gorgeous little thing and is built solid as a fire hydrant. It looks and feels of super high quality. I’ve done only a very few photos with it and have run those few through a couple different editing processes. I have no doubt that this thing can make rich, razor sharp, brilliant images.
While I love the camera and have no regrets about buying it, there are many annoyances. This rant might be helpful to a prospective shopper, but it’s more specifically intended for the engineers who design ’em.
I wanted a small camera because I wanted one I could carry around everywhere, not because I have teeny little fingers. I want compact, not miniature! I lodge this gripe at the on-off switch and the lever-button on the front in particular. I can barely feel these braille-bump sized protrusions under my adult-sized fingers and I can barely feel them ‘click’. A proper switch doesn’t have to be huge, just adequate.
A minor complaint, and I know these tiny shoulder-strap eyelets are everywhere on multiple cameras, made by multiple manufacturers, but it’s ridiculous having to add metal rings and body-scratch protecters when a simple loop would suffice.
And here I take a deep breath. I never thought the menu logic employed by Canon was especially great, but boy do I have a new appreciation.
There are at least three different ways to screw up what your rear command dial does: FUNCTION (Fn) SETTING, COMMAND DIAL SETTING, and the top shutter speed dial are the ones I’ve found. The latter needs to be set on T. All I want is for the rear command dial to change shutter speeds. OH AND there is at least one hidden way to LOCK the dial altogether. Never mind that some other seemingly unrelated settings seem to override what you think you’ve set and don’t tell you how or why. For awhile, changing shutter speeds sometimes caused the aperture setting to change itself! even though the lens was on f/1.4 — not ‘A’!
I’m certainly not saying it’s impossible to make this work, and I know many people do (or give up trying) but why does it have to be so friggin’ obtuse and unintuitive?
It makes me think now that those lovely dials on top the camera are there strictly for nostalgia and fond memories of simpler times. And marketing. Lord knows I fell for it. But if we’re going to honest, the shutter speed dial and the exposure compensating dials each require two fingers to operate, and they both include settings — A, P, B and T on one, and C on the other — that all but require you to pull the camera away to adjust.
I am more and more of the mind that film-style settings don’t deserve their own dial. Maybe it should have been an ISO dial instead. Though it’s infuriating the way ISOA1, 2 and 3 and all the H and L settings can’t be avoided or removed for normal manual usage, only when you’re choosing an auto range. How tough would it be to offer the option to limit the ISO range assigned to say, the rear command dial?
OK enough venting, you get the drift. In the end I really do think I’ll love using the thing, once I get through the learning curve and gain some familiarity. Immediately I’m seeing wonderful rendering of colors and light. And my worries about peering through a tiny EVF hole were mostly unfounded. The tilt-down screen really is a joy to use.
Last few issues are more requests than complaints: Let me assign ‘Return Focus to Center’ to a button. Add choices to the front command dial function list, specifically ISO and None. Make it clear what the push-click command dial functions are, and how or where to change or stop them.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Some background:
Doing proper architectural photography requires tilt-and-shift lenses. Not a lot of choices available, but for me that means Canon’s TSE 24 and 17mm lenses. And tilt-and-shift lenses require full-frame cameras.
Full-frame cameras are not small. Yeah, they’re not 12 lb. view camera big, or even DSLR big. (true, Sonys and Nikons are both smaller than Canon...) And although you can find small lenses to fit, even with the tiny RF 28mm f/2.8 attached, your R5 ain’t gonna be ‘pocketable’.
Big is fine. But more and more I’m liking ‘street’ photography and I’m wanting be able to carry an actual camera with me (as opposed to a phone-camera) while riding a bike. For the former — big professional looking cameras held to the eye ‘paparazzi style’ cause people to duck and hide. For the latter — 4lbs. of camera is just too much to drag up a mountain road. Getting my own self to the top is challenge enough.
And yeah, travel photos.
So a new purpose-built compact camera has become increasingly attractive. After researching obsessively for a lot of weeks I finally pulled the trigger on a Fujifilm X-E5. I’ll spare you the list of contenders.
First the positive:
This is a gorgeous little thing and is built solid as a fire hydrant. It looks and feels of super high quality. I’ve done only a very few photos with it and have run those few through a couple different editing processes. I have no doubt that this thing can make rich, razor sharp, brilliant images.
While I love the camera and have no regrets about buying it, there are many annoyances. This rant might be helpful to a prospective shopper, but it’s more specifically intended for the engineers who design ’em.
I wanted a small camera because I wanted one I could carry around everywhere, not because I have teeny little fingers. I want compact, not miniature! I lodge this gripe at the on-off switch and the lever-button on the front in particular. I can barely feel these braille-bump sized protrusions under my adult-sized fingers and I can barely feel them ‘click’. A proper switch doesn’t have to be huge, just adequate.
A minor complaint, and I know these tiny shoulder-strap eyelets are everywhere on multiple cameras, made by multiple manufacturers, but it’s ridiculous having to add metal rings and body-scratch protecters when a simple loop would suffice.
And here I take a deep breath. I never thought the menu logic employed by Canon was especially great, but boy do I have a new appreciation.
There are at least three different ways to screw up what your rear command dial does: FUNCTION (Fn) SETTING, COMMAND DIAL SETTING, and the top shutter speed dial are the ones I’ve found. The latter needs to be set on T. All I want is for the rear command dial to change shutter speeds. OH AND there is at least one hidden way to LOCK the dial altogether. Never mind that some other seemingly unrelated settings seem to override what you think you’ve set and don’t tell you how or why. For awhile, changing shutter speeds sometimes caused the aperture setting to change itself! even though the lens was on f/1.4 — not ‘A’!
I’m certainly not saying it’s impossible to make this work, and I know many people do (or give up trying) but why does it have to be so friggin’ obtuse and unintuitive?
It makes me think now that those lovely dials on top the camera are there strictly for nostalgia and fond memories of simpler times. And marketing. Lord knows I fell for it. But if we’re going to honest, the shutter speed dial and the exposure compensating dials each require two fingers to operate, and they both include settings — A, P, B and T on one, and C on the other — that all but require you to pull the camera away to adjust.
I am more and more of the mind that film-style settings don’t deserve their own dial. Maybe it should have been an ISO dial instead. Though it’s infuriating the way ISOA1, 2 and 3 and all the H and L settings can’t be avoided or removed for normal manual usage, only when you’re choosing an auto range. How tough would it be to offer the option to limit the ISO range assigned to say, the rear command dial?
OK enough venting, you get the drift. In the end I really do think I’ll love using the thing, once I get through the learning curve and gain some familiarity. Immediately I’m seeing wonderful rendering of colors and light. And my worries about peering through a tiny EVF hole were mostly unfounded. The tilt-down screen really is a joy to use.
Last few issues are more requests than complaints: Let me assign ‘Return Focus to Center’ to a button. Add choices to the front command dial function list, specifically ISO and None. Make it clear what the push-click command dial functions are, and how or where to change or stop them.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
︎︎︎
Update (2026 Mar 13):
Sent it back.
I tried for a week to get two different custom settings saved in the camera: one would assign ISO adjustment to the back dial, one would assign no functions at all, because it was just too easy to accidentally hit that wheel and unintentionally throw it into some weird mode I’d have to stop and figure out and then correct before I could carry on with taking photos for Chrissakes. After spending way too much time standing on a sidewalk hurling obscenities at poor little E5, I went home and surfed the internet; consulted the menu-customizing-geniuses resident in the blog-o-sphere. No luck. I went so far as to write Fuji Support who — once he understood what I was trying to do — admitted, “No, you can’t do that.” And this, after I’d accepted not being able to limit the range of ISO values! Outside of the auto ISO’s, that is.
Too much to bear.
The whole point of this adventure, this new camera, was to have a one that would meld as one with my eye, disappearing from notice and distraction between me and the outer world.
So ends the Fujifilm experiment. I wanted it to work.
Up next: Sony’s A7Cii! Stay tuned...
Sent it back.
I tried for a week to get two different custom settings saved in the camera: one would assign ISO adjustment to the back dial, one would assign no functions at all, because it was just too easy to accidentally hit that wheel and unintentionally throw it into some weird mode I’d have to stop and figure out and then correct before I could carry on with taking photos for Chrissakes. After spending way too much time standing on a sidewalk hurling obscenities at poor little E5, I went home and surfed the internet; consulted the menu-customizing-geniuses resident in the blog-o-sphere. No luck. I went so far as to write Fuji Support who — once he understood what I was trying to do — admitted, “No, you can’t do that.” And this, after I’d accepted not being able to limit the range of ISO values! Outside of the auto ISO’s, that is.
Too much to bear.
The whole point of this adventure, this new camera, was to have a one that would meld as one with my eye, disappearing from notice and distraction between me and the outer world.
So ends the Fujifilm experiment. I wanted it to work.
Up next: Sony’s A7Cii! Stay tuned...