Folks say the Fuji X100 is quirky.

[Pablito]

While i was at the dentist today he and I got talking about cameras and his M9 in particular. He said he hadn't used it much as he prefers his X100 i asked him why...... as an answer he handed me his X100 and said I could borrow it for a while and see what I thought. So far i think it's beautiful and I WANT ONE 🙂 It has a thumb thingy and a soft release, it fits into my hand perfectly and I love the viewfinder.
Going to read the manual tonight and go shooting tomorrow ...

Maybe he can lend me his M9.

 

[bgb]

I think if the M9 had been at work with him he would have handed me that ....... the M9 is a bit out of my price range but a very nice camera, I got to play with the M9 last time I visited him.
Your dentist won't loan you his M9 Salssipuedes?

 

[zwarte_kat]

Not so much quirky, but kind of slow in the whole operation. It's in the details really. When you delete a file you have to watch this annoying retro pixel animation. changing the iso is also kind of slow, though with most cameras it's not much faster. I wish they would give the option to put iso on the back dial, instead of a duplicate setting of aperture or shutter speed. Seems so straightforward to me.

Also, when you accidentally press the flash setting button while in silent mode, you get a message saying you cannot use flash. Perfectly fine with that, except that you have to wait annoyingly long till it disappears, and you can't do anything in the meanwhile.

Cameras like the Sony Nex are much more responsive IMO, but I still prefer the Fujis because of the image and formfactor. The menus I like better on the Fuji BTW, and was one of the main reasons I sold the NEX 5N, incredible camera for the money that it is.

 

[gavinlg]

Not so much quirky, but kind of slow in the whole operation. It's in the details really. When you delete a file you have to watch this annoying retro pixel animation. changing the iso is also kind of slow, though with most cameras it's not much faster. I wish they would give the option to put iso on the back dial, instead of a duplicate setting of aperture or shutter speed. Seems so straightforward to me.

Also, when you accidentally press the flash setting button while in silent mode, you get a message saying you cannot use flash. Perfectly fine with that, except that you have to wait annoyingly long till it disappears, and you can't do anything in the meanwhile.

Cameras like the Sony Nex are much more responsive IMO, but I still prefer the Fujis because of the image and formfactor. The menus I like better on the Fuji BTW, and was one of the main reasons I sold the NEX 5N, incredible camera for the money that it is.

With the iso, you can use the rear dial in OVF mode which is quick.
With the flash thing, just turn the volume of the menus and shutter off, don't use silent mode. If you turn the volume off it doesn't disable the flash.

 

[gavinlg]

I found four major quirky things with the camera:

Focus speed and accuracy aside, the thing's closest focus distance without engaging the macro mode is 80cm, a number hidden well in the manual. In the ads they say it focuses to 10cm - which indeed it does, in macro mode, slowly and painfully.

The projected frame line is far from accurate, even for someone who's used to rangefinders. Varies wildly when compared to the 35mm frame line of a M camera. It covers way smaller a field than the actual 35mm FoV, and is often misleading while you're composing. Weird quirk as it's still so with the latest firmware.

The camera can't remember the distance set in manual mode, nor does it have "snap" button like on the Ricoh GR cameras that focuses the lens instantly to a certain distance. Each time you want to perform hyperfocus on the street (and to fully utilize the silence of the leaf shutter), you'll have to go into the manual mode, turn the infamous manual focus dial, listen to the painful whining of the tiny motor, and wait till it goes into the right distance (and adjust it carefully so it doesn't wander beyond). Every time you switched to AF and then back, you'll have to do all these again.

The camera has three sets custom function settings. Unlike almost every other cameras that sport this nice feature, instead of instantly accessible via a button or dial these presets are buried in the menus. Which renders them fairly useless.


It's a camera with nice optics and more importantly an excellent idea. Sadly like almost all cameras of similar design before it, it's not executed very well. Hope they'll be getting (more of) it right with the X200.

All those things except the frameline accuracy issue are just expectations that you've carried from other cameras. Does a canon 1dx or nikon d3 remember where you've focussed in manual mode when you switch to AF and then back to manual? Does it have a 'snap focus' mode? Those things are point and shoot features, The reason the x100 doesn't have them is because it's not a point and shoot. Same with the close up focussing - the fact that it is a rangefinder style camera with a fast 35mm lens and can still focus down to 10cm is incredible - never been done before - would you have preferred it if they just left out the macro focus and kept the 80cm minimum focus distance like every other rangefinder style camera in existence?

 

[Adanac]

Does it have a 'snap focus' mode? Those things are point and shoot features

Snap focus is a very sane zone focus feature for autofocus cameras, especially those designed as go-everywhere cameras and particularly so for cameras that appeal to rangefinder users or wannabes. What type of camera user makes use of zone focus more these days than any other? Probably rangefinder shooters. More makers should rip this elegant zone focus idea off of Ricoh. As the X100 is an autofocus "rangefinder style" camera, the feature surely wouldn't be out of place on it.

But... you can work around this missing feature.

I had the X100 in manual focus mode most of the time, and used AFL to either spot focus and recompose, or used the AFL button to pre-focus at a specific distance(s) having memorized a few useful depth of field ranges for specific apertures. Snap focus would save a step and some memory work.

One problem (may have been addressed with firmware updates) was that the focus target in manual focus mode inexplicably grew much larger. Others have mentioned other AF quirks, some of which have been improved upon by new firmware.

Aperture dance, another quirk.

Occasional but too frequent camera crash/lockup if you move a control or try to operate the menu while the camera is writing an image to the SD card. Very quirky.

Horrible manual focus experience, a big quirk. I'm not saying the camera should act like a manual focus-only camera, but when AF doesn't do the job, MF must, and MF was very painful on this camera. This wouldn't have been so bad if the AF worked reliably in all situations but when you were in a situation where AF didn't work, MF would hardly come to the rescue. This has been improved to some degree by later firmware.

Another quirk which irked me was the single user definable function button and the useless RAW button which took Fujifilm EONS to finally release a firmware update that allowed users to redefine the useless RAW button.

As the minimum shutter speed is limited to 1/1000th at f/2, if shooting out of doors frequently many want to define the Fn button to toggle the ND filter. Back in the day Auto ISO was buried in another menu. If moving from indoors to outdoors and back frequently you could be in a situation where you'd frequently be menu diving because you couldn't assign frequently accessed menu items to more than one function button. Now you can do two, if I understand the changes correctly.

The quirky nature of the camera is well deserved IMO, as it took Fujifilm forever and a day to finally release the firmware for the camera that should have shipped with it on day one. Unfortunately the camera is now nearer the end of its life (X200 bound to come sometime soon) than the beginning. Better late than never?

I had a love hate relationship with my X100, but I do miss the silent shutter in a carry everywhere larger sensor camera, so much so that I've decided to get a RX1. No doubt it'll have quirks as well.

 

[paulfish4570]

mine was not quirky yesterday. i bracketed to get just the right amount of light, then spend some time in PP to get just the BW look i wanted. it ain't film. i've got to get over that ... 🙂

 

[willie_901]

Paul,

I have to use exposure bracketing more. Do you use 1/3 stop steps?

 

[paulfish4570]

willie, i usually start at zero and work down through minus one with the one-third detents. if i'm not liking what i see at -1, i'll go on down to -2. if it's a pretty day, like yesterday, i set the cam at iso 400/bw/yellow filter. i like to keep the highlights from blowing out at all. yesterday, for example, i got the best exposures at that setting, -1.

 

[David_Manning]

I shoot the X100 a LOT and I'm one of its biggest, loudest proponents. Great optics, user-friendly layout, terrific sensor.

With all that said, it's speed of operation slows dramatically when changes need to be made while the camera is writing and thinking.

Simple, non-complicated example...take a nice shot of a friend or family member, then try to activate the strobe and shoot again with some fill. Nope...gotta wait until the buffer is clear and the file is written.

The X100's flexibility is really tremendous, but its SPEED of flexibility disappoints me.

 

[bgb]

I gave beck the X100 that I had on loan from my dentist and after only one day I can say there is a learning curve but it's a fun little camera and I would now seriously consider owning one. Trouble is Fuji are making things hard by introducing the X-Pro and the XE and I hear rumours of a X200 or something like that. An Xpro with a 35mm would be nice but at $1000 more here in NZ I don't know if it's a good investment ... more thinking required or maybe I need to do less thinking :]