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Okay, I've been here in Calumet, Drummond Street, London, all day
and I've being hovering around the Fujifilm stand because
as some of you may have guessed I've been following the launch of this camera
and not saying a word about it
uh... because until it exists, I didn't want to say anything about it until I've
actually held one in my hands
um...
and a lot of people have been passing by the Fujifilm stand, and they've been picking it up and having
a look at it
and they've all been
um...
pretty pleased to see it This is the Fujifilm
X100
um...
I haven't seen it in real life, a working version, before today. This is my first time
looking at it
I haven't really had time... I haven't taken any real images with it
I haven't had time to
learn how it works
but I'll give you some opinions on it anyway And the only reason I'm interested in this
is because it fits into that category of cameras that professionals use
as their compact. And so it fits into the same category of camera as, say,
the Canon G series, Canon S series
um... the Panasonic Lumix cameras, um...
that sort of thing, the Olympus PEN, some of the Leicas like the Leica Digilux
and that's why I'm interested in it And the other reason I'm interested in it is because
um, since cameras went digital, and since compacts went digital
um, and like a lot of people I've always been looking for,
um... waiting for, a camera to come out
that has usable
manual
creative controls
in my opinion, the manual creative controls
that are vaunted on some cameras
are really just there for marketing purposes
they make the camera a good gadget to play with when you first get it for a few days
but when you actually...
after you learn where the features are in the menus, and so on
once you're shooting in real life you find the cameras is really
a point-and-shoot, you can't really use it in a manual mode
in a creative way
So, I've been following the hype, and I've been hoping like some people have, that maybe
something like this would be more like a camera with usable
manual controls
um... I think
talking to... you know, speaking to professional photographers, rather than to the mass consumer market or even the
enthusiast
I think it's important to
say what this camera is, and what it isn't
This is a retro-styled camera
it's a retro-styled compact for the mass market
and that's really what it is
You know, there might be professionals out there wishing it was something else
um... but the professional market is a very small market
and this is not
um... a Leica M9 substitute or an M9 replacement
and doesn't cost a fraction of that price either
You look at this,
you've got all the manual controls and they are where they're supposed to be,
and of course
the advantage of the traditional manual controls is you can just glance down
at the top of the camera
and you can see on all your analogue dials exactly what your settings are
it's also very intuitive just to use your hands
to change all the settings
One of the things that frustrated me
with compacts with manual controls in the past
straight away the focus always frustrated me, because
to do manual focus you basically had
um... a bar across the bottom, and you used some buttons to change the focus
and it wasn't really usable in any way
In theory it could help you out in a spot where you couldn't use the autofocus
but in practice I've never ever used it
um... Fujifilm here
they have changed that
what they've done is, you have a focus ring
on the lens
It doesn't actually
change the focus directly on the lens at all It's actually linked
to
uh... basically what the camera thinks is the focus. So that bar on the back will then move
when you move this focus ring
I've only had a chance to play with it today
It's definitely better,
for me, than using buttons
but, I can't say to you how good it is because I don't really know. It's an improvement on
moving the dial across here
and it's quite possible that you would actually
use the manual focus option, because...
um, because it's so much more usable here
So that's one thing
And the other thing i haven't liked on compact cameras
um... in the past
has been the loss of
the viewfinder. Some of them
have dispensed with the viewfinder completely
and on some the viewfinder is just a vestigial feature,
basically put in because the camera should have a viewfinder for marketing purposes, to look
good
and it's so small that it's not really usable
uh... Why do you still need a viewfinder when you've got a screen on the back?
um... one reason is, I still prefer to have a viewfinder option
in bright light when you're outdoors, which is the kind of situation you're going to be in
with a compact like this
because you can see a better image through a viewfinder
The other reason is: because if you have a feel for the image that you're taking, you've learned to
have that feel through a viewfinder, you still like to be looking through a
viewfinder which excludes
all the other thing that you see, and just frames the
image for you
This camera has a nice viewfinder
it's
a reasonably good size viewfinder
and it's clear and bright
so it's not a miniature
viewfinder
And, in the viewfinder, you've got all the electronic readouts
you could want
And the other thing you've got in the viewfinder is, instead of using the ordinary optical viewfinder,
which this is,
you can straight away switch, with this little button here
to using the, um..
the built-in electronic viewfinder, through exactly the same window. So instead of looking in bright
sunlight at the image here, and trying to see what you're looking at, you can
look at the digital image
in the switched-over viewfinder
And you've also got all your information readouts on there as well
And the other thing that you can do is if you're using it as an optical viewfinder
and you take an image, you can straightaway afterwards see, through the viewfinder, for a few moments
the digital image that you took
And that...
...in my opinion, that's not just a gadget feature which will give you a few days' interest and
pleasure,
that's a genuine,
a genuine usable,
usable feature
So, that's really...
...they're just my peculiar opinions about it Like I say, I know very little about it, this is my first day
holding one for real
Fujifilm are shouting at me that the accessories, the hood, is an extra feature, this is optional
you have to pay money for this!
but, um...
...Yeah, it makes it look better as well
But, um...
I'll keep looking at this
and if I can get somebody who knows more about these things than me to talk to you about it in the future
I definitely will, but everybody was very shy today
Well that's it, so thank you very much!