Meeting with X100s operation manager from Japan

We were initially shown with slides on the new features of the X100s and X20 by the Fuji HK marketing department.

A few items worth mentioning are:

- X100s' OVF has a new glass coating to help reduce finger print smudge and it is now sealed to prevent dust from entering.

- X100s' sensor now has A/D converters on the sensor itself to improve S/N (my comment: this has been a feature of the Sony sensor of late).

- X100s now has 14-bit RAW.

- The pitch on the manual focus ring (rotation sensor) on the X100 has gone from 2.75mm to 1.38mm to increase MF precision.

- X20's lens barrel now has some kind of seal to prevent dust from entering.

- A Fuji brand protection filter will be available for installing directly in front of the X20's lens (the actual filter thread is 40.33mm).

A number of questions from the QA session worth mentioning are:

Q. Why did Fuji not incorporate Face Detect AF in X-Pro1 and X-E1?

A. Fuji wants the best image quality and we found that Face Detect AF is not accurate enough when you shoot with large aperture lenses.

(The suggestion from me and another user was that Fuji could use smaller aperture such as F/4 to increase DOF in such situation.)

Q. Does X100s have compression with RAW file?

A. No.

Q. Would Digital Split Image AF and Peak Focusing be available in a firmware upgrade to X-Pro1 and X-E1?

A. Digital Split Image AF is a hardware function of the new sensor. Peak Focusing is indeed a firmware feature. Mr. Kawahara then asked how many people want PF to show their hands. About half of the people had a show of hands. The ones who didn't are probably not a X-Pro1 or X-E1 users (there were indeed some X10 users in the crowd).

Q. Would Fuji produce a tele-conversion lens for the X100/X100s?

A. We tried to make a teleconverter for the X100 but we found that the image quality has degraded. But we were able to achieve no image degradation with the wide-angle conversion lens, hence we offer it.

Q. Would black version of X100s be produced?

A. We're still considering it. But it does require a special paint that is not the same on the X20. It is a time consuming and expensive process.

Here are some of my conversations with Mr. Kawahara:

Q. EXR sensor has superb DR in EXR hardware mode. How does it compare with the X20?

A. X20's sensor has a native DR that is 150% of that of the X10.

Q. To get higher DR, X20 would need to use higher ISO where as X10 can stay at ISO 100.

A. Yes, that's true.

(I gathered that it means one would get more noise with a DR400 output on X20)

Q. When will the 23mm f/1.4 lens be available?

A. Should be this year. Hopefully by Q3. But no promise!

General impression of the X100s:

- AF is very fast! There should be no complain now.

- Peak focusing seems to work well. The algorithm is different from that of the NEX camera. NEX only highlights the vertical edge with horizontal contrast. The X100s will highlight all edges around a subject that has high edge contrast.

- Digital Split Image does require a fair bit more turns for the split image to move.

- The joystick controls Standard AF, Peak Focus AF and Digital Split Image AF. Just press and hold it for a second, and the AF mode will change.

General impression of the X20:

- OVF is really nice, especially when it tells me which part of the scene I have focus locked on. It even works with Face Detect AF.

- Lens barrel now requires less effort to turn. It was a change in design. And it is very smooth for the power turn on (the initial turn of the lens barrel).

- The exposure compensation dial is now very stiff. I did not try that on the X100s, but I imagine it would be the same.