Thoughts on the Fujifilm X100 digital camera series

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These are my notes about the Fujifilm X100 series of digital cameras that I’ve been using since 2013 when I bought an X100S after photographing with Leica M9, M8, and M3 rangefinders and other cameras for many years. Links to videos and photos will appear shortly.

The X100VI by the X100S.

X100VI

I wrote a postcard from Seattle to the boss at Fujifilm with thanks for making the X100VI and asking how to get one more quickly to The Camera Shop in Traverse City, Michigan, where I was on the wait list for the illusive camera after paying an advance in February 2024.

Not sure if the card helped, but I got a call from Molly and drove up to get my X100VI (here’s its manual) in September 2024.

The X100VI is somewhat popular due to social media marketing dance meme craziness and its classic film camera looks inspired by the Leica M3 design. It does deserve to be admired since it’s a very nice digital camera with unique features:

  • Both an electronic viewfinder (EVF) for precise focussing and exposure preview, and, most exciting for this candid photographer, an optical viewfinder (OVF) with a clear view of the real world with a frame over it. Each can be instantly switched to using a lever selector on the front of the camera, and the X100VI can even place a thumbnail of the EVF view on the corner of the OVF, which they call the Electronic Range Finder (ERF) so you get both EVF and OVF simultaneously. Bravo!
  • Weather sealing for wet conditions.
  • Neutral Density (ND) filter.
  • A quiet leaf shutter that lets you sync flash at most any speed.
  • Ability to transfer photos to your pocket computer or up to the “cloud” wirelessly.
  • Giganto 40 megapixel sensor that enables the useful existence of a digital teleconverter so we have 35mm default “seeing” field of view (full frame), 50mm “looking” view (hold your arm out straight and open your hand and that’s roughly the 50mm “normal” HCB view), and 70mm “examining” portrait view. You can also get adaptors to get the 28mm “perceiving” view, and maybe 21mm “sensing” view.
  • High Efficiency Image File (HEIF) format to help your storage media and your pocket manage the big files.
  • Image stabilization for those who want very sharp photographs yet have shaky hands and, or, photograph in the dark.
  • Even Koudelka likes it.

Though it looks like one, the X100VI is not a mechanical rangefinder camera because the control ring of the lens keeps spinning rather than stopping somewhere:

The great advantage of a rangefinder is this: With some practice and experience you can reliably focus the camera without putting it to your eye or pointing it at the subject. You can do this because the lens rotation stops at both far and close focus points and you can judge the focus distance by feeling the relative position of the finger tab on the lens, or, if you’re less experienced, by looking at the distance markings on the lens.

So not the perfect digital camera for this photographer, yet, but given the price of Leicas and their competition, it is close enough.

Thank you, Molly, Gavin, Bob, Jason, Fuji bossess and employees, ship and airplane pilots and controllers, delivery drivers, food, infrastructure, manufacturing, and government staff, artists, tax payers, and everyone else in human civilization, including you, who make the existence of a machine that records moments in time, like this one, possible.

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Notes

Ongoing thoughts about the Fujifilm X100VI will be noted down here and edited into the paragraphs above over time.

  • High ISO images up to 12800 have fine grain and manageable mottling, with little discernible noise patterns.
  • Converting HIF files to DNG makes the fan turn on in my M1 Macbook Pro.

How to turn off Fujifilm X100VI LCD screen with a button press: How to turn off Fujifilm X100VI LCD screen with a button press.

  • Shoots film in Log format. Stereo mic with noise-reduction filter as an option.
  • Many braketing and filter options to create particular effects like panoramas and classic film simulations in-camera (press Drive/Delete button to access the menu).
  • Mechanical ISO selector by lifting the shutter speed dial and rotating it, thus changing the numbers in a little window on the dial. Beautiful old school design.
  • Default ISO sensitivies from 125 to 12800, and auto ISO available so you can set a particular shutter speed or aperture and have the camera automatically change the ISO to get a good exposure. High-sensitify “extended” ISO values of 25600 and 51200.
  • Check focus either on LCD or in the Electronic Range Finder (ERF) by pressing the rear command dial.
  • Story about accidentally dropping and kicking the X100S, which kept on going.
  • Lightroom performance. Is it slow? How are the RAW files without the bayer filter over the sensor?
  • Insert Yakuza 0 reference about difficulty of finding camera, like fighting for real estate in Tokyo.
  • Wanted: Trip to Japan to photograph.
  • 2 million menu settings. Needed to study the manual to understand how to turn a lot of things I don’t need off.
  • X100S candid photos.
  • User interface. Touch screen.
  • Check and report back on battery life of the official Fuji NP-W126S and perhaps other batteries.
  • No charger included (Fujifilm BC-W126S Battery Charger). Needs to be purchased separately. We can charge the battery inside the camera by connecting it to a computer using an included USB-C cable.
  • X100VI is around 50 grams heavier than prior X100s.
  • Tiltable LCD monitor.
  • Manual ISO selector.
  • If uninterested, lazy, or lack the time to develop raw images in your own workflow, there are a selection of film simulation settings that are applied to JPEGs in-camera.

Other interesting still cameras:


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