Fuji X-100-T - Real Life Review

Fujifilm  x100t – Real Life review by Yann Audic

For our latest trip to Japan, Fujifilm France lent me the camera I was looking at for the past few months, maybe years, the dream traveling camera. You know lightweight, cool looking,  f2 fixed lens. The x100t has all these features and  it sounds perfect to me as a travel camera, and a daily companion. Plus during our stay in the Canary Islands for The Wolves, I has so many people tell so many persons telling me so many good things about their Fujifilm experience and showing amazing photos from it, check Javier Abad, or Dylan Howell amazing work, so I had to give it a chance.

Here we are, let’s go to Japan  !

At the beginning, I got really confused with the double exposure button, but well here’s a happy accident. By the way it’s a shame that’s the double exposure files are only in JPEG …

The good thing about beeing  jet-lagged : you can see the sunrise on the first morning, perfect light to test the dynamic range,  I’m quite happy about it.

When you’re  shooting daily with a DSLR, the big change at the beginning with x100t is the viewfinder.  It took me a little while to get used to the electonic viewfinder, I mean it’s great to have the exposure right but it’s not as bright and it’s very contrasty, I switched to the optical one and then eventually went back to the electronic one and just dealt with it. In the end it did not stop me from taking the shot I wanted.

Same with the ergonomic, my fingers are so used to the Canon 5D, I dont even think any more to the camera, fingers are just moving automatically to change settings, so it’s always a bit annoying when you change camera / brand  to have to think technical stuff again especially when you’re doing a portrait of someone, like a stranger in the street ( I do that quite often) and you have 10 sec to stop the person… anyway same it’s a matter of practise and after few days I get use to it.

3200 ISO at dawn, not bad and nice grain, I did a bit of NR on Lightroom ( +30)

Also I face a really huge flare, which I kind of like usually but this was way too much and out of control, I didn’t have the hood tho might be the reason why … a good friend told me the hood was super efficient to reduce that. By the way this is the only graffiti I’ve ever seen in Japan wooow …

Again crazy flare around our little cousins from Tokyo

I was shooting with my Contax 645 as well, so I can tell you I appreciate to have a lightweight digital instead of my usual DSLR …

But It’s really during our road trip that the x100t showed its real value, it was so comfy to carry it around, just in my pocket or around my neck, you just forget about it. And that’s a good camera for landscapes, I mean the 35 mm does the job, it’s fairly wide !

I only shot raw files and so I didn’t test the all of the film emulation available in the camera, it might be good I dont know. Also I didn’t manage to make the Wifi work, but that might be me, I’m not very good with that and being in Japan, my iphone didn’t have 3G.

Pros

– Lightweight & compact, unbeatable when you compare to a DLSR obviously. Super discret and silent.

Design & ergonomic, very simple and straight forward. Even though obviously it took me a little while to get around everything the menu and command but eventually I remembered them (-: tried my best you know. Seriously I still think that a dedicated button to ISO would be handy, digital photography is just about speed, aperture and ISO at the end, the rest is optional : wifi, double exposure, macro, flash, you dont really need to access them directly.

Raw files are pretty flat which is a very good thing for post production and color grading, and nice dynamic range.Depth of field is awesome for a camera that small.

Wifi I guess but you know didn’t manage (-:

And quite important, it was pretty easy to match Fuji files and Canon files with VSCO.

Cons

– Thats very personal Cons, I’m more of a super norm-core 40mm person than 35 which is a little bit wide for me, but well hey it pushed me to find another distance of shooting which is great.

– Sharpness and bokeh, thats very sharp, even at f2, like surprisingly sharp but then the bokeh is not very smooth but thats a normal for a smaller sensor

Battery : digital viewfinder like battery very much, you really need to have a second one with you …

My main problem was the autofocus, slow on a moving person and struggles a little bit if backlit, like a lot of camera but more than my DSLR .. and I know I missed few photos because of that, and its situations I like to shoot …

So dont get me wrong overall I think it’s an awesome camera, the perfect companion for travel photography and hiking and I’m very close, like super close to buying one. I’m looking forward for a future version  which might have an autofocus upgrade and make me definitely change my mind, maybe this year ! For now I’ll stick to my Canon 6d-40 mm pancake combo when travelling !