Last Thursday marked the return of the Tampa Bay Miatas car meets at Rick’s by the River in Tampa. Not only had the meets stopped happening for a while, but I hadn’t attended one myself since December 2019. Since then, I’d added a new “everyday carry” camera to my collection, the Fuji X100V, so I decided to leave the Nikon D750 and tripod at home and just keep things light and simple this time. The X100V is the fifth generation of Fuji’s X100 digital rangefinder camera series. As with the Nikon, it’s as manually controllable as you want it to be, but it’s also smaller and lighter. Part of that lightness is the fixed 23mm lens that will open up to F/2. With the crop sensor, it has roughly the equivalent of what would be a 35mm focal length on a full-frame. I bought it in mid-2020 as something to shoot with every day. It’s not quite as small as a cellphone, but it’s much more fun and intuitive to shoot with.
Anyways, enough gear talk, on to the photos!
Miatas weren’t the only interesting cars in attendance. This classic Oldsmobile 442 convertible rolled through on the way out of the parking lot.
That about wraps it up for this post. There were a couple of NDs and I think I saw an NC or two, but they were parked in very dark areas of the lot or very mixed lighting conditions where the purple and yellow lights were too close together to really get anything close to a unified white balance.
My classic red NA stayed home and will until I replace the thermostat. I’m likely going to fix a couple of things on it and sell it this year to help pay for an ND Miata. I think the car would be great for someone in their 20s who wants to work on it and make it their own. I’m thinking an ND would be better for me, from a safety and comfort standpoint. And I just want something I can drive more often without having to turn a wrench on it. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll try to keep the blog better updated this year.
