Down The Rabbit Hole - The XPro 1 and 2

Read Ken Rockwell's evaluation here.

One Toe In The Water: I am known for my excesses. Back in July 2019, I purchased my first X-Pro1 body, an Excellent Minus specimen from Adorama, in July of 2019. Since then, I've acquired an X-Pro 2  body in January 2020, and another X-Pro 1 body in February, both used and in very good shape. I'm obviously hooked, but the path to this current state of camera-induced euphoria was somewhat predictable, given the circumstances.

The Back Story: I managed to drop my X-T2 body onto my living room floor, and for a moment, feared it would need some serious repairs. You see, the drop sheared off the rubber eyepiece, leaving some important-looking fragments of mounting hardware still attached to the body.   In fact, I could swear I saw the stubs to two brass machine screws protruding from the wreckage. Fearing the worst, I temporarily retired the body, making my 16 megapixel X-T1 body my primary camera, and used an X-E2 body as my second body.

"Flash", the Seawood Photo store cat

Not Enough Dots: It wasn't that long ago when I considered my 12-megapixel Nikon D300 body my ultimate "big gun". Now, I find myself relying on the high-resolution files provided by my 24 megapixel Nikon D600 and my Fuji X-T2. Now I was stuck with a paltry 16, and I started to notice the lack of detail in my extreme enlargements. Until I resolved my "broken" camera issue, I felt I truly needed another 24-megapixel body.

I found several used X-T2 bodies for about $700.00 at some on-line dealers. Having two identical bodies had some appeal, but I didn't leap on that option, mainly because this would probably involve an internet purchase, the intellectual equivalent of an blind date followed by an obligatory commitment, truly an "until death do us part" affair. I got cold feet and sought solace locally. I wanted to meet my new love face to face.

My "love at first sight" moment came when I encountered a very VERY clean X-Pro2 at Seawood Photo in San Rafael. I had considered buying one when it was first introduced, but instead chose the X-T2 for its rotating LCD and lower price tag. The X-Pro before me had a price tag of under $900, and after considering its almost pristine condition, I bought it. It came with one battery, a charger still wrapped in its original plastic bag, but nothing more. I surmised that its former owner had other Fuji cameras and therefore already had a battery charger, and other bodies that needed all the available spare batteries.

Too Good To Be True? As Indiana Jones said to Marion Ravenwood, "It's not the years, honey, it's the milage". The number of shutter actuations ("clicks") is good indication of how hard my camera had been driven. This number proved elusive, since this information wasn't provided by the camera or accessible through an application capable of reading the EXIF data. Using Google, I found a website, Apotelyt, that claimed it could extract the shutter count from an unaltered image  uploaded to their website. I tried it, and to my delight, found my new prize had slightly more than 6,000 clicks, a small fraction of its potential lifespan. Huzzah!

Epilogue: Meanwhile, there was still the problem of my ailing X-T2. I learned from my brick-and-mortar dealer that repairs to Fuji cameras was both slow and expensive, and if the damage to the camera was more that superficial, it would be VERY expensive. I also learned that Fuji would trade my ailing camera for one similarly worn but fully warranted for about $500.00, somewhat cheaper than buying a used one on the open market, but expensive just the same. Since I planned on using this camera until it disintegrated, I decided to re-examine the damage, and even considered gluing the broken eyepiece back onto the body.

Product description can be found here.

I was idly searching Ebay for a replacement eyepiece. I happened upon this image of a third-party replacement that showed the back side of the eyepiece. I noticed the heads of two phillips machine screws (see white arrows), and realized that the two screw studs that protruded from the what I thought was the back of the camera were actually part of the eyepiece itself.

I cautiously pushed on what I now know to be the eyepiece's mounting plate, and removed it from the body. The body proper was undamaged. Elated, I found a dealer who carried the OEM eyepiece, and in one week, the T-2 was back in action, proud and competent as ever.

The upshot of this mini-adventure was that I now had two additional X-Pro bodies, and the desire to get to know these cameras better. They hold a certain fascination, a strange bonding to the rangefinder cameras I had never used, but knew well enough to imagine them as the proper equipage for the concerned young photographer I believed myself to be.

The adventure continues.