Fujifilm FinePix X100 In-Depth Review: Digital Photography Review

Playback Displays

The X100 can play back images either on its rear LCD or using the EVF. In both cases the view is much the same, so here we're showing the rear LCD versions.

The 'Information off' playback display is very simple indeed - it shows no exposure information at all, just a wasted plain black bar beneath the image.	The 'Information on' view adds a full array of detailed exposure information, overlaid on top of the image in roughly the same place as it's shown in live view.


The 'Favorites' view allows you to rate your images from zero to five stars, and you can use this rating later to search through and select your images.	The Histogram view is luminance-only - there's no option to show an RGB version. Oddly, you can't delete images in this display mode.

Unusually, flicking the thumb lever to the right brings up this alternative overlay of image information (in all display modes except Favorites).	Another flick, or a press of the down key, brings up this second page. We're not quite sure why 'Lens' and 'Focal Length' both need to be specified on this fixed-lens camera though.

Finally another flick displays the position of the focus point. Bizarrely you can't click-in to check focus in this view. If the image was shot using manual focus the green cross disappears, at which point this display looks identical to the 'Information Off' view (while behaving completely differently).	Clicking-in the thumb lever zooms in on your selected focus point. You can scroll around the view using the 4-way controller, and zoom out and in using the magnify buttons on the left side of the camera.

After a couple of seconds the magnification scale and navigation thumbnail disappear to give this uncluttered display.	Oddly, when zooming-in to portrait format images to check focus, the magnified region remains within a portrait-format box, neatly wasting half of the screen.

Thumbnail views

The X100 gives a choice of four thumbnail displays in playback, but the first two aren't tremendously useful, and the final one crams so many images onto the screen that it's difficult to make out what's going on.

Pressing the 'zoom out' button in playback once gives this not-very-useful view.	Pressing it a second time gives this alternative not-very-useful view.


A further press brings up this finally-useful 3x3 thumbnail grid.	One more press brings up this 100-frame view, in which each thumbnail is near-unrecognisably small, and portrait format images displayed the wrong way round.

Image search menu

One of the X100's more useful playback menu items is the Image Search option. Using this it's possible to sort images by various criteria: most usefully by date taken or favorites rating, but also by whether you've marked them for upload to Facebook.

The Image Search menu lets you sort though your pictures and movies in several ways.	Perhaps most useful (and informative) is the By Date option.


You can also view just your favorite images (as long as you've marked them first)...	...or find pictures of your favorite people by searching for images with faces.

In-camera raw conversion

One of the X100's most interesting, and useful features is its in-camera raw conversion capability. This is far from unique, of course (lots of SLRs can do it too), but Fujifilm offers an unusually wide control over the development parameters, including independent control over highlight and shadow tone, plus noise reduction and dynamic range. The interface is simple and very approachable too. Strangely though you can't choose the either the aspect ratio (which is always the full 3:2 of the recorded raw file, even if the original JPEG was recorded in 16:9) or the output size and compression of the generated JPEG (which is always Large Fine).

	Press the RAW button in playback mode and up pops this screen. You can choose to simply reflect the shooting conditions, or alter the processing parameters to taste. Dynamic Range can be decreased from that originally used, but not increased (you can't magically turn a DR100 raw file to a DR400 JPEG, for example - the data's simply not there).
	Scroll down and you reach a second set of options. Note that the thumbnail image on the left doesn't update to reflect your new settings (and is too small for this to be very useful anyway).
	Press 'RAW' again after selecting your settings and the camera will display a preview for you to approve and save, or cancel. Only at this point you can see the affect of your changes, for example conversion to monochrome. If you're happy, press 'OK' and the camera will save a new JPEG.