Review: Fuji X100T

3:00 am | November 19, 2014

Author: admin | Category: Cameras | Comments: None

Review: Fuji X100T

Introduction

Compact cameras with large sensors are very popular at the moment, while those such as the X100 series with its fixed length lens have a smaller, more niche, audience but are still very much admired.

Fuji cameras in particular have proven desirable because of their retro styling and controls, impressive hybrid viewfinder and high image quality courtesy of the APS-C sized sensor. The light and (relatively) small size of the camera also make them appealing to street and wedding photographers who wish to take off-the-cuff shots without attracting too much attention. There’s also a large sensor with no anti-aliasing (AA) filter, which ensures lots of detail.

The latest incarnation in the series is the Fuji X100T, which is very similar to the X100S. It has the same 16 million pixel X-Trans CMOS II sensor and Fujinon 23mm (35mm equivalent) f/2 lens. It also features the same EXR Processor II, which at the time of the X100S’s release was claimed to produce images with around 30% higher signal to noise ratio than those from the original X100.

The X-Trans CMOS sensor features a unique design which uses a 6×6 RGGB filter array pattern, with an effectively random arrangement of colour filters within each block of 36 photo receptors. Ultimately, this means that the sensor is less prone to moire patterning and that’s why Fuji can get rid of the anti-aliasing filter for increased detail and sharpness.

Fuji X100T

One of the unique features of the Fuji X100 series is its hybrid viewfinder that can be switched between optical or electronic modes. The X100T updates this with the ability to see an electronic display in one corner of the optical viewfinder, which is designed to make manual focusing easier.

There have been other updates to the viewfinder, including projecting framelines when using the optical viewfinder that move to allow for parallax error when you’re focusing on objects near to the camera. There’s also Focus Peaking and Digital Split Image incorporated to further assist with manual focusing – the latter being dubbed an ‘electronic rangefinder’.

As with the X100S, the X100T features a Lens Modulation Optimiser, which is designed to help the lens deliver sharp detail even shooting at narrow apertures, such as f/16, where the diffraction of light would begin to affect image quality.

Again, as with the X100S, the X100T uses a hybrid AF system that uses either contrast detection or phase detection depending on the AF point selected and the brightness of the scene.

Other, smaller, improvements have been made to the camera too. There’s now a 3-inch, 1,040,000 dot viewfinder with a 3:2 ratio, compared with the 2.8 inch 4:3 ratio, 460,000 dot screen on the X100S.

Fuji X100T

Fuji’s film-simulation modes have proven to be one of the most popular features of X-series cameras, recreating the look of traditional films, such as Velvia, Provia and Astia. For the X100T, Fuji has introduced a new simulation, Classic Chrome, to recreate the look of slide film with muted tones and deep colours – apparently this came at the request of street photographers when shooting serious subject matter.

You can also now set exposure compensation to +/- 3 EV (compared with +/- 2 EV before), and there’s also the ability to set a maximum shutter speed of 1/32000 sec when using the new electronic shutter. This should be very useful for shooting at very wide apertures in bright sunlight, and there’s also an inbuilt ND filter which reduces the light level by the equivalent of three stops.

As is pretty much the norm these days, the X100T features inbuilt Wi-Fi. This means that you can remotely control the camera from your smartphone or tablet, or quickly transfer your images for quick sharing to social networks and so on. There’s no NFC communication included though for ultra quick connections between compatible devices.

Other features include up to 6fps shooting, full 1080p video recording, macro focusing as close as 10cm and Intelligent Hybrid AF with a claimed focus time of just 0.08 seconds.

There’s not a huge pool of fixed lens, APS-C sized compact cameras to choose from, and Fuji is the only manufacturer to have produced an updated version recently – it competes with the Nikon Coolpix A and the Ricoh GR.

Build quality and handling

Not a huge amount has changed from the X100S to the X100T in terms of the overall look of the camera – but, as they say, if something isn’t broke, there’s no need to fix it. What has changed, though, is the ability to customise a good proportion of the buttons on the back, depending on your preferred way of working.

On the back of the camera is a four way navigational pad, but instead of each button being marked with a function, you can set your own choices. There are three further buttons, a function button on top of the camera, and two buttons on the left hand side of the screen which can also be customised to one of 28 different settings.

In order to reach the most commonly changed settings all in one place, you can press the Q button to see a sort of quick menu which will show you options such as white balance, sensitivity, film simulation mode and so on. Simply navigate to the setting you want to change and then use the small dial on the back of the camera to alter a setting. The extra good news is here that you can customise the quick menu too, moving settings around to match whatever makes most sense to you.

Fuji X100T

Many people like the Fuji X100 series cameras because of their traditional controls. There is no mode dial, and while there is no true fully automatic mode, you can reach a close approximation by setting both the shutter speed dial on the top of the camera and the aperture ring around the lens to A for automatic. If you want to shoot in aperture priority, set the shutter speed dial to A, and if you want to only control shutter speed, set the aperture ring to A. These classic dials are a great way to quickly enter manual mode that will be appreciated to traditional photographers. A useful new feature is that the aperture ring can now be adjusted in 1/3 stops rather than just whole stops (though only whole stops are marked).

Just next to the shutter speed dial on the top of the camera, is an exposure compensation dial, which is easily reachable by the thumb. Both this dial and the shutter speed dial are reasonably stiff, meaning it’s unlikely you’ll accidentally knock them out of place.

The camera’s hybrid viewfinder is found on the top left hand corner of the rear of the camera. There’s an eye-sensor for detecting when the camera has been lifted to your eye to switch off the LCD screen and activate the viewfinder. You can switch this sensor off though if you only want to use one or the other for any length of time. In order to switch between the electronic and optical viewfinder, there’s a small switch on the front of the camera which is easily reached by your fore or middle finger when holding the camera up to the eye. It’s worth remembering that the optical viewfinder won’t switch on if you’ve got macro focusing mode switched on.

Fuji X100T

One of the new features of the X100T is its electronic shutter, which allows you to photograph at 1/32000 of a second, but this is not represented on the shutter speed dial. To activate the electronic shutter, you need to scroll to this option in the main menu. If you want to shoot at a quicker speed than the maximum speed represented on the dial, set it to 1/4000 and then use the small scrolling dial on the back of the camera to move to faster speeds.

Another benefit of using the electronic shutter is that it puts the camera into silent mode. Though while it’s true that the shutter doesn’t make any noise, it’s still possible to hear the lens focusing – so if you’re photographing somewhere extremely quiet or silent, you might not be completely inconspicuous.

Probably the camera’s biggest changes have been made to the viewfinder, with Fuji making it even better to use than before. When the optical viewfinder is used and the camera is in manual focus mode a rectangle appears in the bottom right of the screen showing an enlarged view of the target area. When the focus assist option is set to Digital Split Image this shows a twin view of the subject which merge into one as lens is focused. In darker conditions, it can be a little difficult to see this view, but in brighter conditions it’s much easier.

An alternative option is to use Focus Peaking. You can set the display to show different colours, depending on your preference, where the areas of highest contrast are (which are usually the areas of best focus). Red id a good choice and easily visible against most subjects. As the focusing ring is rotated, and the subject starts to come into focus, red areas start to appear around parts of the image in the ‘electronic section’ of the optical viewfinder. It makes manual focusing quick and easy.

Another change to the optical viewfinder is that the bright lines which show the framing of the image in the optical viewfinder actually shift as the focus distance changes. This is to correct parallax error and it’s especially useful for accurate composition with close subjects.

The information in the X100T’s viewfinder is also cleaner looking and it rotates to be easier to read when the camera is turned to shoot in portrait mode.

Using the inbuilt Wi-Fi is easy. As there’s no NFC, even if you have a compatible device you’ll need to connect via Wi-Fi, making it slightly slower than some other cameras on the market. On the plus side, the free app (available for both iOS and Android), gives you lots of control over camera parameters, including aperture, shutter speed, ISO (sensitivity), white balance, focus point and film simulation mode, making it very useful.

Performance

As the X100T keeps the same image sensor and processor as its predecessor, we had no doubts that the image quality would also be very high. The biggest change here is the introduction of the electronic shutter to allow for super fast shutter speeds to be used when shooting in bright light.

Colours directly from the camera display the beautiful warmth that Fujifilm has come to be known for, with the film simulation modes giving you lots of scope to shoot exactly how you want to. If you choose to use the Velvia vivid mode, you’ll probably need to be careful of over saturation in some scenes, such as landscapes, where greens may appear too vivid.

Fuji X100T

The new Classic Chrome film simulation mode is a good choice for a lot of different shooting scenarios, and I think a lot of street and documentary photographers will be pleased with it. The colours are pleasantly muted while still retaining a film like quality. Monochrome is also a good choice for these kinds of subjects. Of course, if you shoot in raw format, you can opt to revert back to a ‘clean’ colour version of the image should you need it.

An alternative if you want to get creative is to use one of the Advanced Filters. While the X100T doesn’t seem like the kind of camera that you would use such filters with (some might say they’re gimmicky), they can be fun to try out – but you do need to be aware that you won’t have a raw format version of the image to work with should you need it further down the line.

With no anti-aliasing filter, as with the X100S, the X100T is excellent at resolving detail and is certainly a match for DSLRs equipped with an equivalent lens. By shooting at mid-range apertures of around f/8 we can determine the edge to edge sharpness is pretty good, with softness only just starting to appear in the corners of the image.

Fuji X100T

The camera’s general-purpose metering system does a good job to produce well balanced exposures, but it can be a little prone to under or over exposure in high contrast conditions, for example, so you may find you need to dial in a little exposure compensation to get the best look.

The X100T copes admirably when shooting in low light, high sensitivity situations. Noise is barely apparent up until around ISO 3200, and even then only when looking at images at 100% magnification. The overall impression of detail is fantastic right up to ISO 12800 at small printing and web sizes. You can even get away with 25,600 if you’re viewing it pretty small. The absolute highest setting of 51,200 is probably best reserved for those times when you’re really desperate, and otherwise best avoided.

Shooting in raw format allows you to take better control of your images in post production. At the time of writing, Adobe Camera Raw support had not yet arrived, but you can use SilkyPix to open them X100T’s raw files. With this you can prioritise detail reproduction over noise reduction you can, since JPEG images at higher sensitivity settings show a fair amount of smoothing.

Focusing speeds are pretty quick in good light, but there’s still a noticeable back-and-forwards hunt when trying to acquire focus – and that process is lengthened when shooting in low light. The threshold between needing to switch on the macro focusing and using the standard focusing is something that takes a bit of practice to gauge, but after a while, with only one focal length to concern you, you do get a sense how close you can get to the subject before needing to activate it. The X100T can get pretty close, but sometimes gives false focus confirmation – manual focusing can give better precision.

Despite being a fairly wide angle of view (23mm, equivalent to around 35mm), the X100T’s sense doesn’t suffer from excessive distortion, and I came across no examples of fringing or chromatic aberration during my testing.

Image quality and resolution

As part of our image quality testing for the Fuji X100T, we’ve shot our resolution chart.

Click here to see a full explanation of what our resolution charts mean.

Examining images of the chart taken at each sensitivity setting reveals the following resolution scores in line widths per picture height x100:

JPEG

Fuji X100T

Full ISO 100 image. See 100% crops below:

Fuji X100T

ISO 100. Score: 28. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 200. Score: 28. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 400. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 800. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 1600. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 3200. Score: 24. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 6400. Score: 22. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 12800. Score: 22. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 25600. Score: 22. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 51200. Score: 22. Click here for full resolution image

Raw (converted to TIFF)

Fuji X100T

ISO 200. Score: 28. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 400. Score: 28. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 800. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 1600. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 3200. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Fuji X100T

ISO 6400. Score: 26. Click here for full resolution image

Noise and dynamic range

We shoot a specially designed chart in carefully controlled conditions and the resulting images are analysed using DXO Analyzer software to generate the data to produce the graphs below.

A high signal to noise ratio (SNR) indicates a cleaner and better quality image.

For more more details on how to interpret our test data, check out our full explanation of our noise and dynamic range tests.

JPEG signal to noise ratio

Fuji X100T

Analysis: We tested the X100T against its predecessor, the X100S, the Ricoh GR and the Nikon CoolPix A. The X100T’s JPEGs were identical to those of the X100s, and you’d expect, and both cameras outperformed the Ricoh and Nikon.

Raw signal to noise ratio

Fuji X100T

Analysis: The tables were turned when comparing the raw files. We weren’t able to test the X100T’s raw files fully (see the main text) which explains the discrepancy with the X100s – we expect the figures to be much closer in the real world. The Nikon CoolPix A comes out on top, though.

JPEG dynamic range

Fuji X100T

Analysis: Again, the X100T and X100S produce nearly identical results. Both lag behind the Ricoh GR and CoolPix A, though Fuji’s dynamic range expansion mode (not tested) should close the gap.