X100 in Cambridge - first photos/thoughts

[Steveh]

So I finally succumbed to the siren call of the X100 on Thursday and took it into town for a two hour spin this morning. I'm pretty impressed so far.

Punts:

The Senate House:

Some shop windows:

And this being Cambridge, a bike

and a door

 

[Steveh]

I know these aren't exactly "RFF style" images, but I think they show pretty well the image quality this camera can produce, which seems very high. These were all taken on aperture priority auto, no exposure compensation that I can recall, and I did almost no PP except for a bit of curves and a little bit of "auto tones" in lightroom. There is some distortion from the lens but the lens correction profile in Lightroom fixes that with a click, and otherwise the quality of the out of camera raw files is great.

One thing that surprised me was that after a couple of tries with the optical viewfinder I switched it to the electonic viewfinder and left it there - the quality of the EVf is very high, and being able to see exactly what's going to be in the shot is useful, even if less "Leica-esque". Otherwise the user experience is great - light, small and very quiet - the digital "walkaround" camera I've been waiting for. Being able to dial in exposure compensation with a real physical dial is fantastic. I'm going to have think very carefully about whether I can justify keeping my M8, let alone two micro 4/3 cams as well!

 

[__--]

Steve,

While the colors seems good, I don't really see the "texture" here that I would want: for exmaple, particularly in pictures no. 1 and 3. I assume that you shot JPGs and the relative lack of tecxture is the result of smoothing by the X100's JPG engine. Is that right? From what I've seen elsewhere from X100 RAW files, I have little doubt about the image quality that the X100 can produce.

—Mitch/Pak Nam Pran
Around Chiang Mai

 

[Steveh]

Hi Mitch - no, these were all shot in RAW and then processed in Lightroom, but reducing them to 800 pixels across for uploading and whatever Flickr does to them probably has more to do with it!

If by "texture" you mean fine detail there's plenty of it in the original files, although not quite up to M8 levels because I assume there's some kind of anti-aliasing filter on the sensor. In the shot of the sweatshirts you can very easily see the texture of the material etc. I certainly haven't noticed any of the kind of detail smoothing you used to get from old skool Canon DSLRs. And I think the quality of the lens shines through, which I was more focussed on - I'm not sure how much you can really tell about IQ from small web files anyway.

Steve,

While the colors seems good, I don't really see the "texture" here that I would want: for exmaple, particularly in pictures no. 1 and 3. I assume that you shot JPGs and the relative lack of tecxture is the result of smoothing by the X100's JPG engine. Is that right? From what I've seen elsewhere from X100 RAW files, I have little doubt about the image quality that the X100 can produce.

—Mitch/Pak Nam Pran
Around Chiang Mai

 

[Michael Markey]

Nice shots Steve .... now is that camera shop opposite Kings still there ?
In the `70s the front window was stuffed full of Barnacks.

 

[Steveh]

Thanks Michael - yes it is, but the window's now stuffed full of digicams, sadly. They have another shop on an alleyway off the Market Square that still has lots of secondhand film cameras and lenses though - I always stop to drool as I'm passing by, and have to stop myself going in and buying some semi-functional old folder that's been sitting in the window for a decade or so 😱.

Nice shots Steve .... now is that camera shop opposite Kings still there ?
In the `70s the front window was stuffed full of Barnacks.