New X100 owner - thoughts and questions

[boffen]

I got the X100 today, "unfortunately" I "had" to go to a friend's party, but I took some pictures there, and the first things I noticed is:

- Manual focus is useless when dealing with moving subjects

- The auto-focus works really well in sufficient light, not so well when the light sources consist of a couple of candles and window-light. If the camera had facial recognition, I don't think it'd be an issue at all, though

- The lens is probably the sharpest I've used yet.

- Surprisingly, I find the menus easy to understand and navigate (new firmware), and didn't have any troubles finding the stuff I needed

- Some people complain about the buttons being awkwardly placed and easy to accidentally hit. I have huge hands and fingers and I did not once press something I did not intend to press.

- OVF is beautiful

A couple of questions:

1: The OVF overlay seems to turn grey when shooting in low light, why, and how do I disable it?

2: How do I disable the screen from turning on after I've taken a shot?

I'll probably have some more questions and thoughts as I get to use it more, but for now I'll be glad for any tips you have to offer.

 

[Jim R]

boffen, go to the set-up menu, select Image Display and set to "off". JR

 

[DavidX]

Hi Boffen - I'm sure you will enjoy the camera. As a newcomer myself to the RFF X100 pages, I think you will find (as I did) that there are lots of really useful bits of info here about how some good shooters set their cameras up; I commend you to a good dig through of the threads to see what people are doing. (I would never have used Auto ISO if not for what I read here - now I use it all the time)

On the subject of MF - I too dubbed it "useless" but was shooting landscapes on the weekend and found it was perfect for tweaking the focus distance when used in combination with the DOF scale. I was really pleased it was there!


On the subcted of the OVF frame lines - my observation is that they start off bright, and then, if the camera detects low light they dim down so as not to overpowere the scene.

 

[boffen]

Thanks Jim!

And I agree, the MF would work for subjects that aren't moving, but I mostly shoot "street", and I would never use the MF on the X100 for that. Seeing as it is controlled electronically, I still hope Fuji releases new firmware that allows for adjusting the sensitivity, so that one full turn covers the whole range.

After using the camera some more today, there's a couple of other things I've noticed:

- The camera charger light is green while charging! I thought the green light meant that it was done charging, so I only had enough power to shoot 50 or so pictures today

- Having to turn on macro to autofocus to a close subject is sort of annoying. I guess it makes sense with the OVF, but it's still annoying sometimes. Luckily it's easy and fast to change the settings to macro.

Other than that, and the things that I've already mentioned, I don't see how this camera disappoints people. The X200 will have to be a huge update for me to bother upgrading.