Capturing Moments with the FUJIFILM X-A2 Camera #FujiMoms Giveaway

Capturing family moments over the years has been important to me and finding a camera to visually achieve what I’m looking for hasn’t always been easy. I’m not a professional photographer, just an average mom with a busy life who wants my pictures to look as good as the real thing without changing settings on my camera that I am clueless about. Recently I was provided with the FUJIFILM X-A2 Digital Camera to review and let me tell you, this camera has everything you are looking for without the large price tag and technical skills required to run it.

The FUJIFILM X-A2 continues to surprise me each time I use it and learn more about it. This isn’t your typical point and shoot digital camera; this camera has a variety of features to capture your best or most valuable moments in time. You can simply use the auto setting for no fuss pictures and expect a beautiful photo every time with features like autofocus for multi-targets, facial recognition for portraits, auto-landscape detection and even macro detection for close-up food shots.

I apologize in advance for how picture heavy this post is. There are so many features to this camera that are exciting to share with you; it’s hard to choose one favourite over another however the visual artist in me could not get enough of the colour selection option.

Just look at this picture above of my daughter running across our farm yard in her orange ballerina dress…this girl is on fire. Cue music. Like all the images in this post, this is an unedited photo; I simply turned a dial on the top of the camera, selected the colour I wanted to pull out in the picture and voila. It is that simple! You read that right, NO editing required with this camera. This camera may just be a game changer.

These days selfies and social media go hand in hand but what do we have to look forward to for a quality image? There are some smartphones that take great pictures but if we are looking for true quality there’s nothing that beats a digital camera. TheFUJIFILM X-A2 makes sharing your on-the-go moments easy with the wireless image transfer option using it’s own internal wifi hub. Transfer that perfect picture you just took, anywhere and anytime, straight to your smartphone to share across all your social networks quickly and easily.

Key Features

From manual to auto settings, there are too many features to go over; for the purpose of ease of use, I will focus on the auto and advanced settings.

• 175° tilting LCD screen with intelligent autofocus – flip this wide screen up to take high quality selfies.
• Multi-target autofocus – Capture your intended target quickly by multi-point focusing.
• Auto Macro – focus down to 15cm / 6″ making this the perfect close up camera without tech skills.
• Wide angle lens – Comes with a XC16-50mm kit lens, equivalent to a 24mm lens, perfect to include your surroundings, not just your selfie portrait.
• Quality – 16.3 Megapixels APS-C CMOS sensor and ISO sensitivity of 25600 with self-cleaning sensor.
• Wireless transfer – transfer up to 30 images at a time quickly and easily, anytime and anywhere, from your FUJIFILM X-A2 camera using an internal wifi hub to your smartphone, computer or tablet.
• Battery life – Long battery life for up to 410 photos
• GeoTagging – Turn on this option to save photos by location, tag and locate for easier access.
• Advanced – Turn the dial to choose between single colour selection, filters such as vintage, pop of colour and toy.

Advanced Mode

Before you take the image, turn the main dial to Adv. and up will pop a series of choices. If you go through the options you will see several filters and the the colour choices, red and orange being two. Select the colour and proceed to take your picture.

Advanced – Colour Selection

As indicated in the first image, you can easily select a colour you want to pull out in the picture without any editing afterwards. This feature is my favourite and to show you, I chose red in the following three images.

Advanced – Dynamic filter

This filter creates an aura to make the colours explode in the photograph with a glow around the subject. I chose to photograph my local city landmark, Mac the Moose, for this image; I think he looks pretty amazing.

Advanced – Double Exposure

I haven’t experimented enough with this setting but I think the results could have some very cool effects. I took this image of my daughter in her ballerina dress in two separate positions to achieve the effect of her dancing with a friend. Twins perhaps?

Advanced – Pop Filter

For the next two images I felt like the colours needed a bit of exaggeration to show the true beauty and vibrancy of the vision I was seeing. I chose to select the Pop filter option to give these images an added pop of colour.

The first image is of my local Snowbird landmark, representing our military base and Snowbirds who do regular airshow practices this time of year. The second image is of my eldest daughter who just graduated grade 8. She has a style and vibrant personality all her own; I think I captured that in this photo.

Advanced SR Auto Mode

You can’t beat auto mode on a camera. When you are capturing those candid moments on-the-fly; you don’t want to be messing around with manual settings to get the exact lighting, focus and colour. Auto mode makes it easy with optimized shutter speed, aperture, multi-point focus, facial recognition, lighting (night or day), scene (landscape, portrait or auto macro for quick closeup focus) and more. In the Advanced SR Auto Mode, this camera detects up to 54 different scene types automatically for best results.

• Image #1 – On alpaca shearing day it took my husband and father-in-law a long time to round up the animals. In this photo I captured a moment of silence after chaos where animal and man became friends again and stood watching the barnyard. This is a simple picture on auto mode but I love every detail about it; it shows daily life on the farm.
• Image #2 – After a recent storm when the skies began to clear and the rain slowed to a light drizzle, the sun peeked through the clouds to reveal this double rainbow over the farm. This doesn’t happen often, rarely in fact; the FUJIFILM X-A2 captured this moment beautifully.
• Image #3 – When life is hard you take a nap with your grandpa, mid-visit. If my youngest boy and my father-in-law have anything in common, it’s napping in the most seemingly uncomfortable positions. They look so peaceful; this moment had to be remembered in a picture.

Food Photography

As a food blogger I was skeptical about the quality of the macro until I experimented with this camera; I was completely shocked and pleased with the images this camera captured of my food without numerous changes to my camera. Believe it or not, all of these food photos are taken on the auto setting without any editing.

•  Image #1 – I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning decorating a Draculaura Monster High birthday cake for my youngest daughter. Let’s be clear, I am not a cake decorator but when my 5 year old daughter asked me for a special Monster High cake, I did my best to make her birthday wish come true. I took this image to document this because, let’s be real, this will probably be the last time I make a cake like this.
• Image #2 – This wasn’t for a blog recipe but the way my husband displayed this platter of yumminess just had to be pictured. It was as delicious as it looks.
• Image #3 – The ultimate in comfort food, Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes. When it’s cold and rainy, you need this in your belly. I usually rely on the quality of my DSLR and my 50mm lens for blog recipes but I think this turned out drool-worthy.

Uploading Photos

In a few simple steps you can upload your newly taken images straight from your FUJIFILM X-A2 camera to your smartphone, computer or tablet.

To upload to your smartphone for easy social sharing abilities:

1. Download the FUJIFILM app to your smartphone before taking pictures.
2. After you have photos on your FUJIFILM X-A2 camera and are ready to upload, go to your smartphones wifi settings and choose the FUJIFILM wifi connection. Proceed to the FUJIFILM app on your phone.
3. Click on the image you want to send wirelessly, press the ok button and choose the correct options to transfer. When ready, click on connect in the FUJIFILM app on your phone. The camera will ask if you are ready to send; click okay and you will begin seeing the transfer, choose each image individually or in batches of up to 30 images to transfer to your smartphone at once.
4. Disconnect and upload your desired photo to your social networks. It’s that easy!

For more great pictures using the FUJIFILM X-A2, check out the hashtags #MyFujiFilm or #FujiMoms and follow me on Instagram. Over the past years I have worked my way from a point and shoot to a DSLR with various lenses to guarantee quality photos but I have to admit after reviewing this camera, I couldn’t recommend a camera more. If you are looking for an easy to use lightweight camera with high quality and added advanced options at the turn of a dial, this camera is for you.

For more information and to join in the conversation, follow FUJIFILM on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Enter to WIN a FUJIFILM X-A2 Camera

I’m excited to announce that FUJIFILM Canada has partnered with This Lil Piglet to give away 1 FUJIFILM X-A2 digital camera’s to one lucky Canadian winner! Open to Canada residents of age of the majority in their province, excluding Quebec.

It’s easy to enter, just tell me which feature of this camera you are most excited about in the comments below and fill in the form for a chance to win. Good luck!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post; I was provided product for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own.