I reiterate the point about its mainly being a point about negotiating price. Are we really having a discussion where X100 enthusiasts are getting up in arms about having too many features?
Today's users of smartphones and consumer-grade point-and-shoot cameras manage to take really good pictures (meaning well-focused and well-exposed). This is due to the evolution of the equipment: fixed focus zone focus to autofocus to advanced AF. There are also synch-at-any speed leaf shutters, short FL and big-depth-of-field lenses, backlit sensors, and digital TTL flash. It has always been astonishing at how easy it is to get at least a very good picture with what people scoff at as toy cameras. The sad corollary, though, is that the users of these cameras are far less capable of operating so-called "real" cameras. Pre-focusing is ok as long as you are within a static setting, but occasionally other people might be driving this camera, which is very clearly set up to operate as a point-and-shoot when desired (just not one that lags in what today have become key capabilities). And as long as no one accidentally hits the AE/AF lock button and refocuses (not fun either... and this has happened).
That a camera might be over-featured is an argument for Leica users (actually, Leica zealots). The suggestion that the solution is to perfect "your" technique (rather than to wonder why Fuji left a mainstream feature out) is more than a little off: it's not your technique that's the problem; it's idiotproofing the technique of a bystander, a family member or someone else.
The X series, though having control rings and knobs and a hybrid glass viewfinder, is not a lot different under the hood from the Sony NEX, the Samsung NX, or the Micro 4/3 cameras, all of which have very similar and comprehensive feature sets (as well as face-detection AF when it's needed). My surmise - based on the incompetence of the face-detecting remove-redeye feature in the X-Pro - is that Fuji did not want to pay to license the technology or would have to license it from a competitor in the APS-C space.
The bottom line to this is that if it's a normal feature, it's consistent with the market segment the camera inhabits, it can be turned off, and in some circumstances it is helpful, what's the argument against it again? Some kind of uncontrollable urge to use it? They do make a $7,000 hair shirt to help keep that under control.
Dante
