I took three phones to Europe, but only used my Fujifilm pocket camera

Taking a vacation — especially in my line of work — is often easier said than done. Not because I have a particularly strict schedule or a demanding boss but because the constant stream of smartphone launches throughout the year makes it hard to decide which one (or ones) to bring with me. While most people sit down to double-check whether or not they have enough pairs of underwear packed for a few days away, I sit down to see how many phones I can pack before the TSA thinks I’m a smuggler (I’ve yet to figure out the number, by the way).

So, when I headed off to Amsterdam for a few days off ahead of running my second marathon, I decided I’d bring three great camera phones with me: the iPhone 16 Pro, which still held my personal SIM; the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, which I was in the process of reviewing; and the Google Pixel 8a, which I had just picked up for a six-month revisit. All told, I was heading off with eight modern camera sensors to capture my adventure, which seemed like more than I could need. And yet, I pretty much ignored them all in favor of one much simpler, much less flexible camera — my Fujifilm X100V ($2,120 refurbished on Amazon). Here’s why.

No zoom, no problem

Whether you prefer a Google Pixel 9, a Samsung Galaxy S24, or even an iPhone 16, modern smartphone cameras are more capable than ever. Some can punch in for up to 100x zoom (even if it doesn’t always look incredible), and computational photography processes images just about as fast as you can say cheese. It’s like having an entire photography studio in your pocket, and you don’t have to do much more than press the shutter button. However, with that much flexibility, it’s just as easy to become overwhelmed by one camera or another.

You might prefer the Pixel colors, the Galaxy zoom capability, and the iPhone video capture — all perfectly reasonable choices. Unfortunately, you (probably) don’t have three hands with which to use them all. Even if you did, you might need a fourth or fifth hand to set your focus or zoom in on your subject. By the time you shuffle between the phones in your hand and figure out your settings, the moment might be gone. My Fujifilm X100V, on the other hand, is impossible to use with more than two hands — and sometimes I’ll work it with just one.

One of the very important (and perhaps controversial) reasons I can get away with one-handing my X100V is that it’s a fixed-lens camera. Essentially, that means the 35mm equivalent focal length is what I’ve got — no more, no less. Sure, you can buy an adapter to tighten it into a 50mm equivalent or open it up to a 23mm field of view, but I’ve skipped that so far to keep my camera light and flexible. By the way, a 35mm focal length is about the same as what most smartphones consider 2x zoom, which is how I shoot with my phone most of the time.

Of course, as soon as you take an essential camera feature, like zoom, out of the picture, you suddenly introduce a bit of a learning curve. I quickly realized that if I wanted a specific composition, I would either have to move my feet or become a master of cropping to make it work. It’s tempted me to walk into traffic once or twice, but it’s also taught me to look at everyday scenes just a little differently.

Along with not worrying about whether I can zoom in or out, cutting my setup down to a single lens makes it much harder to get lost in a long, complicated set of menus and manual settings. Yes, there are still plenty of ways to set your white balance, image type, dynamic range, and more, but I’ve noticed that once I find a combination I like, I tend not to dive into the menu to change it for weeks. Another thing that keeps me from fiddling with the finer settings is Fujifilm’s film simulations, but I’ll come back to those in a minute.

But, just like Apple, Google, and Samsung offer different camera experiences, I could have grabbed plenty of other fixed-lens cameras over the Fujifilm X100V. I could have sought out the Ricoh GR III, picked up a Sony CyberShot, or dropped a small fortune on a Leica Q-series camera. Instead, I found myself lured in by Fujifilm’s set of top-mounted dials. Rather than having to double-check the rear display — or dig into a complicated smartphone menu — any time I wanted to change my shutter speed, ISO, or exposure compensation, I fell in love with the fact that I could just pull and twist a few simple wheels on the top of my camera. Even better, the settings stay just how you leave them, meaning I could pull my camera up and grab a shot without worrying about things resetting back to default.

Who needs RAW images?

Yet, I know that Fujifilm’s manual dials and set-and-forget setup won’t be for everyone. I understand that some people love the flexibility a smartphone camera offers, especially when they can share an image just seconds after taking it. Personally, I like to dabble with a few edits after I snag a photo, but that’s just me. Unfortunately, whenever I fall down the editing rabbit hole, I quickly lose track of time and might miss another photo I would have loved to capture. Fujifilm also has an answer for that — the film simulations that I briefly mentioned a minute ago.

Those simulations, which are precisely what they sound like — specific settings that make your camera mirror the look of a classic film stock — take almost all of the guesswork out of the way I want to edit a photo. They only work with JPEG files, which don’t offer as much room for editing as RAW images, so I can’t spend as much time tweaking and changing even if I wanted to. On top of that, it’s simply easier to cook up a film simulation that mirrors how I’d edit a photo than it is to recreate that exact edit in Lightroom. Generally, I find that the film simulations I use over and over again tend to behave better than some of Lightroom’s presets, anyway.

So far, I’ve found go-to simulations for Kodak’s Tri-X 400 and Portra 400 and a third simulation that pulls pieces from other film stocks but doesn’t quite match any of them. And, if you’re wondering why I don’t shoot film instead, well, it’s expensive. I’d rather build up a collection of shots on a memory card that I can access from my MacBook Air than send individual rolls of film off to a lab and pay for processing — wouldn’t you?

However, Fujifilm’s simulations suddenly don’t seem as strong an argument for spending money on an expensive mirrorless camera as they used to, and it’s all because of Apple’s Photographic Styles. Apple has decided to lightly copy Fujifilm, which has been lightly copying actual film for several years, by offering different color profiles that you can quickly swipe between using the Camera Control. From there, you can modify the Photographic Styles with different Color and Tone preferences for a unique look.

Honestly, Apple’s styles are just as flexible as what Fujifilm has created with its film simulations, but my hangup comes with the fact that the iPhone camera app seems to reset to the Standard profile every time I open it after not using it for a while. The other benefit to Apple’s Photographic Styles is that they’re not quite as tightly bonded with your original image file. While I couldn’t hop back into a photo taken with my X100V and swap between two film simulations, I can do so with Apple’s Photographic Styles, giving me several different versions of the same shot.

Of course, I’m not just here to compare shots from my Fujifilm X100V to those from Apple’s latest iPhone. I’ve had my mirrorless camera for coming on two years now, so I have a pretty good feel for the way my images will come out. In fact, I’ve probably taken it on more trips than any other smartphone camera, largely because I can bring home shots like the gallery above (though, of course, not all of these photos are from my days in Amsterdam). Besides, it’s easier to attach a memory to the press of a physical shutter than it is to remember every single tap of an on-screen button.

Social media hasn’t taken over… yet

If there’s one way to sum up everything I love about the Fujifilm X100V, it’s this — I’m not using a phone. Don’t get me wrong, I like my phone and I’m as attached to it as anyone else would be, but I don’t necessarily want to be. If I’m on vacation and being all touristy, I’d much rather stay in the moment and appreciate the museum, restaurant, or park I’m visiting. That means keeping myself off social media, and it usually means using the Action Button to set my phone to Do Not Disturb, too. It’s much easier to do that when I’m capturing memories with a camera that can’t physically access Instagram, let alone post to it.

Outside of the obvious fact that I can’t use my Fujifilm X100V to doomscroll, using it for most of my photos means that my iPhone 16 Pro stayed safely in my pocket unless I needed it. By that, I mean I couldn’t burn through its entire battery by lunchtime. I’ve already mentioned being less than impressed by Apple’s latest battery and charging setup and going abroad with a temporary data-only eSIM didn’t help things. No, I might not have been using data quite as quickly because I only had 4G LTE coverage while in Amsterdam, but I also forgot that I’d need separate chargers for my time in Europe, which limited me to only recharging my phone from my hotel’s built-in USB-C outlet. It was a rookie mistake that ultimately kept me off my phone, so I guess it worked out.

Besides, social media would still be there when I returned to my hotel room. There wouldn’t be a post or a story so important that I had to see it while wandering the Rijksmuseum or a college football score so vacation-altering that I’d want to see it while dodging between cyclists. Living life six hours ahead of my friends and family, I wouldn’t have to worry about posting a punctual update, either — mainly because I’d be eating lunch by the time they woke up for the day.

And no, I know none of that is really a great reason to tell you to grab a point-and-shoot camera to use over your iPhone, your Pixel, or whatever else you have in your pocket, but I think it all comes down to the way you want to capture your memories. If you’re grabbing them for social media, by all means, continue to use your phone — it’s just easier. However, if you want to keep some of those memories just for yourself and capture them in a color profile that feels a little more personal, I don’t know how you can find a better camera than the Fujifilm X100V, except for maybe its successor — the X100VI ($2199 on Amazon).