How a good camera got even better with some nice and long waited upgrades.
In January 2012 I bought myself the Fuji X100, it was not a perfect camera, but it also was not a bad camera indeed.
My main griefs with the X100 where the slow wake up time from sleep, the slow auto focus and in dark often very unreliable and some a bit strange button layout, for example the RAW button, that thankfully got updated to a second function button, the Manual/AF-single/AF-continuous button, the too easy to change exposure compensation dial.
But besides all those problems, the X100 was my day to day camera for more than a year. Then Fuji released the X100s which pretty much improved on almost all fronts, and once my main RAW software (Capture One) had support for it, there was no reason left to wait any longer to upgrade.
All images on this page were edited with Capture One Pro 7
On the outside
On first view the new X100s does not look much different to the X100. The most visible change is that X100s (s in read) is much bigger and more visible, besides this, the A (automatic) for the shutter speed is a little bit farther away from 1/4000. The exposure compensation dial is much harder to change and might be a tad more inside. The too easy to change exposure compensation dial was one of the biggest issues as long as I carried the X100 on the lug straps, but once I changed to a tripod mount strap, this was much less a problem. And after using the X100s for some months I have to say I had much less accidental change than before. Most the time when I pick up the camera and brush too strong on the dial, but then I hear the click and can fix it right then.
On the back the Q (quick menu) button replaces the dreaded RAW button and now calls a quick menu for most, sadly not all, settings. The Drive and AF button have switched and AF button does not need to be pressed all the time to change the AF position.
On the left side the MF/AF-S/AF-C button order has changed so that the most used MF (manual focus) and AF-S (Autofocus single) are on the top and bottom and with the less used AF-C (Autofocus continuous) in the middle. The switch is also much stiffer, so accidental change is much less likely, although this was never a problem for me.
The front is the same, except for a “S” in the lower right corner.
All the rest is still the same.
On the inside
The outside was much less a change compare to the inside. Below the major list of changes
- X-TRANS sensor compared to the traditional CMOS sensor, also with a slight bigger pixel count
- Improved AF system (on sensor phase detection), a very much improved system that is really day and night to the old one
- Manual focus system helpers with either split prism or focus peaking in white, but you can’t change the highlight color.
- Almost, perhaps less than a second, on from sleep or from total off, so you do not need to set the sleep time to 5 minutes or never, as you can actually wake up the camera in time to take a picture.
- New menu system, the same as used in the other X Fuji cameras, which finally combined the ISO settings into one position and adds the quick menu and also maximum ISO 6400 for the auto ISO settings (finally)
- Closer minimum focus distance for normal and macro mode. No more awkward body bend back motions to get the focus to lock on. Also Macro mode can focus much closer, plus with the new MF settings, manual focusing actually works.
- The horrible slow cranking of the focus ring is a thing of the past, if you now move fast the goes faster and if you crank slower it goes slower, now manual focus is actually usable.
- Other things are: better strap hooks, the old one where flimsy and I managed to destroy them completely during daily usage, 1:1 image size, more film modes and some additional modes (eg one color black and white shots, toy camera, fake tilt shift, etc), camera should remember the settings when firmware update is done (have not yet done that, so I hope this is not a lie, this was very annoying in the old version)
Some things that have not really improved are
- Although Fuji claims that the redesigned the battery chute to avoid wrong batter inserts, this is not true, you can still insert it the wrong way around
- The charger still has a removable plastic element at one side, but at least it is much harder to be accidentally removed. I still gaffer taped it down, just in case
- With the addition of the Q button, there is no second function button anymore, I wished Fuji would have added one. The ISO can be changed from the Q menu, but you cannot change the Auto ISO settings unless you set the Function button to ISO or go through the menu, at least you can long press the Q button to go into the custom settings, where you can set this too (sort of). Currently I have the Function button on ND, because I use that much more often than ISO change and ND is not (!) in the quick menu, I think this is a big oversight, plus the Q menu is not customizable, as I do not shoot JPEG a lot of the functions there are no interest to me.
- There is no pre focus settings where I could pre focus the lens to eg 1m, 2m, hyperfocal like any Ricoh GR has. I think this is still a big oversight.
- The dial and the OK button is still as flimsy as before, I wished they would have changed that at least to a cross or something similar.
- The lens cap still doesn’t fit when the lens shade is mounted, but well, I never use the lens cap anyway, so that point is kind of moot for me.
- The flash is still at the same position, so if you use the lens shade you will still get a big shadow (but I mostly use an external flash nowadays, so that is also a non problem for me).
- If you use the OVF and press the AF button you get less points to select than you see on the back display or the EVF.
- The AF help light is still bright white. I wished it would be some Infrared or other less bright light.
The ugly
- if you press the shutter button to wake up, it will just wake up the camera, but won’t take a picture. But not only this, you need to press it for about a second to actually wake up the camera. Now that is just utter annoying and the same thing like the X100 had. So it is again, anticipate shoot, wake up camera, shoot. Sad, sad, sad.
- The fact that the connection cable is still not USB Micro but a Fuji type connector.
But even with those points above, the whole camera is just one enormous step forward from the old X100.
The new sensor and AF system
The first X100 had a traditional CMOS sensor with a traditional AF system that had to step through the whole distance to get an AF lock.
The new X100s now has a CMOS sensor in the X-TRANS layout and a sensor built in phase detection system that really speeds up AF a lot and also make AF much more reliable in darker areas.
So what does the new sensor have? On one hand, with no AA (Anti Aliasing) filter the images will be more detailed but there is also the possibility of morié. Morié is pretty easy to trigger if you just point your camera to a fine net (for example a fly net), but on the other hand, in the day to day shooting this is much less likely to happen and is easy to fix with any current RAW converter.
The new X-TRANS layout on the other hand gave some headaches at the beginning as none of the big RAW converters (Lightroom and Capture One) supported it, but with the current versions this a thing of the past and I haven’t found any problems with any of the images.
The missing AA filter in real life does not make so many differences, especially when shot stopped down and I haven’t had any Moire problems at all.
But finally I have to say that in general this sensor produces absolute stunning shots that can rival my Canon 5D MkII. Especially in the Black and White category where the X100 was good but missed this certain “glow” the X100s RAW files can be converted to BW shots that have this special feeling that I missed on the previous sensor.
The AF system on the other hand can be a big wow element right from the start. With the old camera, whenever you focused it had to pretty much focus from the start, but with the X100s if you stay at the same distance the AF lock is instant. In low light situations where the old X100 had often a 50:50 chance to actually get a lock, the new X100s gets a lock right on the first time, but I have to say that the AF speed in low light situations is about the same, perhaps a bit faster. In dark situations you now have much less “no focus lock” situations. It is not such a dramatic difference like during daylight.
Of course compared to any current dSLR, it still feels slower, but for compact cameras without a dedicated AF system, this is quite impressive. The other problem with the AF system is that it sometimes does not focus on what you want even when you set the AF size to the smallest possible. More than once have I focused on something in the background when I actually wanted to focus on something else. This might either be a problem with the Fuji system itself or in general with sensor based AF systems. I never had this issue with any dSLR I owned but with both of the X100 and X100s. Where with a dSLR I can be 99.9% sure that I have in focus shots, I would say with the X100s it is more around 90% and I catch myself more often to check the shot on the back display to be really sure that it is actually in focus where I want to have the focus. Trying to focus on smaller things can be a huge hit and miss and can be pretty frustrating. On the other hand I do not have any other cameras with similar AF systems in the same category so I do not know if this is a pure Fuji problem or a problem with this AF on the sensor design.
What I found out much later is that the EVF focus system is often much better for accurate and faster focus. I have no idea why the focus would be a bit faster, but it seems that when you use the OVF display the focus patch (size of the focus area) is much bigger and cannot be made smaller. In the EVF the focus patch can be set very small and besides this you also see where exactly you will focus. Something that is not possible with the OVF.
So my basic rules has come that for snaps and daylight I use the OVF and when I need accurate focusing and at night I often switch to EVF.
It also has a problem to focus on non contrast objects like sky and clouds, but this is a general problem with AF and the same issue can happen with dSLR AF systems. The main difference is still that a dedicated AF system in a dSLR will just be faster and more accuarte. I do have quite a lot of moments where in not too bright or very low contrast scenes there is just no way the X100s can AF at all.
High ISO
Probably the most stunning change to the new X-TRANS sensor is the high ISO capability. While High ISO on the Fuji X100 was already extremely stunning it had some minor problems with banding on ISO 3200 and higher and the Auto ISO was only set able to 3200. With the X100s you can finally set this to ISO 6400 and it looks even better than the X100. I personally think it the High ISO look the best on any camera I have ever owned. Not only is there no banding at all, the noise, thanks to the special layout of the X-TRANS sensor is very pleasing to look at and only visible on really high ISO shots.
With this sensor you no longer worry about what ISO you shoot at because the result just looks really amazing. Furthermore the Auto ISO settings have finally moved to the normal ISO menu so there is no longer need to navigate through endless menus to change this. Because of this my Fn button is set to the ND filter as I never need to change the settings. The only time is with long exposures where I force the ISO to the lowest setting.
The lens
Is unchanged to the last system, it was really good and it is really good and for that price there is nothing to complain about. The only thing is the slight wave distortion that becomes visible when taking pictures of straight lines. But this can be fixed with the old X100 lens profile in both Capture One and Lightroom. Purple fringing is also on a minimum even wide open.
Other things
Battery life seems to have improved slightly from the last version, at least it seems to me and the batteries used are still the same, so any spare you bought you can use now (the new battery comes with a yellow stripe on one side, for “this side has to show toward the lens when inserting it”).
The lens hood and filter mount kit is also compatible with this camera and it is still sad that the camera ships without it, not even the filter mount ring. When you see how far the lens actually extrudes it is pretty scary to use that camera without a lense hood at all. I would also recommend to use some simple protective filter if you plan to use the camera every day. Cleaning the filter feels a little bit less worrisome than cleaning the front element directly.
Tripod mount position is also still not centered and when you use a quick mount plate it will cover the battery door, which is just ultimately frustrating when you need to change the battery quite often. I really wished they fixed that. But perhaps this is also because of the lens position and without making the camera bigger it wouldn’t be possible.
Final result
To make it simple, things got dramatically better and make this camera and even bigger joy to use. So much that I often do not bother to take my big rig (Canon 5D MkII) with me anymore.
I only have three points to complain about. First, when I full press the shutter and the camera wakes up, I also want it to take a picture. I see absolutely no reason why this is not working. Second, the AF needs to get more accurate so there are less focus misses. It can be really frustrating when you take a nice picture just to realize it back focused again although you where really sure that that the focus was correct. One thing that helps is checking the distance meter on the bottom of the viewfinder to be sure the focus is correctly, the other is to switch to the electronic viewfinder which then has much more accurate focusing. The third thing would be a pre-focus setting where I can set the distance and then just shoot. That would make this camera the ideal street shooting companion.
Besides this I have no real complaints and can only highly recommend this camera. Just get some spare batteries and you set to be stunned what high quality images this camera can produce.
Sidenote: There is a major X100 firmware upgrade that adds focus peaking and a bit better AF. Kudos to Fuji for not abandoning the old camera.
