Fuji TX-1

Two hundred and twenty thousand yen. That was what Fujifilm charged for the TX 30mm f/5.6 kit, a bigger number than the 160,000 yen it asked for the TX-1 body before tax. The 45mm f/4 was the sensible buy at 45,000 yen, and the 90mm f/4 sat at 55,000. Every lens wore the Super EBC Fujinon TX name, because in Japan this camera never pretended to be anything other than a Fuji. Fujifilm designed and built it. From August 1998 Hasselblad sold the identical body everywhere else as the XPan, and the TX-1 badge stayed home.

What the money buys is a frame you can change your mind about. A switch moves between 24x36mm and 24x65mm at any point in a roll, and the finder masks follow, so one street scene can be a normal frame and the next can stretch 65mm across ordinary 35mm film. Swing-lens panoramics commit you to one shape for the whole roll. A 6x17 body gives four frames from 120 and wants a tripod. The price here is film: a 36-exposure roll shot entirely wide yields 20 frames, so pack more than you think you need.

Pick one up and it feels denser than its size suggests. The titanium-finished body weighs 720 g before the two CR2 cells go in, and those are rated for about 3,000 shots. Focusing is through a rangefinder patch, which keeps the finder bright and means nothing blacks out at the moment of exposure. The meter reads off the shutter curtain itself and couples from EV 4 at f/4 to EV 19 at f/22 at ISO 100, in aperture-priority auto or manual. The dial runs from 8 seconds to 1/1000; flash syncs at 1/125.

Power is its weak spot. Everything is electronic, and when the CR2s die the camera dies with them, with no mechanical speed to fall back on, so a spare pair belongs in the bag. Night work finds the edges quickly. Auto exposure only stretches to 4 seconds, and B stops at 270 seconds. That covers a dusk skyline, but long star trails beyond four and a half minutes need a different camera or a stack of frames. The slow sync also makes daylight fill at wide apertures hard going, since bright sun at f/4 wants a shutter far quicker than 1/125.

The accessories show where the care went. Fuji sold a handmade walnut Wood Grip TX for 4,000 yen, and the wood and rubber front grips fit TX-1 and XPan bodies interchangeably, a small proof that the two share one chassis. The appeal now is what it was in 1998: a widescreen frame on plain 35mm film from a rangefinder you can carry all day. Landscape work is the obvious use, though plenty of owners take it onto city streets for the letterbox look. Its closest alternative is the Hasselblad-badged version of the same camera, and the choice between them is about the copy in front of you rather than the design. A TX-1 is that Fujifilm-built body under Fuji's own name.

A 65mm-wide frame often holds bright sky across the top and dark rock or water along the bottom, and the body's meter hands you one number for all of it. Spot-read both ends with the Zone Light Meter app, decide where the shadows and highlights should fall, then set that exposure in manual. With only 20 frames to a roll, the minute is well spent.