I took my Fujifilm x100 out for a first trial today after owning it for barely long enough for the battery to charge. I have to confess to being very excited by the hype and I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s a few pics from today, all taken with the Fujuifilm x100 on Aperture Priority at ISO400, the rest of the set, containing pictures taken with the Nikons can be seen here
I went along to my news job photographing the fans and flowers outside Amy Winehouse’s residence in Camden, North London after her sad death. Alongside my usual Nikon news cameras I had the X100 around my neck, it weighs nothing! I reckon almost the same as a nikon 50mm lens on it’s own. It appears to be invisible to all around and (once you turn off the annoying sounds) is virtually silent, allowing for considerate photography, especially in the environment I was in.
The optical viewfinder with the digital overlay is very simple to figure out and is quite clear even in bright conditions and allows you to see more of what is about to walk in and out of the frame. Once the shutter is depressed it gives a reassuring glimpse in the viewfinder of the captured frame, which cuts out any chimping to see if your shots. The dials and aperture ring are all exactly where you expect them to be with an exposure compensation dial right where your thumb is placed making it easy to dial in any adjustment. One thing I hate about cameras is endless digital menus and whilst this appears to have them, all the important stuff is controlled by the dials and buttons on the actual camera, there’s even a function button which can be assigned – mine is the ISO making it very simple to adjust in low light.
The colour reproduction is excellent and the fixed prime lens is very sharp and clean.
As you can probably guess, I love this camera already and have owned it for no longer than 24hrs. I will be taking it out and about with me on more news jobs this week and will post the results as I go along. I have trips planned to Spain and Vietnam in the coming months and the thought of only taking along an Ipad and the x100 are very tempting and increasingly likely!
Stephen Simpson
