My review of the RFF X100 ...the good and the not so good!

[Keith]

First of all let me say that if you think criticism of this camera on my part is paramount to looking a gift horse in the mouth you may want to find another X100 thread to read. Freebee or no freebee I feel obliged to be honest about what I think of the camera so far. 🙂

The Fuji is an absolute jewel in the hands and the optical viewfinder is a pure delight ... the EVF however is god awful IMO and considering that the camera is virtually impossible to focus manually due to poor response from the focusing ring it serves little purpose aside from being a piece of clever technology. I also believe that the complexity of the hybrid finder is one of the camera's main vulnerabilities and will compromise it's longevity ... if that term can ever be applied to a digital camera!

The camera's controls are a little squeezy and appear to be designed for a child's hands but they do the job and I'm happy enough with their locations and the way they function ... this side of the Fuji's ergonmics work well for me so as a subtle shooter it has no peer IMO. Turn off all the geeky sounds and this camera becomes the true silent ninja ... a Leica M is an elephant in the room by comparison, so if you can't take decent street photos with this thing then you should give up that genre because a better, virtually unnoticable street shooting tool is hard to imagine. The autofocus is plenty fast enough for me but does seem a little hit or miss at times ... I find the same thing with my D700 so I'm happy to accept the fact that it's not a perfect system and you learn to live with it when it's your only option aside from zone focusing.

I'm not going to bang on about file/image quality because it's definitely good enough, though I have to say ISO 3200 looks like soup compared to my D700! That said, I don't actually care too much because I really get no joy from the clean precise look of digital images at lower ISO's and tend to seek the higher settings so I can 'embrace' the noise and celebrate it like we celebrate grain with film!

By the way my personal default settings for this camera are as follows:

Aperture priority
Raw
All sounds off
DR 100%
ISO 3200
ND filter on ... which gives me an effective shooting ISO of 400

Settings like image review and power off times etc are neither here nor there and have no effect on image quality so I won't deal with them.



Now the bad which involves a problem I'm having with the camera and the performance of the lens:

A couple of days ago the camera started doing some odd things. It was under exposing by three stops with the ND filter off and between five and six with it on. I noticed it when out of the blue, the camera suddenly selected around 1/60 sec in AE for a scene in open full sun at f16 when I was using an effective ISO of 400! (3200 with ND engaged) I turned the ND filter off, selected ISO 400 and took a photo in full sun at f16 and manually selected 1/500 shutter speed and got the same result ... very under exposed! I did a reset to return the camera to factory defaults and tried again and got exactly the same result. If I manually set the shutter speed three stops slower than what the light was telling me it was fine ... perfect exposure in fact! The interesting thing is that in AE the camera's metering is compensating for whatever is going on and giving a decent exposure but at a three stop slower shutter speed than it should ... so the problem is obviously ISO related and will have something to do with the ND filtering software for sure.

I removed the battery and put it on charge over night and tested the camera the next morning by using it manually and it was fine ... it had reverted back to normal. Then out of the blue it went feral again and started under exposing three stops once more and nothing I did changed it. I rang DCW where I got the camera and told them what was happening and that I was bringing it over to show them the problem. Before I left I checked the firmware as I faintly hoped an update may sort it but it's already the current version 1.1 so no go there.

This is where it get's really tedious ... DCW are way on the other side of town and Friday traffic in Brisbane is not fun! When I got there and tried to expain what was happening I got treated like some old fart who had bought a piece of modern technology that he didn't understand and the young guy behind the counter really got up my nose by explaining to me that a lot of digital cameras under expose slightly, in fact he'd noticed it with his Canon DSLR! When I explained that the camera was producing images in manual mode that were three stops under exposed based on sunny sixteen he looked blank so I expalined the basic full sun, f16 and ISO as shutter speed principal to him. He didn't grasp it so I took him outside with his Canon DSLR and told him to set the camera on manual, the lens to f16, the shutter to 1/500 and the ISO to 400 and take a pic looking up the road and review the image ... which he did and it was correctly exposed of course! "OK, watch this!" I said and did the same thing with the Fuji expecting the three stop under exposure and wouldn't you know it, it had gone back to the 'good Fuji' just to make me look like a complete idiot and no amount of coaxing would make it play up ... for the hour I was there trying to get the damned thing to repeat it's behaviour it worked perfectly! The really annoying thing is that no one in that place thinks it has ever done otherwise and I'm just another customer who doesn't understand how 'modern' cameras work!

I left unimpressed and so far (touch wood) the camera has retained it's integrity ... though no doubt that could change in a moment and if it does this time I'll be keeping under exposed images with the exif data to verify the problem. I should have done this in the first place but assumed the camera would still be acting the same way when I got there. To be honest I don't really think that anyone in that place has a clue about the basics of exposure so I'd probably be wasting my time and may deal directly with Fuji if the problem persists.


On to the lens!


I don't care what anyone says ... it's incredibly flare prone from a strong light source just out of frame. It may be sharp but I have a battered old Summitar that probably wouldn't be as bad as my posted examples show the Fujinon to be. These were taken with the camera well inside a room in full shade and the light source that has caused this flare was to the left and several metres away ... and was in fact just a bright outside sky through a door in one pic and a window in the other. The door and window also have a deck over them that extends a fair way out so this light source is diffused and not close to the camera at all.

I took photos from exactly the same positions as the X100's rather flarey examples with my D700 fitted with the budget Nikkor 35mm f2-AFD lens for comparison. All photos are at f2 straight from the camera with no adjustments and they were shot in AE with both. Blind Freddy could see the difference here ... the Fuji may improve a little with a hood but I don't have one as yet ... but then again the 'crappy' (barrel distortion queen) 35mm Nikkor didn't have one and it wasn't fazed at all.

My Conclusion:

It's a great camera and I just plain love it but with a few obvious warts that Fuji need to get right next time! I also think that they may have dropped the ball a little with quality control but I'll forgive them because there's a lot going on inside this little camera and potentially more to go wrong. However, I really don't think they've done their homework with the lens ... no modern high end camera optic should behave like this IMO.

My rating out of ten ..... **********

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramble. (if you did!) 🙂

 

[gavinlg]

Interesting that exposure problem Keith - don't you love it when you go to show someone and it behaves itself? I had a similar thing happen at the Melbourne Michaels Camera store looking at an old Olympus FTL (screw mount) that was labelled as 'not working'. Myself and the salesguy took it outside, set the ISO to 400, shutter speed to 1/500 and the aperture to f16 and the meter showed a near spot on reading. The sales guy had no clue what I was doing and maintained that the meter didn't work. I got the camera for fairly cheap and have been happily using it since 🙂

Otherwise, no review is complete without some examples in use - post some pics!

 

[functus]

Thank you for this, Keith. That flare issue might be problematic if you want to use this as an available light shooter indoors ...

 

[bigeye]

Keith: Thanks for the review for adults. I hope the issues work out for you; a good software update may sort it out.

Are the blue springs objet d'art or are you lifting the Pajero? You have to be careful what you post on the web.

- Charlie

 

[elshaneo]

Keith,

Thanks for your honest review mate 🙂

In that case, I'll wait for the second hand prices of this camera by next year to be much more reasonable, then I might go for it...

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I hope Fuji gets a new version of firmware out to fix the obvious bugs and to come up with a manual focus that is usable. I have not read anything good about the manual focus operation. The hardware sounds like it is limited by the early firmware.

Thanks for the honest review.

 

[DavidX]

Bad luck with the exposure thing; I just tried playing around with the ND to see if mine would misbehave, but it did not. I'm totally stumped with Auto ISO and manual mode though - the metering goes all over the place and I just cannot understand it! (figure it's me though)

I concur with 3200 looking really nice, but to me it looks pretty much the same as the D700 at 3200 (just looking at OOC jpegs mind) That was one thing that really impressed me early on.

Hope you continue to enjoy.

 

[JoeV]

Great review, Keith. Honest and up front. Sorry to hear about the problems with the camera.

I was an early adapter to the micro-4/3 cameras, receiving my G1 in December of 2008. Right out of the box, intermittently, it would shoot weird, hazy black-and-white only images. I called Panasonic Direct, whom I bought it through, about two weeks later, and had to get it shipped to them and fixed rather than repaired, due to the time that I procrastinated in dealing with it, hoping that the problem would just "go away." It didn't.

My advice is to just get it replaced or repaired while it's new and under warranty. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to do.

I've had my G1 ever since, it's taken thousands of pictures flawlessly since being repaired, and I have no reservations about owning it, except in procrastinating up front in getting it replaced (I lost about a month of shooting waiting for it to get repaired). In the end, I had to send Panasonic the RAW files to prove the problem was real (it was intermittent) and they replaced it. And you can't easily email a raw file (they're too big), BTW. Had to rig up an FTP protocol to send it to them.

As for the EVF in the X100, have you tried out those in the Panasonic G-series for comparison? I'd like to know if the problems you have in liking the EVF is the camera or just EVFs in general. For my purposes, I've really learned to like the G1's EVF, but I can see where a great optical VF is likeable, too. The thing I value a good EVF over an optical-only VF is being able to see depth of field changes in the live-view image, real-time, before the picture is taken. For me, this is more important than some of the negative artifacts of EVFs. And also being able to view the live scene in black and white.

Good luck with your camera, keep us posted.

~Joe

 

[M4cr0s]

Thanks for an interesting report and samples!

You shouldn't have issues like those you describe with a camera in this price range, nor in 2011. Period.

Now, I simply can't get mine to flare like that in similar conditions (hard to replicate intensity of the light though). In fact I've noticed very little flare in the 6-700 shots I've made with it so far in various conditions (just tried at various angles in front of my windows that get direct sunlight), both with and without a hood. I do however concur that it can and will flare, perhaps more easily than many other lenses. One thing I've noticed is that the lens is a bit soft or dreamily low contrast at F/2.0 when focusing close (~1m and closer). The folks at Fuji is aware of this as the suggest a minimum aperture of F/4.0 for "macro".

In terms of sharpness, distortion and overall IQ I find the lens amazing and certainly better than the 35 F/2.0 AF-D, especially for corner performance already wide open when the focus point rests more than a couple of meters from the camera. IMHO, on a crop sensor you'd need something like a 24 1.4G (or perhaps one of the Zeiss'es) to get equivalent or better IQ. There simply aren't that many good primes in the ~24mm range for F-mount - most of the older Ai and AF-Ds are just so-so and the Fujinon certainly beats the hat of most zooms, maybe except of the beastly 14-24.

This camera clearly have quite a few warts, as you say. It is however the most enjoyable thing I've ever shot (never owned a Leica) and I love my many Nikon SLRs/DSLRs and various old rangefinders to death.

Anyway, good luck with yours, I hope things work out of the best (and that we get a nice, juicy firmware update sooner or later)!

Mac

 

[Gid]

Keith, it may be worth checking what the DR is set to. Its setting affects the ISO used and I think I read somewhere that there was a problem of underexposure when importing raw images to LR if the DR was anything other than standard (100%). Also worth noting that each setting - AE, auto, manual etc retains their own shooting settings - ISO, DR etc are not global, so you need to go into each shooting mode and set each parameter.

As far as flare is concerned, I had the exact same problems with mine (in some cases much worse) and I was using the Fuji hood. However, since I've taken off the cheap UV filter I was using I haven't been able to replicate the flare problems.

As regards the EVF, I'm not a great fan of them, but this is as good as the Olympus VF2, which means its about as good as it gets at the moment.

Remember that focusing in OVF mode, the focus point can be anywhere in the focus box - provided that everything it that box is on the same plane, you're fine, if not, it becomes hit and miss at large apertures. The problem arises because of parallax and at shorter distances. You can check the point of focus by using the command switch at the top right to cycle through the shooting info in image review - third screen. You may be surprised where it has focused. Once you know this then you can account for it.

This is a camera where RTFM is an absolute must - from cover to cover. There is also a "Fuji Guys" video (youtube?) that is worth watching because they cover off some of the "interesting" aspects of this camera.

I still don't "love" mine, but I am liking it a lot more now.

 

[willie_901]

Another View

Another View

Fuji explains that F stops below 4 are susceptible to spherical abberation artifacts.

http://www.finepix-x100.com/en/story/

Road to the F2 aperture value.
Designing an F1.6 or F1.8 lens is not so difficult; however, in the case of a digital camera, even if an aperture larger than F2 is used, the light receiving elements on the sensor cannot effectively use the brighter portion of the incoming light because of low incident light gathering efficiency.

Also by choosing an aperture of F2, it is possible to achieve a higher MTF* level when the aperture is closed to F4, F5.6, F8, etc. In most photographic situations, we envisage that users will often use an aperture that is 1 to 2 stops higher than F2. Therefore, in designing the lens, we put a priority on capturing superior quality photos with exceptional expression of detail in the aperture range of F4 to F5.6.


I have no problem with criticism of Fuji's lens design philosophy, but that's how the camera works.

The artifacts are enhanced by bright light sources as you demonstrated. While a lens hood will help, but the spherical abberation is inherent to the design. So when bright light is just outside of the fame and at certain angles, the spherical abberation is a problem at apertures wider than F 4. Otherwise, the results at F 2 are sharp and have proper contrast. At F 2 the extreme corners of the frame are not as good as those from the Biogon 35/2 or even pro Nikon glass at 35/2 and 2.8. But they do not fall apart as they did with my Nikkor 12-24/4 at all apertures. I prefer the results from the X100 lens compared to the LUMIX 20/1.7... but not they are really quite similar.

While I find your default parameter to be unusual (ISO 3,200 with ND on at all times), there is no reason whatsoever the camera should not be 100% reliable with these settings. Perhaps you should contact Brandon Remler so he can add this problem to the known list of firmware issues (http://www.brandonremler.com/).

I find manual focus to be useful and practical. I use manual focus with the OVF regularly. I use the AFL button to let AF find the initial focus point (this only works in OVF mode). Then a half-press of the shutter displays the equivalent of a lens-barrel focus scale. Visual examination of the scale quickly confirms focus. Or, for critical focus a press of the command switch zooms the display (in either EVF or OVF). Because focus is now close due to the AFL press, turning the lens focus dial become practical. Pressing the command switch again returns to full display (including OVF if that's where you started. This is very similar to how I used the LUMIX G1. Manual focus operation is frustrating without getting the focus close using the AFL button.

I hate electronic sounds on a camera. However I found that turning on the focus confirmation beep (and no other sounds) greatly improved my ability to operate the camera with confidence. The focus beep is the only trust worthy confirmation of focus capture in AFS mode. The confirmation beep not that loud and without it understanding of how to make best use of the AF system is difficult (for me anyway).

I use the following parameters and find the camera to be completely reliable.

ISO = 200 (set in AFC, AFS and M focus modes)

Auto IS0 = yes, maximum ISO = 1600 (maximum native ISO)

Fn button = ND filter select

AE mode, meter mode = multi

OVF (EVF for distances less than 6 ft or when AF capture is tricky)

Macro Mode: minimum F stop = 4

Focus mode = M or AFS

Focus confirmation sound = on

Dynamic range = 100% (other settings affect auto ISO operation)

RAW only

 

[ampguy]

Great review Keith. Thanks. The flare images also show some orangish cast?? Perhaps the lens was designed with b/w in mind?

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

in the few shots I've taken with an X100, the lens seemed fine to me. no weird flare and stuff whatsoever.

 

[Richard G]

Just got mine. The lens is great, less distortion than I feared from some of the architectural shots I've seen here. The high ISO performance for me, with nothing to compare but digicam or film, is stunning. I've used manual with the AFL/AEL button. AF will struggle with some shiny objects. Having mastered the Hexar manual and menu options I've found this pretty easy. I've run through half the manual only and find the whole set up reasonably intuitive, but I have to acknowledge the head start from discussions here on RFF. I'm not shedding a tear for my Ms yet, but the manual exposure simplicity of this and the relatively easy access to manual focus compared to anything else electronic I've tried is going to make this a trustworthy camera for so many situations. Those framelines in the optical viewfinder have to be seen to be believed. So far I've found this to be better than advertised.

 

[dave lackey]

So, Keith, how does a single lens-thingy suit you? I am having fun with the XA2, but the single lens thing drives me crazy as 50mm is my Leica norm and I am so used to having the zoom lenses and choice of primes on my Nikons. I cannot imagine being stuck with a single lens camera without carrying either of the rangefinders, SLR's, or DSLR's along with it.

IMO, the XA2 is perfect for those occasions when you just can't carry anything else along but those are short-duration and infrequent events for me. The IQ doesn't even compare to what I use to work with professionally, but it's stealthiness offsets that somewhat.

Fixed lens cameras, to me, are fill-in cameras, not primes.

 

[peripatetic]

Keith a question:

Why would you set the ISO higher and use the ND filter if you don't have to? Why not just drop the ISO and turn off the ND filter?

Perhaps I'm missing something but you seem to be deliberately choosing two settings which I would expect to degrade the image (even if only slightly in the case of the ND filter).

 

[Keith]

Keith a question:

Why would you set the ISO higher and use the ND filter if you don't have to? Why not just drop the ISO and turn off the ND filter?

Perhaps I'm missing something but you seem to be deliberately choosing two settings which I would expect to degrade the image (even if only slightly in the case of the ND filter).

I suppose it does seem a little counter intuative but that setting is based on my preference for the slightly 'dirty' look of digital files shot at higher ISO's. It allows me to use an effective ISO of 400 which also means being able to use the lens at f2 a lot more of the time. I also like the option of a little motion blur occasionally which is pretty unlikely at ISO 3200 unless you stop the lens down or are shooting in the near dark. When I first read the specs of the camera and saw that it had the built in three stop ND filter I instantly thought of being able to use it in this way.

Getting back to the EVF ... I don't think it's that I'm against EVFs in principal it's more to do with the fact that the camera's manual focusing system isn't really practical unless you have the time to faff about a fair bit ... it does work but it's rather clunky IMO. I do really like the camera though and oddly since the drive across town to the store it's behaved perfectly. 😛

I took some macro shots with it today and I think it's very good in this mode. The camera seems to have really delighted all the street shooters with it's charms and amazing viewfinder but I think it has a greater versatility that takes it way beyond the street genre. If you were happy with the 35mm perspective you could comfortably live with it as an 'only' camera IMO.

 

[Spyro]

nice floor 🙂

when it starts playing up try with auto iso and see what happens. Also, have you set a min shutter speed?

 

[oftheherd]

Nice review Keith. Strange behavior it had there. Hopefully no more. Glad you like its good atributes enough to keep using it. Looking forward to seeing some photos from it without flare. That really surprised me. The Fujinon lenses I have are difficult to get to flar.

 

[peripatetic]

Can you get it to flare at normal ISO?

Could it be an artifact of the high ISO and ND settings?