X-H1: Arturo Rodriguez & Pepe Molina x Reportage -Proud of-

My first X was X100. I remember that little voice in my head that said, “Buy it,” ha ha ha.

It was beautiful. The box it came in even had some type of striking black silk. In spite of not being a professional camera, back then I took it everywhere and I published some things with it, even on the 15-M movement in 2011, when I was working for the Associated Press in Madrid. But it was not really until 2015 when I got my hands on a X-T1 that I decided to replace my heavy and extremely expensive Reflex equipment with the X System.



Some of my colleagues had already done so and spoke very highly of it. At that time, I was living part-time between Thailand and Myanmar and the issue of weight and going unnoticed with a small camera was very important to me. From that moment on, many things changed. Having such a small, light camera encouraged me to get back to my roots, when I started to study photography and I always carried around a camera on my shoulder. Professional reflex cameras had gotten so large and heavy that the last thing you felt like doing was carrying one around on the street when you went out for a beer or to take a walk. But this was feasible with this new tool. The electronic viewer... What can you say about something that shows you the color temperature, the exposure and the field depth in real time, while you’re shooting? What you see in the viewer is the final result.



I’m still surprised that there are colleagues who ask me if it’s possible to work with these cameras; I’ve been doing it for over 3 years. I suppose the same thing happened when the first 35mm cameras came out and everyone was still working with photographic plates. For my daily work and my personal projects, I now use a X-Pro2 and two X-H1 with XF16mmF1.4, XF23mmF1.4, XF35mmF1.4, XF56mmF1.2, XF50-140mmF2.8 and the Flash EF-X500.