When it first debuted at Photokina 2010, I and lots of people like me were pretty excited about the Fujifilm X100, a fixed lens digital camera with a Hybrid Viewfinder. What's a hybrid viewfinder? Those who attended murmured something about a backlit color LCD overlaying an optical view. Great idea, I thought. Since then, I've heard about shortages and high demand. From the Imaging-Resource.com Lab there were rumblings of a difficult interface and annoying behavior. Both Luke, our main Lab Technician, and Rob, our SLRgear Lab Technician, had much to say about their troubles with the Fujifilm X100. DPReview, for its part, posted a list of complaints, and Fujifilm responded with a firmware update. That's when the Fujifilm X100 landed on my desk.
The Fujifilm X100 was an ordinary looking camera, if your idea of ordinary is a rangefinder from 1962, with a shimmery metal top and leather coat wrapped tightly around its waist. Dials, knobs, and switches popped out from all the right places, not quite outnumbering its 14 buttons, mostly on its back side. So few cameras these days have interesting optics, but I found myself drawn to both the lens and the optical viewfinder.
Build. Over the last 12 years, mainstream digital camera manufacturers have experimented with new forms, but ultimately settled on three major forms from the past: the SLR, the compact ultra-zoom, and the pocket camera. Though the Compact System Cameras are seizing on the pent-up demand for the return of the rangefinder, and though the Leica M9 still stands as the real thing, fans of the old Canonet-style rangefinders were longing for more, something that really looked like one of those cool, more affordable old rangefinders that they or their parents enjoyed so much in the 1960s and 1970s. For an example of a Fujica 35 ML rangefinder from 1958 that looks very similar click here. There are those who could not care less for retro, as I was told many times after admiring the retro styling of cameras like the Olympus E-P1, but the popularity of the Fujifilm X100 tells a different story. There are enough folks, apparently, who like a little retro with their single-focal-length lenses to keep Fujifilm's factory cranking out X100s.
Sponsored
The Fujifilm X100 was an ordinary looking camera, if your idea of ordinary is a rangefinder from 1962, with a shimmery metal top and leather coat wrapped tightly around its waist. Dials, knobs, and switches popped out from all the right places, not quite outnumbering its 14 buttons, mostly on its back side. So few cameras these days have interesting optics, but I found myself drawn to both the lens and the optical viewfinder.
Build. Over the last 12 years, mainstream digital camera manufacturers have experimented with new forms, but ultimately settled on three major forms from the past: the SLR, the compact ultra-zoom, and the pocket camera. Though the Compact System Cameras are seizing on the pent-up demand for the return of the rangefinder, and though the Leica M9 still stands as the real thing, fans of the old Canonet-style rangefinders were longing for more, something that really looked like one of those cool, more affordable old rangefinders that they or their parents enjoyed so much in the 1960s and 1970s. For an example of a Fujica 35 ML rangefinder from 1958 that looks very similar click here. There are those who could not care less for retro, as I was told many times after admiring the retro styling of cameras like the Olympus E-P1, but the popularity of the Fujifilm X100 tells a different story. There are enough folks, apparently, who like a little retro with their single-focal-length lenses to keep Fujifilm's factory cranking out X100s.