Soulless?

I’m not really a huge fan of any one camera brand, nor am I really a hater of any. I’ve used and enjoyed all kinds of cameras, made by numerous manufacturers.

I will say that the only one that I’ve felt any antipathy toward is Sony. Don’t get me wrong, they make fine photographic appliances, but so many of them feel like just that: an electronic appliance for making photos. The only Sonys I’ve really bonded with in any way so far are the a700 DSLR, which hardly counts since Minolta did most of the heavy lifting on that one and Sony basically showed up in time to slap their name on it, and the wonderful little RX100 pocket camera.

Other than that, I’ve used Mavicas and CyberShots, NEX mirrorless bodies, as well as using an a7 and an a7 II as my work cameras for most of a year, and just never really warmed to any of them. Their menus and interfaces always feel like they were designed by someone who transferred over from the clock radio or stereo division last week.

I mean, Canons and Panasonics are pretty soulless, too, but not in that way.

You know who knows how to really nail that camera vibe? Fujifilm. They’re probably the best at it these days. Olympus and Pentax, too. They’ve got the whole camera vibe thing figured out. When you’re using one of their camera, you know that there were serious camera nerds involved in the design of the thing.

Of the big two classic Japanese camera makers, Nikon does it way better than Canon, but their attempts at retro ring hollow when compared to Fuji’s.