Fujifilm X-T5 Review After 9 Months: The Perfect Daily Carry Camera?

In December 2024 I started carrying the Fujifilm X-T5 with me most days. One body, one lens: the Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8. No bag full of glass, no back-up system, just a camera that felt right in the hand and produced images I wanted to look at again and again.

This isn’t a technical breakdown of specifications. You can find endless lists of megapixels and autofocus modes elsewhere. This is a real-world account of what it’s like to live with the X-T5 as your daily carry camera for months — walking through markets, hiking in the mountains, photographing friends, pets, and everyday life.

Mountains of Gudauri, Georgia before sunrise

Why the X-T5 Works as a Daily Carry

The X-T5 strikes the sweet spot between capability and portability. It’s not a pocket camera, but it’s light and compact enough that you never think twice about taking it with you. And that’s the real test of a daily camera — whether it comes along for the ride every single day.

Handling is excellent. The body feels solid, the dials make sense in practice, and the overall design encourages you to shoot. The one drawback: the grip is small, especially if you’re carrying it for hours. But it’s a trade-off you accept for the form factor.

Battery life is strong, weather resistance adds peace of mind, and nothing about the camera feels fragile or fussy.

A Classic Look with the Zeiss Touit 32mm

For this whole period, I shot only with the Zeiss Touit 32mm (about 48mm full-frame equivalent). Limiting yourself to one lens can feel restrictive, but in practice it was freeing.

This lens and sensor combination has a rendering that feels almost film-like — a classic look with natural colours and beautiful tonal transitions. It’s sharp when you need it to be, but never clinical. Whether I was shooting mountain light, a street market, or an interior, the results had a consistency that reminded me why a simple set-up often produces the best work.

Soviet stuff, Dry Bridge Market, Tbilisi

The Colours: Fuji Finally Gets It Right

Fuji’s film simulations are well known, but with earlier models I often felt the need to tweak or post-process to get the image where I wanted it. The X-T5 changes that.

For the first time, I found myself happy with many shots straight out of camera. The JPEGs look so good that I often didn’t bother opening Lightroom. When I did, using Fuji’s film profiles in Lightroom Classic gave me a perfect starting point — close to how the scene actually looked with my own eyes.

That natural rendering is a big part of what makes the X-T5 special. The files aren’t exaggerated. They’re true.

Everyday Performance

• Street & Daily Moments – Fast enough, quiet enough, and discreet in hand.

• Cityscapes & Low Light – Excellent dynamic range, smooth highlight roll-off, and natural colours at dusk and night.

• Landscapes – At 40MP, detail and tonal depth are superb, especially with snow and sky.

• Pets & Events – Autofocus is more than capable for daily photography. This isn’t a £5,000 sports body, and expecting it to perform like one is missing the point.

• Interiors & Products – Accurate colour reproduction and plenty of resolution for commercial use if needed.

Spring Blossom

A Few Things to Know

After months of use, here’s the short version:

• The handling is excellent, but the grip could be deeper.

• Image quality has a classic, film-like rendering that never gets old.

• Fuji’s in-camera film simulations are finally good enough that I often skip post-processing.

• The menus are straightforward. Autofocus is reliable. For a £1,700 camera, it delivers everything it should.

Is the Fuji X-T5 Still Worth It in 2025?

Absolutely. The X-T5 is more than just a spec sheet. It’s a camera that encourages you to shoot — to carry it, to use it, to trust it.

After nine months of daily use, it’s clear: this is the first Fuji I’ve used where the straight-out-of-camera files are so consistently good that editing feels optional. Paired with a single, versatile lens, it has all the capability most photographers will ever need.

If you’re searching for a daily carry camera in 2025 — one that balances portability, quality, and joy of use — the Fuji X-T5 should be at the top of your list.

Street Photography - Station Square

The Heroes of Everyday was the way someone described this set of photos I shot at Station Square - my aim was to show the spirit and soul of the people who work tirelessly to keep the bazaar working day after day. Shot simply on the trusty Fuji XPRO 1 and Zeiss Touit 32mm F1.8 at 400 and 640 ISO to make sure I had enough shutter speed to grab the shots unnoticed. This series of markets is already much cleaned up compared with when I first came 10 years ago and is changing rapidly. For me it’s still a classic Asiatic experience and an absolute essential to get a real feel for life in Georgia because people from all over the country congregate here.

Spring Courtyards of Tbilisi

First-time visitors to Tbilisi often try to orientate themselves by comparing the city to other places they’ve visited, cross-referencing the visual clues in an attempt to understand the world into which they’ve been plunged. Thankfully after a few days most relent and freely admit that “Tbilisi is so Tbilisi” because the unique mix of Art Deco and Art Nouveau, Sovietica, Persian, Turkic, Russian and Modernism combine to make the place that is not only the Capital of Georgia but the Capital of the Caucasus feel at once homely and comforting yet somehow exotic and undiscovered.

One could be excused for not discovering the magical semi public, semi private spaces that the courtyards of Tbilisi represent if no-one were to show you these; after all they are hidden from view and if you come from Europe or North America you’d perhaps be too polite as to push that mysterious door and start exploring a place that you weren’t sure you should really be. The thing about visiting Tbilisi is that the city challenges you to get out of your comfort-zone. What was considered the second-most bohemian city in Europe at the turn of the 20th century is arguably now the most - there’s a can-do spirit in the air gayly infecting all-comers whether that’s gastro-hounds, crypto-bros, bon-vivants, intrepid-travellers and all those just curious to take a look.

Caught in a seemingly perpetual struggle between a controlling past in the Russian sphere-of-influence and a flourishing future as part of a wider-European future as the most Easterly member of the European Union we find Georgia thrust into the headlines each year as the government tries pushing unpopular reforms that echo laws enacted in Russia over a decade ago with the aim of stifling foreign influence Tbilisi feels like a cauldtron of emotions and competing interests. The courtyards of the Old Town show us the artistic attention to detail and plus-ça-change attitude of Tbilisilebi who’ve definitely seen this all before.

Spring often starts a little later in Tbilisi than in Central Europe but once the sun passes the Spring Equinox the mercury often rises rapidly after sometimes torrential April showers; those two elements combining to engulf buildings and courtyards in blossoms and bloom, late April into May is absolutely one of the highlight times to visit; you get pleasant daytime temperatures, a city that remembers much of life is lived outside and perfect conditions for exploring courtyards and making discoveries.

Modern cities often feel quite prescriptive and indeed, even here in Tbilisi the inexorable creep of AirBnB-ification and the homogenisation of exteriors and interiors to some beige-ennui of commercially-driven copy-paste continues unabated. The lockdowns and Ukraine War took some of the edge off of this development meaning there are still many places untouched by the prescriptive and unimaginative waves of gentrification - so if you haven’t yet beet to Tbilisi - there’s a great time to visit and that time is: right now.

23 in 2023 with an 11 year old Camera

I haven’t shot nearly as much as I would have liked this year, some years are like this and I don’t feel this diminishes my worth as a photographer - for me accepting the less creative times and treating them the same as the periods of great creation is pretty important. I’ve been working on lots of exciting things that aren’t photography related - which keeps me fresh and means that when I do make time to shoot more I’ll feel fresh and ready. All the same I did try and document some beautiful things I saw around Tbilisi when out and about and I find the results to be aesthetically pleasing.

Tbilisi Queen Tamar Avenue

Quiet photography is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year, I recently discovered that this isn’t something I’ve thought of alone - clearly others have been thinking about and practicing this too, indeed I recently found a great article about this - all the same I have been very aware that this is what I’m into in this phase of my photography journey. The main idea is that the contemplative act of creation is relatively silent and that the art itself is strong enough to stand on its own without a whole load of noise being made. The output should have a quality of something that people want to keep coming back to again and again.

Baywatch Varketili

I’ve been pretty sad about the price rises of 35mm film (in particular) and also the discontinuation of my favourite film stock - Fuji Pro 400h. At the end of 2022 I sold off some 35mm cameras and also some digital to consolidate on a very pared-down daily carry that gives the look and feel of film - that combination is a mint condition Fuji XPRO 1 from 2012 along with a Carl Zeiss Touit 32mm F1.8 which is the equivalent of a 48mm in full frame. This setup clearly has a lot of limitations - firstly it’s not very fast at all, the lens isn’t that fast in terms of light transmission but also not shabby, the autofocus is limited and sometimes the exposure is frustrating… however what I hope you’ll see in the images I share here is the beautiful colour rendition, nice grain, good sharpness and lovely fall-off from in to out of focus areas. It’s a shame Zeiss don’t make more lenses for Fuji X mount but as it is they are expensive and the Fuji lenses are great - but they don’t have that Zeiss pop that I like so much. I should admit that there’s one image here taken on the Contax Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.8 and that’s the one above - what I find interesting is that the glass and coating has such a similar rendition

XPRO 1 with Zeiss Planar 1.8/32 and leather case - a classic and understated daily carry

I’ve chosen images from Tbilisi because that’s where I’ve spent the majority of 2023 - I am always amazed and how I still find beautiful details and scenes some 10 years after I moved here, this city truly is a photographic treasure.

Temka Nights

Sololaki Street Sales

Is it bad that I can’t remember the name of this restaurant?

Didube Charm

Dadi Wine bar where the wine we make is enjoyed

The wine

Didi Lilo Skies

Asatiani St Laundry

Boss Cat

Amaghleba Stairs