A couple of months ago, I decided to sell most of my DSLR gear to make way for a more compact set up. I found it no longer fun bringing with me 2-4 kilos of extra load of my camera and a couple of lenses.

I decided at first to buy a Leica M8. It’s a little more expensive than my 7D even in the used market, but the image quality is superb. But it had a few issues that I had to deal with too, such as the IR problems, and the fact that Leicas are a little to difficult to source locally. The next option was the Epson RD-1 series. Made through the collaboration of Epson and Voigtlander, it was relatively cheaper than the M8, but had better high ISO capability than its German counterpart.

I actually got close to sourcing an RD-1 in good condition from the US. But an eBay buyer beat me off it by just an hour. So I was back to square one. I was also going to buy a Voigtlander 35mm f/1.2 lens already, but decided not to do so anymore.

Why?

Because I finally decided to get the Fuji X100.


Another profile of the X100.

While the Leica and the Epson are digital rangefinders, the Fuji X100 is more of a hybrid between a rangefinder and a compact camera. Actually, this camera is literally in a class all its own. It’s not a rangefinder, not an SLR, and doesn’t have an interchangeable lens.

The X100 is without a doubt a good-looking camera, but is it really worth owning? Here are my thoughts.

Who Will Enjoy the X100

The X100 is for people who want a compact camera with the image quality and the controls that one expects from more advanced cameras. The aperture, shutter speed, and exposure compensation have dedicated dials. The ISO control is also in the function button by default. You no longer have to move your eye away from the camera to change these settings.

Top control dials of the Fuji X100. The big dial on the left is for the shutter speed, the smaller one on the right is for exposure compensation and the Fn button can be assigned to perform a specific function. Mine controls the ISO.

The Fuji X100′s aperture ring. The ring with the knurled edges is the manual focus ring.

Those who can live with just one lens will also enjoy the X100. With a fixed 35mm full-frame equivalent lens, it’s often wide enough for group shots and for environmental portraits. But if you think that a fixed lens is too much of a commitment for you, then there’s always the SLR and other interchangeable lens cameras. I’m totally aware of this, which is also why I still keep my trusty Canon 450D.

Street shooters will also love the X100 because it’s small, discreet and silent. Sure, I’ve shot street photos with the 7D and the Canon 17-55, but I often get suspicious looks with that set up, and not to mention the loud clack of the mirror slap when I hit the shutter.

Size comparison. The Fuji X100 compared side by side with the Canon 450D on the left and the Yashica GS rangefinder on the right.

The X100 Image Quality

I love how the colors look with the X100. Here’s one taken at the Eastwood Mall.

Simply put the X100′s image quality is superb. This is especially the case with the default JPEGs. Again, I love the camera for that since I don’t really like tweaking RAW files. I simply don’t have the time for that. I want my photos looking good out of the camera.

The colors are great too. Of course, you may have to set the colors based on your taste, but the default colors are a step better than my Canons’. You have a choice of several ‘film simulation’ types, including the Velvia for really saturated colors. While Velvia is recommended for landscape shots, I take most of my shots with this setting. The black and white mode is pretty good too, and I shoot with it more often than I did with my Canon cameras.

At f/2, which is the maximum aperture of the lens, images tend to be a little soft. It doesn’t bother me at all, and I actually like the resulting ‘glow’ around the edges of images when I shoot wide open.

The Fuji X100 ‘glow’. See how the edges of the blue pipes and the middle pipe seem to glow when shot wide open.

More Pros for the X100

One of the things I like about the X100 is how it allows to macro focus into subjects. This overcomes the problem traditionally found in rangefinders (upon which much of the X100′s design is based). Now you are no longer limited by its minimum focusing distance of 2.5 feet. You can just switch the macro on and then focus on your subject closely.

Macro. A test shot of the camera’s macro mode.

Being a Canon user, I couldn’t understand the company’s decision not to add an AF-assist lamp on their cameras. Sure, the light from the lamp can be distracting at times, but it’s still better than Canon’s annoying pre-flash, or even nothing at all especially when you’re shooting at low-light conditions. So suffice it to say that I’m happy Fuji has this feature on the X100.

I mentioned earlier that I was considering buying a rangefinder to replace my Canon 7D. But the options I had used manual-focus lenses, that although wouldn’t kill the deal for me (besides I’m fully aware that these digital RFs only use manual-focus lenses), it’s still nice to have autofocus especially when you’re out shooting in the streets. The X100′s autofocus isn’t the fastest around, and I personally hope they could make it a lot faster, but it’s still good enough for me. And when shooting in the streets, I generally zone focus and pre-meter anyway, so I can shoot without fumbling with the controls.

Oh and there’s video too! I don’t really shoot a lot of videos, but for the times that I need this feature, it’s nice to know that my X100 has it. Watch a 1-minute video I took using the camera.

Aside from the image quality, I also chose the X100 because it’s light. I could carry it all day without complaining that my arms are starting to hurt.

Taking photos with the X100 is a practically silent affair–totally perfect for discreet street shooting. There are of course the fake shutter sounds, but you can always turn it off. I even turned off the focus confirmation beep. So when you press the shutter button completely, all you hear is a click that’s as faint pressing the buttons on your computer keyboard. Sometimes though, its uber-silence prevents me from really knowing if I really took a shot or not–and yeah, I did miss a few shots because of that.

And here’s the obvious bit: the X100 looks pretty. I would be honest: seeing the camera featured on blogs before it was launched was nothing short of love at first sight. A lot of folks who have seen the camera in person commented on the looks. Many also mistook it for a film camera. So if you want a cool conversation piece that’s a little less expensive than a Leica, then get the Fuji X100. Heehee.

A Few Downsides

Most of the X100′s problems can be found at the LCD where you view the menus. The software has tons of kinks that Fuji has yet to fix.

While I’m perfectly happy with the X100′s image quality, I would also be stupid to expect everything to be perfect.

I hated the fact that the folks at Fuji didn’t include the lens hood with the camera. The camera is by no means cheap, and it would have been a lot classier had they included the hood. Oh, and you have to buy the adapter ring to be able to use the hood, and put a filter on the lens. All these for around 6-7,000 Pesos extra. I would have been fine paying a little more with these things included in the box, but as an extra? Come on. What’s more is that the X100 tends to flare easily at wide open apertures, so an included hood would have been really welcome.

Mostly designed after a rangefinder, the X100 inherited one major problem with that type of camera: accurate focusing at close distances. This is caused by parallax.

Unlike SLRs where you frame your photos through what the lens sees, you frame with a separate viewfinder with the X100. So what you see isn’t always what the lens sees in this Fuji camera, an error which increases exponentially at close range.

You could always use the electronic viewfinder (EVF) when shooting up close, so you could get accurate framing and focusing of your photos. Otherwise, you’ll find out that the camera actually focused on the background and not your subject!

But using the EVF uses a lot of battery power (more on that later), so if you want to save battery, I suggest you learn to compensate for parallax when focusing at close subjects.

Moving on to the battery life, it usually just takes half a day of shooting for me before my X100′s battery dies. I was already aware of this before buying the camera, so I bought an extra one for back up. I might even buy a few off-brand ones later, just because I love hoarding batteries.

Then finally, there’s the ISO function. Being a Canon user, I found it strange that when choosing ISOs, I cannot choose auto ISO in the list. To do that, I would have to go to a separate menu, and choose auto ISO. Another thing is that auto ISO also activates the ISO limit. But I’m the type who wants to access even ISO 6400 even when it’s at auto mode! There’s no separating the two with the Fuji which is a bummer for me.

There are other issues too such as slow manual focusing, focusing problems due to Fuji’s decision to use contrast based focusing instead of the faster phase detection focusing, and its tendency to ‘forget’ some of your settings after a shot (e.g. macro mode) but other blogs and sites have already discussed these, so I won’t talk about them here.

On a positive note, many of these things can be fixed via a firmware update, which according to Fuji is coming soon. I hope it would come next week already, though.

Plus, I perfectly understood before buying the camera that this is a ‘Mark 1′ series of a camera, meaning that I am totally aware that not everything will be perfect especially with the software, and the improvements would be based a lot on ‘beta testers’ like me. The pluses far outweigh the negatives for me, so I took in the plunge anyway.

Conclusion

I guess that pretty much covers my first week of using the Fuji X100. At this point, I’ll just wait for the firmware update and hope that the folks at Fuji would fix many, if not all of the software-related issues with the camera.

But for a 1st generation camera, I think the company has got the concept right. It’s not a sports camera, but rather it is a camera for those who want a light, good-looking camera with great-looking image quality for snapshots, street photography, and even for serious work, within its limits of course.

Fuji X100 Sample Shots

Click on the link for my photo stream of Fuji X100 Sample Photos.

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