By the end of this month I’ll be flying to Taiwan with my wife for an extended weekend.

As ever, we love hiking and this is what we are going to do. We’re not interested in shopping, nightlife or cityscape. We live in super crowded urban Macau, so enough of this.

Two days are carved out for the Yangmingshan mountains in Taiwan and I’m currently paralyzed by a classic photographer’s choice. The kind of good problem that keeps me up at night.

Which one

I’ve been going back and forth on which camera to pack. For a while, the Sony RX1R II seemed like the logical winner – a miracle of a camera that somehow shoved a 42 MP full-frame sensor and a world-class 35mm Zeiss Sonnar lens into a body that fits in a jacket pocket.

When you’re hiking through steep trails for hours, every gram counts. Our backpacks are heavy with water, food and survival stuff. The RX1R II‘s portability is hard to beat. On paper, it ticks all the boxes for a high-performance travel companion.

However, I took some photos recently with the RX1R II and I was not impressed.

I guess our standards and preferences change with time. I recall this camera’s image quality as amongst the best. But somehow… I’m not happy now. Not happy with the colours and overall feel.

Perhaps I’m suffering from medium format disease?

Mid-format

I briefly considered the Hasselblad 907x 100c, but it quickly fell out of the equation. As much as I love this camera, I find it way too cumbersome for hiking. It’s heavier and generally less intuitive in the field.

When you’re navigating steep trails, with sweat running down your face under 90% humidity, you need a camera that works with you, not against you.

It took me some time to realize that the Fuji GFX100RF is actually the sweet spot. It offers the medium format soul I crave without the brick-like handling of the ‘Blad.

The GFX100RF gives me a level of flexibility that the fixed 35mm of the RX1R II simply can’t. Because of that massive 102-megapixel sensor, I get the benefit of a digital zoom.

I can shoot at a native 28mm equivalent for the sweeping vistas in Yangmingshan, then hit 35mm and still have roughly 65 megapixels of resolution, comfortably beating the Sony’s native 42 megapixels.

Furthermore, the depth, color science, and richness of this sensor are just on another level.

Fujifilm always gets the colours right. I know I sound like a broken record, but PROVIA film simulation (Fuji’s standard profile) delivers a colour slide type of feel that I’m absolutely in love with.

For nature, a blue sky and greenery. Plus natural skin colours. Nothing, at this stage, beats my Fuji GFX100RF.

Why reinvent the wheel

Gear Acquisition Syndrome have us searching for things to buy all the time.

We are never happy, never satisfied with what we’ve got. We always have some kind of problem that we want to solve by buying more stuff.

It never ends.

But this time, fortunately, I’m conscious enough to accept the Fuji GFX100RF has got it all.

I’m convinced it’s the perfect, take anywhere camera for me right now. Period.