Thoughts on the X-T100
Today, Fuji launched the newest camera in its lineup, the budget conscious X-T100. Its kind of a cross between an X-A5 an X-T20, and I have to say, I think this is a really interesting camera. It gives you a well-equipped body, with a high-quality EVF but with a Beyer sensor instead of X-Trans. This means that you don’t have to worry about any changes to your workflow to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of working with X-Trans files, but still, have all the other advantages of a Fuji camera.
Now, I know this already existed with the X-A series, but that lacked an EVF, and I think that makes a big difference. It also seems to be faster and has a bigger buffer, so some of the limitations of the “low end” nature of the X-A series also seem to be lifted. I’m actually really curious to try this. This might come across as heresy, but in my opinion, the real strengths of the Fuji system are the lenses and the colour science, not X-Trans. According to some of the people who had early production versions, they didn’t notice a massive difference in image quality but found the files much easier to deal with in Lightroom. In fact, I watched a few videos from early users, and it was kind of funny to watch how they tried to dance around the fact that X-Trans wasn’t noticeably better.
I can’t help but wonder if this is Fuji testing the water to see if they can move away from X-Trans. They already use a standard Beyer sensor in the GFX, and the world didn’t end, so I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that they’re considering it. Ok, send your hate mail to...
Another interesting thing is that this has a fully articulated screen. While Fuji is billing this for selfies, it might actually make a good vlogging camera too, depending on whether or not the video quality is any good. If it has decent 1080p and they haven’t limited the picture controls like the X-Pro2, then this might actually be a good option for vlogging, as it has a microphone input too. It’s also not limited to 15 minutes like some other Fuji cameras which require a grip to shoot longer. The 4K on this is pointless though. 4K at 15fps is useless for video, so I guess it's mostly for the 4k photo mode.
The Fuji Guys did a “Vlogging” video with the camera, but I don’t know. The video quality doesn’t look great to me. It seems over sharpened and very contrasty with dynamic range that doesn't look great, much like what I get with the X-Pro2, but to be fair, I don’t know how they set it up, or if you can change the options, so I’ll wait till there are some proper reviews out there before passing judgement.
As I said, I’m really interested in this camera. I would seriously consider buying one as it would make a really nice unobtrusive street photography camera, and it would make my processing workflow a lot simpler. I would really love to try one to compare it to X-Trans to judge for myself, to see if there is much of a difference In real life. Considering the relatively low price of this, I can imagine that this will probably sell really well.
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