Fuji Fujifilm Finepix X100 - Pricing, Availability and general OMG

I did, you're correct, James...and I probably will be waiting due to so many people pre-ordering the camera... I'll be lucky if mine arrives in May. By then I have a feeling there will be lots to read - including Jon/chylld's review.;) So in a sense I am going to "wait and see".:D

I've been trying to convince Fuji USA to lend me a unit for review... I'm still trying :redface:

I'll be sure to let you guys know if I get one.

Light a candle for me! :D
 
I am on a list in Australia, but now that the first samples are coming in, I am seriously thinking of getting off that list. One thing that is becoming increasingly apparent is the quality of the bokeh, or lack thereof. Some consider the bokeh of the Voigtlander 35/1.4 Nokton lens to be harsh and distracting, and in my opinion, the bokeh of the X100 is considerably worse. Go to flickr and search for 'fuji x100' and sort by recent items. There are quite a lot of images coming in from Japanese buyers who are getting them now. Just about all of the f2 images have this very strange, disturbing quality to the bokeh. Some might be okay with that, but I am used to the creaminess of Canon, Leica and Zeiss lenses. Even the Sigma DP1, DP2 and Ricoh GXR A12 modules have smoother bokeh, and are bitingly sharp, to boot. Not to mention the Leica X1.

I hate to be pessimistic about this, especially as the specs promise something akin to the holy grail of semi-affordable quality compacts, but the more of the samples that I see, the more they have that disturbing harshness to them. I just don't like it. Others' mileage might vary, but as I shoot wide open and in low light very often, I can't get around this.
 
oh me oh my! i'd read a few negative opinions on the phone while out today but decided to reserve judgement until i got home to my big monitor. and what can i say - VERY disappointed.

"horsie smile" - that bokeh is so ugly and distracting i'm actually tempted to bring out my Voigtlander 50/1.1 for a comparison! granted, background foliage bokeh is difficult to render nicely, but still it shouldn't be that bad...
"Fuji X100 Velvia mode" - the flowers in the distance go all double-vision. unlike the one above, this one is totally inexcusable.
A couple of photos from Steve Huff's guest preview. Ugly.

I need creamy bokeh. If the X100 doesn't give that, I'll have to look elsewhere....

Why do I feel like I'm in a bad dream right now...
 
I'm going to reserve judgement until I have the opportunity to try the camera myself. Granted some of these photos are not so great, but I have seen some beautiful ones by other photographers...and then I guess it also gets down to what one is after. Not meaning to sound like a pie in the sky, kool aid drinker here, but I hate to jump to conclusions based upon other people's photographs....though I guess most of us do do this all the time when we read reviews, eh?;)
 
certainly a camera's capability is limited by the photographer (especially in the case of the steve huff guest preview) however no amount of skill can correct a fundamental technical deficiency.

if it was something like AF speed or buggy behaviour, that could foreseeably be fixed via a firmware update. but the optics cannot be changed so easily (or rather, at all, in the case of the x100)

how good a camera is depends on how well the camera's capabilities mesh with the photographer's needs. having just spent a week in sri lanka shooting an average of 3-400 shots a day with my epl1+20/1.7, i personally know very well what i need to see in a camera for it to be a worthwhile upgrade.

i'd love to try it first but at what cost? if it's bad then sure i could sell it right away, but what exactly am i hoping for? that my camera will have a better optical lens design than everyone else's? i'm poring through my holiday photos now and it's not hard to see which ones would be easily ruined by busy bokeh. let alone softness wide-open...
 
there aren't any shots i can see there with shallow-enough dof to cause concern. certainly it's a good performer when stopped down, but i really like bokeh in my shots - it's my style and i can easily see myself being frustrated at being stuck with a lens that is both soft and busy wide open. my voigtlander 50/1.1 never sees much use, but when it does it's always stopped down to 1.7 or 2.0 which always makes me think whether i should have just gone with a cheaper, lighter, better-performing zeiss zm 50/2 or similar.
 
Thanks Jon, I appreciate your enlarging your response and understand your concerns. From my point of view, at present anyway, I'm still very optimistic.

I am assuming that the store where you're expecting your X100 to be delivered pretty soon has a good return policy should you do decide it's not for you?
 
Thanks Jon, I appreciate your enlarging your response and understand your concerns. From my point of view, at present anyway, I'm still very optimistic.

I am assuming that the store where you're expecting your X100 to be delivered pretty soon has a good return policy should you do decide it's not for you?

Maybe I'm just getting tired (nearly 2am here) so i'll leave judgement and decision for tomorrow :)

Part of me is as disappointed in the X100 as I am in my current camera. No matter how hard i tried, a wide prime just doesn't cut it for the way I want to shoot. So why keep it, let alone replace it with something that looks to be inferior in a few significant ways?

If I do take delivery of it though, I probably won't return it - there are plenty of people jostling for a place in the X100 preorder queue so I'll just "help" one of them out :)
 
For all of you anxious X-100 pre-orderers, a guy living in Japan who got the camera a couple of days ago has made the PDF manual available online for a week. Get 'em while they're hot:

For all those asking, I've posted the Finepix X100 Owner's Manual PDF here:
https://files.me.com/kylebarrow/dxsgl2
The link is only good for a week and will expire on 2011-03-12.


-Ray
 
Looks about 840 GBP + P&P if you buy from a store outside the UK (ie a reputable store in the EU). I'm gonna wait for full reviews and then see the prices around Christmas, at which point I expect we'll have a higher end NEX, along with the 24/1.7 Zeiss and an electronic viewfinder to compare with too...
 
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