Why Fuji abandoned the Kaizen philosophy
Money.
kai / arata, reformation, change, modify, mend, renew, examine, inspect, search.
zen / yo: virtuous, good, goodness.
I love Fuji.
The X-Pro1 made me fall in love with photography all over again, back in 2014. I bought it used in Vancouver for $500CAD: A steal back in the day!
As many of you know, I’ve got a lot of heat for having been extremely critical of the X-Pro3: I’ve been vocal about it because I felt it was such a departure of Fuji’s philosophy of “Good change” (Kaizen). It was a “Bad Change” –sorry for the pun–, a downgrade. It was the start of Fuji-being-just-another-camera-company-trying-to-make-a-buck… and who can blame them now!
I certainly can’t. Not anymore. And you know what, I’m not complaining about the lost of firmware upgrades like we had in the past. Fuji needs to do whatever it takes to survive in this market. We just saw Olympus more or less going out of business (they got bought-of! They’re on borrowed time).
Fuji velvia! More photos of my time in the NWT here.
Fuji cannot afford to lose potential customers to older model to the second hand market business: that wouldn’t be profitable. So they had to kill their Kaizen philosophy for the greater good of staying in business. Yes, it sucks. Yes, I wish would could have a bunch of freebies in our X-Pro2 and X-T3 and X-H1. But I’m willing to understand their change of philosophy: after all, the market changed so much since 2012! An iPhone 11 Max Pro or a Huwai P40 Pro is a serious competitor. I’ll buy the X-Pro4, if they give me the damn normal screen, or the X100V screen.
We might lose on the short term, but I think we would be losing more on the long run if Fuji had to go out of business. Panasonic is digging their own grave by keeping the worst-in-the-industry autofocus, and Olympus is going out soon. So the competition will be smaller, but still, Fuji has to find ways to stay relevant.
I will order the 50mm f/1.0. Why? To support them. I did not want to buy a X-Pro3 because I felt they were laughing at us, the professionals… but make no mistake: Fuji makes among the best lens on the market and the best cameras, and they are certainly pro tools. We need a 600mm f/4 equivalent and that would be my main system.
There’s nothing like the Fuji colors out there, straight out of the camera, or even the lenses. I shot with Zeiss Otus and gold ring Nikon lenses: it was good, but Fuji has more magic.
Fuji abandoned the Kaizen philosophy, but not the professionals. Thank God.
Out.
JP