Looks promising.

If it really is responsive, quiet and has a decent viewfinder, you will find me at the front of the line for the Fuji FX100. This is much more than the ‘Leica M9 for the rest of us’. It’s not just the price, it’s the automation. The Fuji has autofocus and shutter or aperture priority auto-exposure. The M9 has only the latter.

Sure, the lens cannot be changed, but as a single purpose street snapper, you don’t need that anyway. What you want is fast – no fiddling with exposure or focus or this or that. Just press the button. C’mon, gimme the snap.

So Fuji’s new site (mostly English, though some page turns get you to pure Japanese) is welcome.

Just look at the complexity of the design of that aspherical lens element!

35mm equivalent f/2 lens in the Fuji FX100

Emphatically not your father’s 35mm Summicron!

Yesterday’s news. The superb 35mm Asph Summicron which I used for years on my M2.

So it doesn’t look like Fuji is skimping on the optics, but the key variables remain to be assessed – speed, viewfinding and noise.

Still, I find lots to be excited about here.

To enter the FX100 site, click the picture below.

Click to enter the Fuji FX100 web site. Needs Flash, so no iPad! Thanks, Mr. Jobs, for being such a jerk.

Looks promising.

Fuji expects to release its new FX100 in early 2011 and, on paper, it’s the nearest thing yet to the street snapper’s ideal – a fully automated Leica M2 with a 35mm lens and digital imaging.

The fact that so many are getting over-excited by this announcement is indicative of the pent-up demand for such a camera – it uses a 12.3 megapixel APS-C sensor and a 35mm equivalent focal length high quality f/2 lens. Memories of the 35mm Leica Summicron of yesteryear but with autofocus added.

The Fuji FX100 high quality street snapper.

The camera uses traditional analog dials for aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, as this discloses:

Top view – note the ‘A’ on the shutter speed dial for aperture priority exposure automation.

Exposure automation is either aperture priority (the camera sets the shutter speed) or shutter priority (by setting the Aperture ring to ‘A’). The texture of the body covering looks similar to that of the rubberized version so well used on the Leica M through the M4 after which it went downhill.

Shutter priority automation is available by setting the aperture ring to ‘A’

Most importantly, the camera just looks right and what causes the pulse to quicken is the inclusion of a proper eye level viewfinder. Not only does this promise a high quality EVF 1.44 megapixel image with data display (same definition as in the Panasonic G1 and GH1) it can also be switched from EVF to traditional optical viewfinder mode. Now the magnification is only 0.5x full size (the G1/GH1 are 0.7x life size), a tad on the small side (the Leica M2 is 0.72x by comparison) but anything, just anything, beats the awful LCD display used by everyone else as the sole viewfinding device in 100% of competing cameras – OK, absent the ridiculously priced and antiquated Leica M9. Let’s hope the optical finder is not a dog – here the Leica sets the standard though the clutter of finder frames in the M9 is awful compared to the one-frame-at-a-time of the M2.

The Leica X1 is an also-ran here. No viewfinder, slow to start retracting lens and silly-priced at $2,000. Strictly for the Rolex set – people who need to show everyone they are checking the time …. or taking a picture.

Three big questions need to be answered:

• How responsive is the shutter release?
• How fast is the autofocus?
• How quiet is it?

Oh! yes, and there’s always that small issue of price. Fuji is a low volume manufacturer so it’s unlikely to enjoy the economies of scale of the majors, so this will not be cheap. Rumors have it at $1,400 which seems too much. At $1,000, if it’s responsive, I’m interested. And you should be too if street work is your thing. And you certainly do not need interchangeable lenses for the camera’s design brief – street snaps.

I have no qualms about the optical quality of the lens. Fuji is a long time designer and manufacturer of high quality large format lenses and also makes the optics for the Hasselblad digital range of cameras. These people are skilled optical designers.

Dimensions?

Fuji FX100 – 127 x 75 x 54mm.

Leica M2 – 138 x 77 x 34mm – and that 34mm swells to some 73mm when you attach a 35mm lens.

So the FX100’s size is just right; not so small as to be fiddly, but more compact than a Leica M with like functionality.

Weight?

Fuji FX100 – not yet disclosed, but I would guess 16 ozs. That f/2 8 element aspherical glass element lens will not be light.

Leica M9 + 35mm Summicron – 32 ozs – no lightweight as Leica refuses to use modern composite materials in its obsolete design.

Now what is needed is something at the $700 price point from Panny, Canon and Nikon with like features,