The Fujifilm X half preview: what do you think?

Hi everyone!

We have our initial impressions of the newly announced Fujifilm X half which you can read and see some sample shots from here.

What are you thoughts? Do you have any questions for our staff that we can answer after our hands-on experience?

I like weird cameras - not because I'm really in the market for them all that often, but because new and slightly "out there" ideas are both fun and a potential benefit for more conservative camera designs, if those new ideas happen to be good. With that in mind, I expected to be bemused by the X Half, but after seeing the price tag, I'm afraid my feelings lean more towards irritation. With both the X-E5 and X-Pro 4 supposedly on the horizon, I honestly just hope that Fujifilm got the silly out of their system for now and deliver cameras that take themselves seriously - sequels, if you will, to the X-Pro 2 and X-E3, rather than their successors.

Also, I do hope that "Project Red Badge Renewal" will pick up some steam - I recently compared the XF 8-16 and 50-140 to some full frame competition, and even if you just look at physical size, it's not a pretty picture. If I'm a customer looking for a system to settle on, these zooms in particular look increasingly antiquated.

Meh. I would have preferred an update of the X30, a camera I still adore.

This April fools day joke is being published rather late.

Morris

Shouldn't this discussion be in a different forum, perhaps a new one?

Behind the scenes of the X-Half development team:
We could built a decent 1“ camera that others don’t offer anymore. With all the beloved Fuji charme and design people love. For 699,- (before tariffs). Wait: We just haven't been able to get the autofocus right for more than 10 years. People will ridicule us - and our only autofocus guy was sent into retirement.


Let’s build the entire camera around the crappy AF so that it no longer stands out and appears intentional and let's emphasise the fun aspect. Let’s put a Halo-filter on top to give the crappy low resolution pictures that charming crappy vintage look emphasised by the flash. It’s not a real flash? The halo does away with that. Here she comes now: The X-Half. Half of everything for twice the price.

I agree so much. I still love my X10 and consider its manual zoom lens the best possible solution for a point and shoot both in handling and function and in effective range. An update with a one inch sensor and all the usual Fuji goodness would be a must buy for me.

I'd love a serious small fixed lens Fuji with a one inch sensor, but this one isn't it. There's nothing it would give me that I would consider a replacement for either my original X10 or my Little Monster combo of the X-M1 and the 27mm f/2.8.

That said, the X Half is cute, and some of its gimmicky features sound like they might be interesting and fun to play with. I can see the appeal as a superior grade of toy camera, and I like toy cameras and have a whole collection.. But then the price rears its ugly head-- when I consider my overall photography budget, I have more important places to put that kind of money.

Entirely too expensive for what it is. An XT30ii is much better value for money at least in the US.

Fantastic idea. Price is way too much. Should have been $499.

I'm sure some fashionistas will buy it, but given how good today's smartphones have become, I don't see it gaining much traction. More importantly, I wish Fuji had reallocated its development resources to a new X-Pro camera instead.

Matthew39 said:

Shouldn't this discussion be in a different forum, perhaps a new one?

Click to expand...

What forum - toy cameras?

AlanDPReview said:

Hi everyone!

We have our initial impressions of the newly announced Fujifilm X half which you can read and see some sample shots from here.

What are you thoughts? Do you have any questions for our staff that we can answer after our hands-on experience?

Click to expand...

This is a miss for me.

I mean I get it, this is meant more as a premium toy camera than anything else, but then the price is too high (I understand that the tarifs didn't help, it's $850 in the US but only €799 in Europe (if 850 was the MSRP, Euro price should be €899).

But as it stands there are a good number of things that make this camera a complete miss to me. And no, that's neither the lens or the sensor, not even the orientation of it.

here is a list :

- the flash is a standard LED where it should have been a flashtube like on the X100VI (X100 series as a whole), not only to give the retro point and shoot look, but also to be able to freeze the action properly. Only reason I can see to use a LED instead would be for video if you need continuous lighting. But the video specs are... well not enticing enough to actually use it for that.

- if not, the coldshoe should have been a hotshoe (preferably the camera would have both). Considering this is not a digital interface hotshoe and that the camera has no mic jack, I don't see the point of this coldshoe being there at all.

- the viewfinder didn't need to be a hybrid viewfinder, but a similar system with a semi reflective mirror and a monochromatic OLED panel that would allow for some AF control and confirmation in the OVF, as well as parralax correction should have been the minimum, even more so when in film mode you can't use the back LCD to compose your shots.

- video should have been more fleshed-out for vertical social media video use : remove that silly 55 second record limit and give that camera a microphone jack (even if it's 2.5mm !). Maybe try to actually improve AF (because right now it's really rough)

- allow the user to shoot RAW files. I know this is not the point of this camera, but pretty much every photog I know was turned off the moment they heard it's JPEG only. Keep the JPEG stuff, but allow the RAW mode to be turned on ! Film photography was not a matter of point and shoot only, a lot of people developped their own film and made their post processing in the dark room. Photo editing is the equivalent of that and removing it completely is silly. On top of that, that 1" sensor is a common commodity, we've had it in a lot of compact cameras over the years, we know it can deliver great images with just a little bit of post processing.

- the film advance lever should have more mechanical feedback. From what I hear, this is smooth all the way through. Maybe add a little click at the end of the movement so we know that we have winded it properly. Multiple reviewers complained about how it's often unresponsive and you have to wind it twice to be sure to be ready to shoot.

If the camera had all of those things, it would be a camera that even me would look at as a fun, side camera option.

In its current state, I'm not sure I'd spend a penny over 500€ to get one, and we're years away from it being available for that price on the used market.

Only hope now is that Fujifilm is listenning to feedback and are already working on the X-Half II or X-Half S with some (hopefully most) of the things that I listed as missing from the current X-Half.

It's a great concept, but the execution is leaving a lot to be desired in my opinion. If I wanted to have a small, good looking camera in that kind of pricepoint, I'd get a used X100, or if I want something smaller a Lumix LX15 or something similar.

Matthew39 said:

Shouldn't this discussion be in a different forum, perhaps a new one?

Click to expand...

There are already about four thousand subforums on here and people already sometimes get confused about what topics should be in the Finepix forum, the X System forum and even the Medium Format forum (which, in a curious contrast to most of the subforums, is cross-brand rather than being a slightly arbitrary breakdown of product lines within a brand, and as a result happens to be one of the few forums where people pleasingly actually talk about image making more than the minutiae of gear).

Fewer forums and less fragmentation, please, not more.

As to the camera, well… if it’s acceptable to say it here, I think the Petapixel video review is a pretty fair appraisal. Personally I was ready to pre-order one today—I love oddball gear and I love a lot about the X Half—but just a few obscure details mean I’ve cooled my enthusiasm a little.

Parody product at a ridiculous price.

Yes it looks like a fun product - but it I think it demeans the X- family and looks like a sort of knock-off product made to look and sound like it's Fuji.

The pricing and branding are IMO simply appalling.

In my opinion: It's a brilliant product and will be extremely popular for a certain demographic and social media users. Pre-order now if you want one. I suspect it will be in high demand (and short supply) like the X100VI

Great product design in my opinion. I recently posted another thread that I'm looking for a small camera to bring if I don't want to carry the heavy GFX with me and this ticks some of the boxes. It reminds me of when I shot the Pentax Q a long time ago and only used the JPGs. Tiny camera with good IQ back then. However... the jpg samples I've seen so far aren't all that good honestly. Not sure why but they look worse than from an 1 inch sensor.

It reminds me of the Yashica Y35 from 2018, which is also particularly original, but after two or three uses they quickly end up being forgotten!

Fujifilm X100 (2011) / Yashica Y35 (2018)


But why not, if it can amuse some people, we might find it at a knockdown price on eBay in a few months

Jeff Biscuits said:

Matthew39 said:

Shouldn't this discussion be in a different forum, perhaps a new one?

Click to expand...

There are already about four thousand subforums on here and people already sometimes get confused about what topics should be in the Finepix forum, the X System forum and even the Medium Format forum (which, in a curious contrast to most of the subforums, is cross-brand rather than being a slightly arbitrary breakdown of product lines within a brand, and as a result happens to be one of the few forums where people pleasingly actually talk about image making more than the minutiae of gear).

Fewer forums and less fragmentation, please, not more.

As to the camera, well… if it’s acceptable to say it here, I think the Petapixel video review is a pretty fair appraisal. Personally I was ready to pre-order one today—I love oddball gear and I love a lot about the X Half—but just a few obscure details mean I’ve cooled my enthusiasm a little.

Click to expand...

Me, too. It looked fun, but a bit over $900 at my doorstep is too rich, for one thing. It's just too limited. I still want a really small camera, pocket sized, and the only viable candidates right now (for me; view finder is essential, as are at least some exposure controls) are the RX100 and ZS 100/200, both of which have crappy viewfinders. Still looking; meanwhile, my XT 30 ii serves.

I think the preview sells it short by calling it silly. It's a real camera aimed at a target market.

The 10.8mm f/2.8 lens is 6 elements in 5 groups with 3 aspherical elements. A toy camera has a plastic meniscus lens. I'm looking forward to seeing a more critical look at the lens performance.

It's like Fuji decided to build a real camera competitor to phone cameras. It has vertical (portrait) photo orientation, JPEG output, filters, Wifi, Bluetooth, and incredibly long battery life. It's a camera clearly aimed at people who primarily share their photos on web sites and social media. Silly is shooting a 40 megapixel raw image, editing it on a high-end workstation, exporting it to low resolution image and posting it to Instagram where it will only be viewed by phone screens.

I have an X-Pro3 and an X-T4. I'm seriously considering preordering the X-half for a "leave-in-my-car" carrying around camera.