How good is the X100S?

Very.

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This camera is simply addictive. The rendering, colours, ergonomics and VF are just amazing.

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At the minute, don’t shoot me, but I’m thinking of selling the X-E1 I only just bought. I’m also not adding the X-Pro1 back into my bag (though that has more to do with wanting to adopt a street/documentary style at the moment than anything else). I do plan to pick up the X-Pro1 again once I need to go longer and wider.

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The contrast with the D600 I just bought couldn’t be starker. Both produce excellent image quality, the D600 is better by the way, but the D600 is heavy once paired with the better FX lenses and walks out to take photos with it become about the camera and carrying it to a scene rather than about seeing and composing great images. I can just forget about the X100S and get on with photography. That isn’t really fair to the D600 (I knew it was a large camera when I bought it) but it does reflect how I feel about it.

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I see doom mongers have turned up on various websites (perhaps upset that they’ve lost the argument about image quality) to say the AF speed is slow. All I can say is that the AF speed is very fast on my model, particularly in AF-C, where it really does rival M43s cameras.

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Yesterday I went for a walk to London Bridge and thoroughly enjoyed myself with the X100S. The results I am getting with this camera do justify the purchase price but frankly the camera is a lot of fun to shoot with too!

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All taken with my X100S.

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Update: A very “nice” chap on a well known internet forum tells me he can take better pictures than this with his smartphone, so, for amusement’s sake I thought I would include a link to my X-Pro1 vs iPhone post. Enjoy!

5 thoughts

  1. I have an X100 and XE1, I will keep my XE1 for its ability to change lenses.

    I am in two minds as to whether I should get rid of the X100 and get the X100S.

    It isn’t that the focus is slow (after updated software) that annoys me it is the inability to nail the focus on a regular basis.

    Did you find that with your X100 and is the X100S much improved in that respect?

    • Personally I didn’t have a huge problem with AF on the X100 except in poor light (and that was more about it failing to lock than anything). When I shoot street photography on the X100S I generally shoot in AF-C and use the EVF (I used the same settings on the X100 – I save the OVF for higher contrast scenarios). That seems to give good results – I think the autofocus is better in EVF mode.

      I did find that the X100S is faster to focus and produces fewer red boxes (failures to focus).

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