Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Beautiful compact body. Large APS-C sized sensor with outstanding low-light performance and class-leading DxOMark score. Fast f2.0 lens from top-tier lens manufacturer. Innovative optical/electronic view finder. Favorable initial reviews from trusted sources like Luminous Landscape. Could this be the perfect carry-everywhere camera? I could not resist any longer and was fortunate enough to get one from the first batch of Amazon orders. WOOO HOOO!!!!! The camera arrived last week and since it arrived I have been taking pictures with it every day in all the situations where I wouldn't normally bring my GH1 or D3S. Inside and outside. Bright light and low light. People and things. Pictures of friends and family at home, out-and-about, on nature walks, in restaurants, at school. Pictures of food served in restaurants. Pictures of my children's classmates in the classroom and on the playground. Pictures of flowers and bugs and plants. And each picture I took dragged me kicking and screaming and ultimately crying to the unavoidable conclusion that this camera is fatally and tragically flawed. Like the hero of a Greek tragedy, the Fujifilm X100 has the most promising of attributes, each with a fatal flaw, and the outcome is photographic tragedy. This camera has delivered more out-of-focus shots than I have ever experienced in my three decades of photography. Of more than five hundred pictures that I've taken with the X100 in the past week, less than 50 are in focus and only a handful are keepers. With firmware 1.01, the X100 can only reliably take good pictures of stationary well-lit subjects, like static scenes or posed people. Let's start with the innovative optical viewfinder (OVF). It has a white rectangle in the middle that turns green when the camera acquires focus. But the OVF doesn't tell you what part of the scene is in focus and it most definitely is not that white rectangle in the middle. (This is partially mitigated by the 2011/06/24 firmware update.) My only consistent success with the OVF is with static scenes entirely contained in the chosen depth of field, like pictures of a wall. If you want to know what part of the scene is in focus, you must use the electronic viewfinder (EVF). But the EVF has a perceptable lag so you can't use it to time your shutter. And even worse, when you initiate auto-focus, the EVF is momentarily frozen and by the time it unfreezes and you can see your subjects to be in focus and properly framed, your subjects may have moved on, so when you release the shutter you end up with another out-of-focus shot. My only consistent success with the EVF is with static or posed subjects, like the ones that appeared in the Luminous Landscape and Steve Huff reviews. Don't believe me? Check the X100 image samples on dpreview -- there are only two pictures with non-static subjects (DSCF0345, two girls on a rocking horse, DSCF0422 couple hugging), and they're both out-of-focus. I didn't count DSCF0426 (woman in front of mosaic) even though the woman was out-of-focus because the mosaic was the subject. Second consider the fast f2.0 Fuji lens that I have coveted since the X100 was announced at Photokina 2010. It lacks optical image stabilization (OIS). So if you're shooting handheld, you have to keep the shutter above 1/60 or better still 1/125 to avoid handheld motion blur. Its soft at f2.0. So if you want a sharp image, you're going to have to stop down to f2.8 or better yet f4.0. And now you're looking a camera that's not so great at low light anymore unless you stick it on a tripod and what's the point of a compact camera that must be mounted on a tripod? Third the auto-focus. It only works well for subjects that are well front-lit. As the light decreases or moves behind the subject, the X100 quickly gets to the point where it can't auto-focus at all even with the very intrusive AF assist light. "No problem," I thought, "I'll switch to manual focus and use this beautiful focus ring on the front of the camera". But that focus ring is only tenuously connected to the camera's focus point, and the connection is 100% electronic. You can turn the focus ring 10 times in the same direction and still the focus will only have changed a tiny bit. Even something so basic as using the ring to move the focus to the closest focus point (4") or the farthest focus point (infinity) is 100% unpredictable and 100% annoying. So if you want to acquire accurate focus, you have to use the auto-focus with the EVF, a wide f-stop, and the scene better be well front-lit or the auto-focus will hunt hunt hunt and never acquire focus. Fourth the camera's controls. The X100 has dedicated controls for aperture, shutter speed, and exposure compensation. As expected, you change those settings whenever you want and they take effect immediately (provided you don't switch between automatic and manual modes). The X100 also has a dedicated ring for manual focus and dedicated buttons for metering, auto-focus point position, changing OVF/EVF/LCD, macro mode, flash, white balance, shooting mode (aka "drive"), menu, and a custom function button that can be set to the ND filter or ISO (among others). Unfortunately you cannot use any of those controls or change any of those settings while the camera is recording an image. With a premium 30MB/s Sandisk Extreme SDHC card, the X100 takes between 7 and 10 seconds to record a single RAW+JPG image and 30 seconds to record a burst. During that time, you can't switch between the OVF/EVF/LCD, change the metering mode, move the auto-focus point, manually set the focus, turn the ND filter on or off, change the ISO, or turn the flash on or off. Nor can you switch between auto-aperture and manual aperture, or between auto-shutter and manual shutter while the camera is saving an image. That's right, after every picture the X100 controls are frozen for 7-30 seconds, including the manual focus ring. It's so difficult to believe, so out of the range of thinkable thought, that few reviewers have noticed it. It's annoying if you're shooting a static scene, but the scene isn't changing so you can just wait until the red light stops blinking and then change your settings. But if you're recording a dynamic scene, it's intolerable. That's the synopsis of Greek tragedy that is the Fuji Finepix X100. All the desirable attributes of a camera in a camera that can only consistently take good pictures of well front-lit static or scripted scenes. Over the past week, I grew to appreciate my Nikon D3s even more by way of contrast with the X100. I realized that my D3s is big and heavy but it is the ultimate clutch camera. No matter what the photographic situation, I am sure to walk away with some outstanding shots from the D3s. The Fuji X100 is the exact opposite - in most photographic situations, I am likely to walk away with no good shots at all. The Fuji X100 is the ultimate choke camera. There are some other problems with the camera that I would gladly overlook if the camera could take more in focus pictures. But I'll include them anyway in case you wouldn't be able to overlook them. The camera is uncomfortable to shoot one-handed. It's significantly heavier than a LX3 or GH1 w/ 20mm f1.7. It doesn't have a grip and the front is covered with slippery plastic material so that when shooting one-handed you have to support it from the bottom with your pinkie, which quickly becomes uncomfortable. Even my monster D3s with the 24-70mm f2.8 zoom is more comfortable to shoot one-handed than the X100. There's one customizable "function" button but no dedicated button for ISO, the ND filter, for burst mode, or to take a movie. I set it to the ND filter, which means I have to trust to the (mostly good) auto ISO setting. The 720p24 movies that the X100 takes are good, although they are often out-of-focus and the camera is very slow to reacquire focus. If I had to take a movie, I'd pick my GH1 and TM700 far ahead of my LX3, D3s, or X100. Next on the list (and far down) I would probably pick the D3s with manual focusing even though I dislike manual focusing - at least I could choose an appropriate lens for the situation and there's always hope that the movie would be in focus and if not I could only blame myself. The LX3 movies are always in focus but the colors are faded and grainy even in bright light so I would more likely take a chance on the X100 than enduring the LX3 movies. The X100 can capture more detail in a static well-lit scene than the Nikon D3s does with a similar number of pixels. The colors in the RAW files are chalky and the greens in the RAW files are very brown. Not sure how this affects the JPEG conversion since my favorite RAW program (DxO) doesn't yet support the Fuji X100. The menus aren't any better or worse than the menus from Panasonic, Canon, or Nikon. The lack of "menu resume" is annoying. The on-camera flash is excellent. Somehow Fuji has programmed the on-camera flash to emit just the right amount of flash to improve the picture. It's the only camera I have with a built-in flash where direct flash pictures can often look better than non-flash pictures. To save batteries, I turn off image review, turn on "OVF power save mode", and reduce the LCD intensity, so I haven't yet had a problem with battery life. I appreciate that Fuji decided to use one of their standard batteries and chargers instead of making a new battery size for every camera like Panasonic does to my great annoyance. Ultimately, the Fuji Finepix X100 is a very limited use camera. It can't replace an LX3, GH1, D7000, or D3s. In perfect conditions it is capable of taking better images than any of those cameras, but in real world use it is unlikely to do so. You broke my heart, Fuji. **Update 2011/06/24** On June 24, 2011, Fujifilm provided a firmware update 1.10 that claims to fix an astounding twenty two defects in the camera. Most of the repaired defects were related to inconsistencies in the user interface. The 1.10 firmware also adds a "Corrected AF Frame" feature that appears to improve the operation of the OVF. According to the updated X100 user manual (p.87), "A second focus frame for focus distances of about 80cm will be added to the display in the optical viewfinder. The focus frame for the current focus distance is displayed in green when the shutter button is pressed halfway." I no longer have an X100 to test, but it sounds like the corrected AF frame gives a better idea of what the camera is focusing on when using the OVF.