What makes an image compelling? Fujifilm vs. Nikon

I am circling around trying to avoid it. For now I am succeeding but who knows for how long. This I am writing feels like a pushing the procrastination at least somewhat in the direction I want.

For over a year I have been writing my thoughts and experiences with the Nikon Zf down in a document that just keeps growing and growing. Every once in a while I try to write it into something coherent and get it published.

But every time I fail.

Which I have done yet again as I started writing this.

One of my points with the Nikon Zf as I compare it to my Fujifilm cameras is that I have never gone back over old images shot with the Nikon Zf and found images that once did not speak to me but on second glance did.

With my Fujifilm images this happens over and over again.

There is something about the images coming out of Fujifilm that really captures the memory of how I saw a scene or speaks to the “romantic reminiscence” of it. It is as though when I have the scene fresh in mind then it looks too far off. Maybe to “gimmicky” in its render. A little less sharp than I would have liked. A little too much grain for my taste. So I just glance over them. I “star” the immediate great ones and then perhaps feel a little let down on some of the scenes that I hoped would have turned out better.

When I then go back over the images several months later, I always find images that I then give “stars” as they then suddenly really speak to me.

Weird as it may be with my Fujifilm cameras, this has never happened with the Nikon Zf.

Don’t get me wrong. It is not like the images do not speak to me. It produces incredible images. They are just great “up-front”. The ones that does not speak to me initially then never really speak to me months later as the Fujifilm always does.

But recently I actually came close to having that experience.

I will only call it “close” as it is “cheating” a little compared to the Fujifilm experience. “Cheating” because I edited an image that was originally shot as black & white into color.

Lately I have been trying to become more proficient at editing. I use Ubuntu and hence Darktable to edit my photos. Over time I have been getting better but it is oly recently that I feel like I have come to a level where I sometimes are able to produce images that comes close to matching what I can get SOOC.

During this experimentation I also edited some of my Nikon Zf photos to see if I could get them close to the Fujifilm as I really like the Fujifilm colors.

One of the images I edited was this one below. Originally shot as black & white, where it did not really speak to me all that much. But as I went over it and played around with editing it as color and more precisely to mimic Fujifilm’s Classic Negative it suddenly spoke to me.

It is shot at ISO 12800 on the Nikon Zf and I really like the grain that it has produced. I think one of my main gripes with the Nikon Zf images is that they are just too “clinical” to my taste. There is almost no noise/grain at all. Which of course to many people is one of its strengths. And it sure is. It is strange trying to argue for it as a weakness. I can always edit and add grain in post processing and with the latest update Nikon have even given an option to add grain in camera. But there is just something about the Fujifilm grain that seems more pleasant to my eyes and even though I am becoming more proficient with editing I will always prefer to get as close to SOOC as possible.

With Fujifilm that is easy. With Nikon I am not quite as convinced yet.