Fuji X100s
Test album done with a camera and a technology that inspired people over the past one or two years. The Fuji X100s is said to be the newest iteration of Fuji X technology (resolved AF, resolved operation speed, etc…), sporting the newest X-Trans sensor. Prior to shooting I have read Zach Arias’ article on the camera and my friend Charles Lanteigne’s article as well.
After thorough shooting, I have concluded that this camera and the fujifilm brand caters to people who love shooting with fujifilm film rolls and hate retouching their images.
The Fuji X100s does a few of things right. Experiencing such pleasures is quite motivating to keep using that camera. Makes me wish other cameras had them.
- Images out of camera: They are gorgeous, film-like and very pleasing as opposed to the standard AWB digital look of other cameras. The reason why I believe a lot of people shoot film is that the colors of film don’t require must retouching to be beautiful. So does the images from the X100s. As such, you spend less time in front of the computer and more time shooting.
- Style: The camera is gorgeously retro and operates “kinda” well.
- Provides film-style controls where shutter and aperture are assigned to dial and lens.
- Dat ND filter makes shooting in sunlight enjoyable
- Digital publishing: The images are gorgeous on any digital screen.
From there, it falls apart…
- Images are unusable in conventional ways of digital processing (Lightroom in particular handles badly the files). Files stand up horrible when seen up close. While many of my fujifilm owner friends are trying to convince me to play around with alternative ways of processing, I am not ready to give up my workflow for a more complicated and time consuming one. This just break the camera for me.
- AF is reliable 1/3 of the time, often missing its target
- Hybrid viewfinder mechanism gets stuck in the middle of switching
- The EVF is disgustingly slow and hard to use (coming from the OMD and the NEX-6), so I end up using just the optical which is nice
- Navigating the laggy Fujifilm UI is a frustrating mess
- The system needs to drop out of shooting mode to reboot into preview mode
- In preview mode, you need to enter a “burst” folder in order to view all the burst shots you’ve shot.
- It’s really hard to check to see if your image is in focus or is sharp
- The list goes on and on…
In the end, using the camera is an exercice in patience and frustration for a digital camera user providing files that aren’t optimal for post-processing and an unreliable operation that frustrates more than rewards. Yet with a film approach, the process could turn into a happy ending thx to controls that make the camera operate on a similar path as film. The fact that the camera produces gorgeous out of camera images saves a whole lot of computer time for the people who don’t know much about digital post-processing.
Fuji X100s
Test album done with a camera and a technology that inspired people over the past one or two years. The Fuji X100s is said to be the newest iteration of Fuji X technology (resolved AF, resolved operation speed, etc…), sporting the newest X-Trans sensor. Prior to shooting I have read Zach Arias’ article on the camera and my friend Charles Lanteigne’s article as well.
After thorough shooting, I have concluded that this camera and the fujifilm brand caters to people who love shooting with fujifilm film rolls and hate retouching their images.
The Fuji X100s does a few of things right. Experiencing such pleasures is quite motivating to keep using that camera. Makes me wish other cameras had them.
- Images out of camera: They are gorgeous, film-like and very pleasing as opposed to the standard AWB digital look of other cameras. The reason why I believe a lot of people shoot film is that the colors of film don’t require must retouching to be beautiful. So does the images from the X100s. As such, you spend less time in front of the computer and more time shooting.
- Style: The camera is gorgeously retro and operates “kinda” well.
- Provides film-style controls where shutter and aperture are assigned to dial and lens.
- Dat ND filter makes shooting in sunlight enjoyable
- Digital publishing: The images are gorgeous on any digital screen.
From there, it falls apart…
- Images are unusable in conventional ways of digital processing (Lightroom in particular handles badly the files). Files stand up horrible when seen up close. While many of my fujifilm owner friends are trying to convince me to play around with alternative ways of processing, I am not ready to give up my workflow for a more complicated and time consuming one. This just break the camera for me.
- AF is reliable 1/3 of the time, often missing its target
- Hybrid viewfinder mechanism gets stuck in the middle of switching
- The EVF is disgustingly slow and hard to use (coming from the OMD and the NEX-6), so I end up using just the optical which is nice
- Navigating the laggy Fujifilm UI is a frustrating mess
- The system needs to drop out of shooting mode to reboot into preview mode
- In preview mode, you need to enter a “burst” folder in order to view all the burst shots you’ve shot.
- It’s really hard to check to see if your image is in focus or is sharp
- The list goes on and on…
In the end, using the camera is an exercice in patience and frustration for a digital camera user providing files that aren’t optimal for post-processing and an unreliable operation that frustrates more than rewards. Yet with a film approach, the process could turn into a happy ending thx to controls that make the camera operate on a similar path as film. The fact that the camera produces gorgeous out of camera images saves a whole lot of computer time for the people who don’t know much about digital post-processing.