Walter S Matthews
Veteran Member
There was steady stream of people, me among them, interested in the X100 at WPPI in Vegas from Monday to Wednesday of this week.
I was impressed with the camera although I wish I had been a little better, or quicker, at figuring out how do do the settings. It's not that the camera is complicated, it is not, it's just that you don't feel you have much time when people are waiting for you to finish so they can play with it and I had to wait for at least 15 minutes to get the chance to play with it. .
The Fuji guy let me put in my SDHC card and shoot a few photos. I screwed up, actually the Fuji guy did cause I never got to actually see where he set it, because I asked for iso 6,400 but it seems that what i got was 640(see the second photo-first photo was shot at 1,600)
The camera is substantial, it is easy to hold and easy to shoot with. Focus is a little tricky but i think thats because I was not used to how it works. Out of 10 shots 2 were completely OOF and I'm sure it was my stupidity and not the cameras falut
I was shhooting hand held with "show" light levels-some filtered outdoor light, some tungsten lights and some flourescent light- and the exif data is included with the files.
I believe an important point needs to be made about shooting with this kind of camera. If I were to use it at a reception there would not be an issue with shooting groups as it is plenty wide. However, if you move in and get a close up of someones face, for example, their nose is exaggerated compared to their ears and you get the well worn out close up wide angle lens look. (When I was first learning photography in the late 60's and early 70's, close up photos with fish eye lenses were so popular.)
I shot more than 50 weddings with the Fuji S1 and that had 3MP of data. Therefore, if i back up and put the subject into approximately the center 1/9 to 1/6 of the frame, i will be able to get, by cropping, 3MP of image quality and since the lens of the X100 is significantly improved over my lens of that era, I should be able to at least match the quality I got with the S1. I have cropped both images here for you to look at and I would be comfortable using that quality in an album, particularly if they were of reception shots where the image rarely goes over 4x6.
I am not sure how much you can tell from the images I am posting but they are shot by me and I am completely satisfied with what the camera delivers. I believe i can use that camera as a zoom that I do in my head before i shoot and crop it later. In other words the image quality from the 35mm equivalent focal length all th eway to at least 100 mm equivalent focal length, or more properly field of view, is completely acceptable to me. I am miffed that i did not get the iso 6,400.
(I deleted the ladies face as she was a show attendee and did not realize her photo was being taken.)
a crop of that photo is next
and a further crop that is beyond where I would be comfortable going.
I figure the Fuji representatives are fair game for photos so I didn't delete his face
I don't know what happened to the aspect ratio but all of the second round of shots were at aproximately 2 to 1, rather than 3 to 2. Obviously a setting in the camera ...
and finally a closer crop for the pixel peepers to complain about....
A word about the color adn DR. Clearly the camera does not have the DR of the S5. I won't bother showing you that but it isn't even close. However, the color are very much in the range of colors that have come to be known as Fuji's colors. Remember the lighting here is some outdoor, some thugsten and some Flourescent so it is a very tough color balance environment and it changes dramatically as your subject changes locations just slightly.
I was impressed with the camera although I wish I had been a little better, or quicker, at figuring out how do do the settings. It's not that the camera is complicated, it is not, it's just that you don't feel you have much time when people are waiting for you to finish so they can play with it and I had to wait for at least 15 minutes to get the chance to play with it. .
The Fuji guy let me put in my SDHC card and shoot a few photos. I screwed up, actually the Fuji guy did cause I never got to actually see where he set it, because I asked for iso 6,400 but it seems that what i got was 640(see the second photo-first photo was shot at 1,600)
The camera is substantial, it is easy to hold and easy to shoot with. Focus is a little tricky but i think thats because I was not used to how it works. Out of 10 shots 2 were completely OOF and I'm sure it was my stupidity and not the cameras falut
I was shhooting hand held with "show" light levels-some filtered outdoor light, some tungsten lights and some flourescent light- and the exif data is included with the files.
I believe an important point needs to be made about shooting with this kind of camera. If I were to use it at a reception there would not be an issue with shooting groups as it is plenty wide. However, if you move in and get a close up of someones face, for example, their nose is exaggerated compared to their ears and you get the well worn out close up wide angle lens look. (When I was first learning photography in the late 60's and early 70's, close up photos with fish eye lenses were so popular.)
I shot more than 50 weddings with the Fuji S1 and that had 3MP of data. Therefore, if i back up and put the subject into approximately the center 1/9 to 1/6 of the frame, i will be able to get, by cropping, 3MP of image quality and since the lens of the X100 is significantly improved over my lens of that era, I should be able to at least match the quality I got with the S1. I have cropped both images here for you to look at and I would be comfortable using that quality in an album, particularly if they were of reception shots where the image rarely goes over 4x6.
I am not sure how much you can tell from the images I am posting but they are shot by me and I am completely satisfied with what the camera delivers. I believe i can use that camera as a zoom that I do in my head before i shoot and crop it later. In other words the image quality from the 35mm equivalent focal length all th eway to at least 100 mm equivalent focal length, or more properly field of view, is completely acceptable to me. I am miffed that i did not get the iso 6,400.
(I deleted the ladies face as she was a show attendee and did not realize her photo was being taken.)
a crop of that photo is next
and a further crop that is beyond where I would be comfortable going.
I figure the Fuji representatives are fair game for photos so I didn't delete his face
I don't know what happened to the aspect ratio but all of the second round of shots were at aproximately 2 to 1, rather than 3 to 2. Obviously a setting in the camera ...
and finally a closer crop for the pixel peepers to complain about....
A word about the color adn DR. Clearly the camera does not have the DR of the S5. I won't bother showing you that but it isn't even close. However, the color are very much in the range of colors that have come to be known as Fuji's colors. Remember the lighting here is some outdoor, some thugsten and some Flourescent so it is a very tough color balance environment and it changes dramatically as your subject changes locations just slightly.
