Sunday, May 29, 2011

Fuji X100: A few more shots

The X100's growing on me. It's very quirky for sure, and even difficult to use at times, but the image quality's great. I wish I could screw some more lenses onto it.

I took these yesterday at a makeshift war memorial - the soldiers' boots represent Virginia soldiers killed in action. The X100's built-in ND filter let me shoot the shot with the flags at f/2...but auto ISO chose 3200. Huh?




Saturday, May 14, 2011

Fuji X100: Some rock and roll pics

I've been diligently carrying the X100 around everywhere I go until I have to give it back. I'm learning to live with many of its quirks, and I'll publish a "tips" post once I'm done with it. Here are a couple things I've figured out lately:
  •  There's a way around the "silent mode" flash dilemma - just turn off the operational volume and shutter sound. Voila, permanent silent mode, and you can just call up the flash whenever you want it. Who needs a fake shutter sound, anyway? (If you do, there are three to choose from.)
  • ISO is weird. You can set auto ISO parameters through the setup menu (not the ISO menu), but if you set a specific ISO in the main menu, auto ISO won't go any lower than that number. I had briefly turned off the auto ISO the other day and set the X100 to ISO 400 in order to meter a shot I was taking with a 1957 Ricoh 500, which has no meter...anyhow, I assumed that auto ISO would override the manual ISO setting, not so. No big deal, really, but good to know.
A couple co-workers play in a band that played an early evening show the other day, so I got right up on the stage and snapped a few shots.



Monday, May 9, 2011

Fuji X100: lovin' and hatin' it (updated)

I jotted down my first impressions of the new Fuji X100 the other day - looking at the post now I can see it doesn't jive with most "first impressions" posts I've seen for this camera. I spent a lot of time pointing out the things the camera doesn't do well, at least in my eyes.

While I stand by all of those observations, I did figure one thing out - you can indeed wake up the camera from sleep mode, by holding down the shutter button for a second or so. Then a few seconds later, you're ready to shoot again. Everything the X100 does, it does deliberately.

However, the proof is in the pudding, and I'm loving the images I get out of this camera. It's just not snappy and responsive. Depending on what you're shooting, this is either no big deal, or a crying shame. That's what inspired the title of this post.

Here are a few more snaps - I'll keep jotting down notes as I go while I have an X100 to play with.

Update, 7/1/2011: Eolake raises a good point in his comment below. The X100 is actually plenty responsive, I was just trying to tweak too many things and dive into too many menus at the time I wrote this post. In the end, I just set the ISO, aperture, and shutter at auto and shot away most of the time. Don't make the mistake I did - just shoot away!