Things I noticed.

The Fuji X100 brochure is now available from Fuji and as these things have a way of disappearing like all those test shots in early reviews, I have placed it on my file server and you can download it by clicking below:

Click to download the X100 brochure.

I’ll put aside any comments on the sheer vacuity of the puffery, which is at least written by an English speaker not by Google Translate, but there is some gold among the dross, and here’s what I spotted (page references are to pages as numbered using Apple’s Preview PDF viewer and 2-page display – the page numbering in the original is poor and incomplete):

My comments are aimed at the primary target for this camera – street snappers. If you are into landscapes or bugs, I recommend you read elsewhere and buy something else.

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Page 4 – The user is clueless how to hold a camera with an optical finder. The lens should be supported from below with the left hand, not obscuring the finder.

Page 6 – The top plate engraving quality is a whole lot better than on my Leica M2 and M3.

Page 8 – The OVF displays vary between pictures confirming that you can tailor these extensively. The finder magnification is only 0.5x, a bit disappointing. The Leica M2’s 0.72x would have been better. The 1.44 mp definition of the eye-level EVF is identical to that of the Panasonic G1. That’s excellent. Diopter adjustment is -2 to +1 and the finder has a long eye point of 15mm meaning that eyeglass wearers like me will not struggle to see the full frame. One key aspect of the OVF is being able to see outside the frame lines, anticipating objects coming into the field of view.

Page 9 – The OVF can show under/exposure compensation, set on the top dial. Nice. It will also show DOF – useless, in my opinion. The AF target mark is a nice size compromise between spot and overall. The brightness of the displayed data varies with scene brightness. Really nice. There’s a proximity sensor, like in the iPhone, which switches off the LCD when the camera is brought to eye level. There’s also reference to a ‘Power Control System’ which suggests that you can switch off the dumb-as-it-gets LCD screen to conserve power. Any street snapper will immediately do this, not to conserve power, but to turn off the single device which has made nearly every point-and-shoot useless until now. An LCD screen is incapable of being a useful viewfinder in daylight. There’s a reference to ‘Page 25’ for more details, but that page is missing, their numbering jumping from 24 to 26 in the original document. Anyway, anything around 300-500 is fine and spare batteries are dirt cheap.

Page 10 – The lens charts show the lens peaks at f/4-5.6, just like Leica’s 35mm Summicron. The built in ND filter reduces sensor sensitivity by 3 stops. Handy when you want to use a slow shutter speed or large aperture but the light is otherwise too bright. For those who think they should be wasting their money on an X100 to take pictures of flowers, the LCD finder will allow framing down to 4″ (10cm).

Page 11 – Like on the Leica M8/9, peripheral photosite lenses on the sensor are inclined inward to minimize edge optical aberrations. There is some sort of dynamic range enhancement built in to reduce highlight burn out.

Page 12 – The top and bottom casings are die-cast magnesium. That beats a cheap pressing though I would have preferred plastic, owing to its greater shock resistance and flexibility when struck. They claim the lens engravings are hand-filled with enamel. Whatever. The reference to “Made in Japan” is so duplicitous you can bet the thing is made in China. The body covering is plastic. The smooth rubber from the G1 would have been better, if less sexy. The clear intent here is to mimic early Leica M bodies, though those used vulcanite which cracks and peels with age. There’s a dumb-as-it-gets male thread on the front of the lens with a decorative cover ring. You have to remove this and fit an adapter for a protective 49mm filter. As most 49mm filters have a front thread, it may be possible to simply screw one on reversed, but that would require the thread pitch on the lens to be identical to that used in filters. I don’t know if that is the case. There’s an optional leather case which no sane snapper will come within 100 miles of. There’s also an optional lens hood for those with more money than sense. Also an optional TTL flash for the same set.

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Page 13 – The rear thumb wheel allows 1/3rd stop adjustments compared with 1 stop for the shutter dial on the top and aperture ring on the lens. Not sure how this interacts with what the mechanical dials show. The AE/AF button can be set to lock just AE or just AF. I cannot figure out whether a first pressure on the shutter release locks focus (which I like) and if so, that means I’ll be setting the AE/AF button to AE only, like on my G1. I have no comments on manual focus as I cannot see any use for it in street shots where time is of the essence. Those who like manual gearshifts in cars can get off on the options here. There’s a RAW button if you want to shoot in RAW and the camera is set to JPG. Who cares? Set the camera to RAW. There’s a bunch of stuff on white balance but as that’s all in Lightroom I don’t care. You can use sRGB or AdobeRGB gamuts. 5 shots per second bursts are limited to 2 seconds, 10 shots. Lots of bracketing options – AE, ISO setting, and film simulation (footnoted on p.14) – between Provia (natural), Velvia (garish) and Astia (flat). These purportedly emulate Fuji’s film emulsions. Nothing you can’t so in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Metering is selectable between multi metering (meaning you are clueless what is being measured), spot (2%) and average. The latter, used with RAW, is just what the doctor ordered for street snaps.

There’s an AF assist lamp for slow scenes as in “Hey! I’m over here! Can you see me now?”.

ISO top speed can be pushed to 12,800 from 6,400, a choice which can be assigned to the Fn button. Smart. Auto ISO works between 200 and 3200.

The reference to 0.01 second Shutter Time Lag is pure BS. They are trying to mislead by referring to VF display response not shutter lag. Every consumer camera on earth has a shutter lag dozens of times slower and the X100 will be no exception.

Here’s a show stopper. The included (and crappy) Silkypix software works with Winblows only! Wouldn’t do to realize that 99% of all creative people use Macs now, would it? This means that if you shoot RAW, like I do, you will have to use Windows with an emulator (I use the free VirtualBox from Sun and Wincrap XP) to process the images using SilkyPix until Adobe and Apple come up with RAW converters for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, iPhoto and Aperture. Ugh!

Page 14 – Built in Yellow, Red and Green filters for those who like to shoot in monochrome and don’t know how to use color or Lightroom. Beyond pretentious. The illustrations are so poor it’s hard to make out any difference. There’s some sort of dynamic range control for high contrast situations. If you like to get hosed down and buy the lens hood, it comes with the filter adapter ring.

No mention of movie mode anywhere which spares me additional vituperation. This is emphatically not a movie camera, having just two uses. One is for street snaps. The other is for the insecure – the types who put stickers in their rear windows saying which university they attended – to show their wealth. Those are the ones who will happily buy the silly leather case.

But, overall, this looks promising.

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An early review.

Spanish site Quesabesde has a review with picture samples of the Fuji X100. I was able to download the samples earlier and can report they are excellent – very fine grain even at the highest ISO settings, and sharp. Fuji has since instituted a blackout as the article states : ” Note: At the request of Fujifilm Japan has agreed to withdraw QUESABESDE.COM samples taken with a preproduction unit of the FinePix X100, with a view to publishing the short term a more extensive analysis from a final model of the camera.” The article also has RAW samples but as even SilkyPix has yet to process X100 RAW, they were unable to make any sense of them. These early samples were great so hopefully things will only get better.

Here’s a translation courtesy of the pidgins at Google Translate:

WANTED
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Fujifilm FinePix X100: first samples

Although it sounds like a worn cliché, the truth is that for some time that a model did not arouse the interest of the Fujifilm FinePix X100. Since it was seen at Photokina, there are few professional and amateur gourmets who have believed to see in the philosophy of this compact $ 1,000 responses to their requests. QUESABESDE.COM advantage that we have a working model of the X100 (do not ask how), it is time to stop philosophising and start answering questions with the camera in your hands.

Iker Morán .- Do not go on sale until March, but patience is not our forte. Faced with the prospect of waiting a little longer to get their hands on the FinePix X100-just that we were recommended from Fujifilm Spain-QUESABESDE.COM secret services have been launched to find a preproduction model of the compact.
Fujifilm FinePix X100

Have been 48 a few hours of living with a body that has installed the firmware version 0.69. Although it is early to draw conclusions (some camera functions were not operating at 100%), and we are working on a first test and a video that shows its performance and operation.

Anyway, thinking of the more impatient and in recent months who have asked for details of the expected camera, here are some early samples galleries and a fast response to an impromptu autocuestionario.SE SEARCH
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Although it sounds like a worn cliché, the truth is that for some time that a model did not arouse the interest of the Fujifilm FinePix X100. Since it was seen at Photokina, there are few professional and amateur gourmets who have believed to see in the philosophy of this compact $ 1,000 responses to their requests. QUESABESDE.COM advantage that we have a working model of the X100 (do not ask how), it is time to stop philosophising and start answering questions with the camera in your hands.

Iker Morán .- Do not go on sale until March, but patience is not our forte. Faced with the prospect of waiting a little longer to get their hands on the FinePix X100-just that we were recommended from Fujifilm Spain-QUESABESDE.COM secret services have been launched to find a preproduction model of the compact.
Fujifilm FinePix X100

Have been 48 a few hours of living with a body that has installed the firmware version 0.69. Although it is early to draw conclusions (some camera functions were not operating at 100%), and we are working on a first test and a video that shows its performance and operation.

Anyway, thinking of the more impatient and in recent months who have asked for details of the expected camera, here are some early samples galleries and a fast response to an impromptu autocuestionario.

“The ergonomics are as good as it seems at first sight?

The finish, the feel of the camera in your hands, the distribution of controls and, in general, the management allowed a few snags. Already discuss in more detail, but it’s nothing that we did not know for several months.

When you apply a good dose of common sense (almost everything is invented, you just have to reinterpret it in digital) is difficult for some to fail. But, as always, there are fringes that are not as well finished off (at least in pre-production model has fallen into our hands.)

Screen menus, for example, broadly follow the aesthetics of the compact Fujifilm. Not that they are very complex, but we expected something more special and personalized for a camera like this. Neither the rotary dial back-too deep in the body, not suppose to press it by mistake, is very comfortable to drive when changing any settings.

How does the viewer hybrid?

Located on the right side (the SLR used to have to retrain and learn to let the left eye wide open to see what happens out of frame), the X100 combines a direct optical viewfinder with an electronic 1.4-megapixel resolution . Simply activate the lever on the front of the camera to switch from optical to electronic form.

Although the viewfinder can boast excellent performance (only when the soda weakens a bit in low light remember his nature) is particularly interesting to the viewer directly. It not only shows the typical framing guides-with parallax correction, and the meter, but also information such as sensitivity, image size, or even an electronic level superimposed.

Is it fast?

It is one of the most recurrent questions of those interested in this camera. In this sense, they can rest assured that the startup and shutter response is very fast even in this model the end he has given us a headache in other ways.

Concerning the burst, the camera can reach speeds of up to 5 frames per second, but, attention, as follows: the blast was triggered in full to fill the buffer and then plays a few seconds to see the results.

Advertising
Less happy we are with the recording time on the card. At least in the final model is not proven (insist on this detail) and working with SD Card SanDisk Class 10, the simultaneous recording of a picture in two JPEG and RAW was delayed about 5 seconds, during which itself was possible to re-shoot but can not access or browse menus making.

And silent?

This is another of its strengths: the X100, like all cameras of this type, has a very stealthy shutter. Although the camera comes standard activated a sound that plays when you press the shutter-very well done, indeed, worth disconnect and go completely unnoticed.

How was your approach?

The autofocus of the X100 performs well in terms of speed and accuracy within the predictable in-focus by contrast. Even in poor lighting conditions and with the assist light turned off, your reaction is correct, but it takes a little worse in areas of low contrast and macro shots.

Fujifilm FinePix X100

However, the approach is one of the benefits that usually recorded improvements through new versions of firmware, so hopefully this model evolved from 0.69 to final chamber.

Besides the two automatic modes of approach (simple and continuous), also has a ring on the lens to manual mode. This is not a mechanical system, but this ring starts the electric motor approach, with small movements that are executed at every touch. When working with an optical viewfinder, no confirmation of an outbreak, but a guide to the distance that can be very useful.

And the results, what?

The images speak for themselves. Although this is a preproduction unit you must take the results with pliers and no definitive conclusions (white balance, for example, has room for improvement), obvious that Fujifilm has done its homework in terms optics (23 mm equivalent to 35 mm f2 in step universal) and CMOS (APS-C size with a resolution of 12 megapixels).

Hits: 12 MP © QUESABESDE.COM
Catches were made with a Fujifilm FinePix pre-X100 (firmware 0.69):

Note: At the request of Fujifilm Japan has agreed to withdraw QUESABESDE.COM samples taken with a preproduction unit of the FinePix X100, with a view to publishing the short term a more extensive analysis from a final model of the camera.
All outlets, of course, have been made with the default settings of color, sharpness and saturation, and using the optional lens hood for optics.
Does it EXR processor?

Although it is assumed that CMOS has not been manufactured by Fujifilm, from the company has insisted that it is a custom version for this camera, especially with her EXR processor.

Hits: 12 MP © QUESABESDE.COM
Catches were made with a Fujifilm FinePix pre-X100 (firmware 0.69):

Note: At the request of Fujifilm Japan has agreed to withdraw QUESABESDE.COM samples taken with a preproduction unit of the FinePix X100, with a view to publishing the short term a more extensive analysis from a final model of the camera.
In this sense, among the options menu provides a dynamic range control settings from 100% to 400%, although the latter value is only operational from 800 ISO. In short, we will post some samples to check the camera performance in this area.
What noise?

Another of the greatest fears of those interested in this camera was what that will endure when the light touches is complicated and increase the sensitivity. Again, the samples are the best answer.

Samples: high sensitivity © QUESABESDE.COM

Catches were made with a Fujifilm FinePix pre-X100 (firmware 0.69) with sensitivity settings from 640 to ISO 12800:

ISO 640
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 12,800
Note: At the request of Fujifilm Japan has agreed to withdraw QUESABESDE.COM samples taken with a preproduction unit of the FinePix X100, with a view to publishing the short term a more extensive analysis from a final model of the camera.
Adjustments between 100 and 12,800 ISO-the latter not available in RAW-format, the camera supports up to 3,200 ISO smooth and even further if the conditions are not very critical. In all cases, the system has remained active noise reduction in standard mode.
What to do with the RAW?

That’s what we ask ourselves after filling out a card with dozens of images in RAW format and verify that there is not any software capable of reading them. Even tried a beta version (and in Japanese!) Of SILKYPIX 5, but no luck. Anyway, there we three files in original format in case anyone is encouraged to investigate.

Samples: RAW © QUESABESDE.COM
Catches were made with a Fujifilm FinePix pre-X100 (firmware 0.69). Photographs taken in RAW format and processed using the function included in the camera menus.

Note: At the request of Fujifilm Japan has agreed to withdraw QUESABESDE.COM samples taken with a preproduction unit of the FinePix X100, with a view to publishing the short term a more extensive analysis from a final model of the camera.
For now, what we can do (more to satisfy curiosity, to see the real potential of RAW) is to try to process them and export them to JPEG using the camera function that includes among its menus. That is precisely what we have done with these three images.
“I can leave the charger at home or autonomy is a fair bit?

With all the quotes that requires a non-final model in our quick test battery has supported more than 250 shots (JPEG and RAW formats) and about 20 clips from 10 to 20 seconds each.

Exactly the video recording (although nobody seems to remember, is an option there) seems to be the major consumer of battery, as it was to start experimenting with this feature when the camera started to show signs of exhaustion.

We believe that dosing the use of the screen and restricting the recording of sequences, we can stretch well over the autonomy of this battery of 1,700 mAh.

Is that all?

No. This is just an appetizer for the more impatient. Although circumstances have forced a stay of the X100 among us has been very short, we are working in a field test a little more detail and a video that shows the most interesting features of this camera in action.

Everything is to brighten the wait until we get a final chamber as those hit stores next month’s deck.

Note: Memory cards are pictured in this article have been released by SanDisk as part of an advertising agreement reached between the company and QUESABESDE.COM.

End of translation.

Here’s what I got out of that mess:

• They are using firmware 0.69, so not final
• Shutter lag is very low (this is THE key feature for a street snapper)
• Switch off the electronic sound and the shutter is very quiet
• It takes 5 seconds to write a JPG + RAW file to a Class 10 SDHC card but the camera’s buffer allows you to keep snapping in the meanwhile
• ‘Manual’ focussing actually operates a servo focus motor. Not sure if that matters.
• ISO with JPGs goes up to 12,800 but stops at 3,200 for RAW files
• The battery lasts 250 snaps only – not great – and burns up faster with movies. (Spare batteries are under $20 in the US). If you are buying this camera to make movies check back with me for the number of a good loony doctor. You are wasting your money – this camera is for street snaps. Period.

By the way, how much longer is Fuji going to keep calling itself Fujifilm? It’s even emblazoned on the X100’s top plate. Time to wake up, boys.

I’ll be writing about mine as soon as I get one, strictly in the context of real world use on the street. If you want pictures of test charts you can go to DPreview.com. Just don’t expect to find any photography there.

Some thoughts on sizes, weights and so on.

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Comparisons in a digital world:

There are only a couple of meaningful comparisons for the Fuji X100 if the camera is intended for candid street photography. These include the Panasonic G1 (which I use) and the Leica M9 (which I will never use). While the Panny uses the much smaller MFT sensor, and the Leica a full frame 35mm one, all three share small size, fast response and great viewfinding systems.

Chrome finish:

Thank goodness. Black is for poseurs. Chrome looks amateur and no one will take you seriously on the street.

Interchangeable and zoom lenses:

First let’s get the interchangeable lens issue out of the way. You don’t need it. Street snaps are made, for the large part, with 35-50mm FFE lenses and the Fuji’s 23mm APS-C lens (=35mm FFE) is in that sweet spot. If you think you need an interchangeable lens on the Fuji you are looking at the wrong tool. I have been around the world with a Leica M2 and a 35mm Summicron lens and it met my street snapping needs 90% of the time. The other 10% did not justify lugging extra gear. I did not use it for landscapes, pictures of dangerous wild animals or macro close-ups. Both the Leica and the Fuji are useless for all three and useless for you if that’s your subject matter. Get a DSLR.

Oh! so you want a zoom lens? Never mind the added bulk, the smaller aperture and the greater weight; you can avoid all three as the X100 comes with a zoom built-in.

Here is the zoom device which comes with every Fuji X100, a bargain at under $300. It’s what is known in the trade as an ‘optional accessory’:

Fuji X100 zoom device by Allen Edmonds.

You wanna get closer? Walk!

The Fuji does not include OIS anti-shake technology, which is a shame (it never hurts to keep the camera steadier) but adding it would likely increase bulk and weight. Tough trade off, but I would rather have it included at the cost of an ounce and a millimeter or two.

Is the X100 for you?

Easy to answer. Go to your photo library and summarize your pictures by focal length. I have just shy of 10,000 snaps on the G1 and just over 22% or 2,258 of those have survived the cull. Of those some 1,500 or 70% of the total survivors were taken at 16-18mm, which is the same as a 35mm FFE lens, like the one on the X100. If you end up with similar data, the X100 is for you.

Shutter sound and responsiveness:

This video gives you an excellent idea of both shutter sound and responsiveness. It’s unclear whether there’s a focus delay here, and M9 users can add 2-3 seconds for that as the camera’s manual focus renders it largely unsuitable for modern, super fast response street work – people are much more hip to cameras than in Cartier-Bresson’s day. If focus delay is missing from the video then responsiveness will be slower than this shows:

Shutter sound – with electronic shutter sound off (refresh the page if the video is not visible):

That sounds like a very quiet between-the-lens shutter (think Rolleiflex TLR) which is almost too quiet for street work where you want to hear the shutter to know whether you have caught the moment. The Leica M2/3 were if anything too loud (the M9 is louder still) and it remains to be seen whether the X100 is too soft. You can switch on an electronic ‘beep’ but it’s so objectionable only a boor would consider doing that. You know, the sort of jerk who would think nothing of using his motor driven DSLR in a quiet church and whose wife hails from Texas and is named Mabel.

Size and weight:

Sizes are in millimeters (L x H x D) and include a 35mm f/2 Summicron on the M9 and the 20mm f/1.7 pancake on the G1. Weights exclude lens hoods, which are a total waste of space and function with modern optics – shade the lens with your hand in critical situations, which occur 2% of the time:

Fuji X100: 127 x 75 x 54. 15.6 ozs, best as I can tell.
Leica M9: 139 x 80 x 71.5. 28.8/31.8 ozs (heavier with chrome finish lens)
Panny G1: 124 x 84 x 70.5. 20.5 ozs.

So the Fuji is marginally smaller than the G1 and half the weight of the M9.

Size of the X100 looks about right. It’s no more pocketable than the M9 or G1, but just right for steady hand holding.

Camera strap and lugs:

What do you wanna bet that the X100 will come with one of those ghastly garish manufacturer straps emblazoned with the word FUJI multiple times in 96 point type and just waiting to slip off your shoulder? Like me you will be ordering an Upstrap and installing it on the side lugs, which look like they could have been moved around to the front a bit more for better balance. Hard to judge, but that 8 element f/2 lens will not be light and will make the body want to tip forward. Let’s hope these lugs do not self-detach as was the case with the first batch of Panny G1 bodies.

Battery:

The X100 uses an NP-95 Li-on rechargeable battery. This is a small unit (1800 mAh) and Fuji states it’s good for some 300 snaps. Mercifully, it’s used in other Fuji digital point-and-shoots and retails for some $20, so a spare or two will be called for, given that an 8gB SDHC card will hold some 600 images, good for an intense day’s street work.

Controls:

One of the most promising features of the X100, shared only with the M9 in the digital camera world, is the provision of manual, analog dials for shutter speed and aperture. The X100 also adds +/- 2 stop manual exposure override. The number of times I have messed about with the G1’s push-and-turn front dial to manually override exposure and completely erred because I forgot to reset the thing is legion. Face it. Humans are analog devices. We respond to dials, clicks and turns far better than to digital electronic displays, beeps, flashing lights and push buttons.

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The X100 needs some sort of adapter to fit a clear 49mm protective filter to the lens (How dumb is that? What’s wrong with threading the lens?) so those who baby their gear will have to get one of those. Me? Like Rhett Butler I don’t give a damn. My hobby is making snaps not babying my gear for display in the china cabinet. If you have to baby it, you cannot afford it, be it a Leica, a Porsche or an X100.

Sensor sizes and pixels:

Sensor sizes are in millimeters, pixel count in megapixels:

Fuji X100: 25 x 17 (APS-C). 12.3.
Leica M9: 36 x 24. (FF). 18.0
Panasonic G1: 18 x 13.5. (MFT). 12.1.

If you use the G1 in classical Leica 3:2 aspect ratio, as I do, the pixel count drops to 10.8 owing to masking of part of the sensor area.

Do the math and the pixel density for the Fuji is approximately twice that of the M9 but 35% less than that of the G1 (in 3:2 mode). Time will tell if this is a good thing, though too many pixels tend to hurt resolving power. As the Fuji probably uses the same Sony sensor used in Nikon’s APS-C DSLRs, chances are that it will be fine, as the Nikons have a great reputation for definition.

Viewfinder:

The Leica M cameras have the best optical viewfinders I have ever used. While my M6 flared like crazy into the sun, making the RF patch unusable, the M2 and M3 were superb and I have read that the M9 is as good in terms of flare resistance. The M2 got it right for absence of clutter. You only saw one frame at a time – 35mm, 50mm or 90mm. The M3 showed the clunky 50mm frame at all times plus the 90mm or 135mm when those lenses were fitted, and needed bulky lens attachments for the 35mm lens. I used my M3 with a 35mm ‘bespectacled’ Summaron for aeons and now wonder how I managed to do that. And every other rangefinder M body cluttered the view with multiple frames, typically two per lens, plus the RF patch, of course.

Paris 1976 with the Leica M3 and the clunky ‘bespectacled’ 35mm Summaron.

The Leica M has very neat parallax compensation in the finder system. As you focus closer the frames move diagonally toward the axis of the lens and viewfinding remains more than acceptably accurate down to the minimum focus distance of 39″.

How the X100 does this remains unclear. The camera has three finder systems. The traditional LCD screen on the back (useless for street snapping), an optical finder in the same relative position as the Leica M and an eye level EVF switchable with the optical. I would assume the latter relays the signal from the sensor and, indeed, when activated with the front panel switch, the optical finder’s front is blanked off, so I would guess the eye level EVF offers accurate framing, as does the LCD. Whether the frames viewed in the optical finder offer parallax compensation is presently unclear but likely not a big deal given that the typical street snap is framed at 7-15 feet from the subject, where parallax is negligible. The Panny G1 offers two finders – the LCD and the eye level EVF, the latter 100% accurate and excellent except with bright highlights where it burns out easily. In poor light the G1’s EVF blows the M’s optical finder out of the water, and absent some grain and delay at very low light levels is the best low light finder I have yet used. It leaves pure traditional optical/prism finders, like in the Canon 5D, in the dust.

The X100’s eye level EVF promises the same 1.4 megapixel resolution as the G1’s EVF, so things look promising here. How responsive and grainy it will be remains to be seen.

The X100 seems to offer an in-EVF finder DOF device of some sort. Frankly, if you are in the business of judging DOF while street snapping then you are in the wrong business. Learn your gear’s DOF, memorize it and forget about finder aids.

Focal length and DOF:

DOF is a function solely of focal length and aperture at a given subject distance. A 50mm lens at a stated aperture will have the same depth of field at the same subject distance whether you are using a fingernail-sized sensor in a point-and-shoot or a 4″ x 5″ sheet film camera. Sure, diaphragm shape can alter the look of out of focus detail, but it will not change depth of field. So it’s instructive to compare effective focal lengths and effective apertures at full aperture for the three cameras considered here, equating all to a 35mm f/2 FFE lens.

• The M9 obviously has an FFE of 35mm.
• The X100 will have the DOF of an f/2.8 35mm lens on an FFE body.
• The G1/17mm f/1.7 pair will have the DOF of an f/3.5 35mm lens on an FFE body.

So the M9 offers the shallowest DOF fully open and the G1 the deepest. Not a lot to choose but it remains to be seen whether the X100’s lens is good enough to be used fully open. For what it’s worth, I use the 14-45mm kit zoom on my G1 and at 18mm (35mm FFE) where I use it most it has an effective aperture of f/6.3 or so, leaving way too much sharp and detracting from the subject.

RAW:

I am uninterested in taking digital pictures in anything but RAW format. As a street snapper I have not the time for the niceties of exact exposure measurement, a subject providing one opportunity as often as not, and that a fleeting one. RAW comes into play as it offers far greater processing flexibility to fix the inevitable mistakes. The X100 will ship with SilkyPix RAW conversion software, just as the G1 does. Well, in a word, SilkyPix sucks. Only when Adobe came along with their RAW converter for Lightroom and Photoshop did the G1’s RAW images come into their own, and there will likely be some delay after the release of the X100 before Adobe has added X100 RAW to its application software. Think of it as the cost of early adoption.

Build quality:

Really not all that important. If it holds up for 10-30,000 exposures that’s all you need, as it will be obsolete by then and something better will be available for less. The days when you bought a camera to hand down passed with your father’s Chevrolet.

Speed:

When it comes to street snappers, you can’t have too little weight, bulk or too much speed.

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Will the X100 be this fast?

The Pickpocket. Panasonic G1, kit lens.

Come March, 2011 all will be revealed.

Electric cattle prod wanted.

So Fuji finally posts some sample images from the X100 on its site and, boy, are they real stinkers or what?

Not only is the quality of the photography simply execrable (flowers? FLOWERS?), they look like poorly exposed and processed low quality JPGs. Click the picture below to go to their site:

Click picture for Fuji’s site with originals.

The images include one of a US Mailbox at f/2, with so inappropriate a background that all the burned out highlights make the lens OOF rendition look very poor. They couldn’t even be bothered to get the orientation of the downloaded image correct! Another, the snap of the tree in snow through a barn door, could hardly be exposed or processed more poorly. It looks like something from the days when you used a printing paper two grades too soft with an overexposed original which had burned out whatever goodness ever existed in the highlights.

I mean, gimme a break here. You spend major money developing a camera that every serious photographer cannot wait to get his hands on. You generate major pre-release buzz. You finally provide what looks like a real viewfinder in a digital camera which actually sports analog dials for us analog humans. How much would it take to give away half a dozen of the bloody things to crack photographers at Vogue/Harpers’/National Geographic and have them provide you with a few images, gratis, free and for nothing, that actually do your creation justice? Doesn’t it read ‘The Professional’s Choice’ in the masthead? Instead, Fuji, you have Messrs. Ito and Nakamura or whoever, snappers who have yet to learn the difference between exposure and dropping their underwear in public, make your sample photographs for display to the whole world? Is this the first impression you seek to make?

Let’s hope Fuji’s photographic talent and processing technique are inversely proportional to the quality of the images its new camera is capable of producing.

Now pretty much confirmed at $1,200, with March delivery in the US. I am on the pre-order list at Amazon but, goodness, am I tempted to hit the ‘Delete’ key or what? $1,200 is not chump change, even if it does leave $8,800 change from an M9 with a 35mm Summicron.