Initial Thoughts on the New Fujifilm X100S

In July 2012, I bought a used Fujifilm X100 as a travel camera so that I wouldn't have to bring my bigger, more expensive DSLR to a foreign country and raise eyebrows. It was great at first - a beautiful large sensor in a compact, stylish body. However, after being used to the speedy autofocus of my DSLR that is invaluable to me as a wedding photographer, the X100's auto focus and general slow interface was beginning to irk me - to the point that I would rather pull out my iPhone and get a quick shot.

When Fuji announced its new X100S was available for pre-order in January, I didn't hesitate a moment and pre-ordered one. The new X100S sports much faster, more accurate autofocus, and its start up time was speedy as well. I won't get into numbers here, but the new X100S is ready shoot when I turn it on in half the time it took the old X100. I would bet that it was faster for me to pull out my iPhone and swipe up to camera mode than for the X100 to start up.

It is so important for operations to be quick in a camera for a photographer like me who loves shooting moments. The new X100S doesn't lag after the image preview anymore, which I am really excited about. On the old X100, I would take a picture and it would go into image preview and stay there for about 3 seconds, and when the viewfinder finally cleared up there would be an entirely different composition/moment going on!  Of course, I tried turning off the image preview, but the time it took to press the playback button, view the image, and go back to shooting was way too long, and it was pointless. It was frustrating. Imagine I was photographing a person, and then they suddenly appeared in front of the camera like scary movie. No more annoying several second lag!

So far, the only problem I have with the new X100S is that in the delete image option, there is an option to delete ALL the frames, which I find problematic. For an old X100 user to switch to the X100S, you have to be really careful not to double click the delete button (as you normally do with the X100 to delete an image) and accidentally delete all your images!

But anyway, I'm excited to use this camera. It's even got a 1:1 aspect ratio for the square crop, how fun! I'll probably be posting a little bit more after I've had a chance to shoot with more.

***UPDATE***

I'm not much of a pixel peeper and I don't usually do these kinds of comparisons, but I thought I'd share this. I went out with the X100S that night and I took this shot at a really dark bar/grill.

This was shot at ISO 4000, f2.2, 1/75 sec. It had no problem focusing. To the right is a 100% crop of the glasses. (Straight out of camera)