The Complete Guide to Fujifilm's X100s Camera

The Complete Guide to Fujifilm’s X100s Camera

Professional Insights for Experienced Shooters

Version 1.0d

ISBN 978-1-304-96887-6

Published by The Friedman Archives Press

Copyright © 2014 Tony Phillips. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced either in print or in any digital format without express written permission. Contact the author at Tony@TonyPhillips.org

Gratitude

I would like to thank the following for their invaluable contributions to the quality of this undertaking:

Gary L. Friedman    Ron White

Justin Moriarty         Fujifilm Australia

And further thanks to my models, Jayne, Levi, Beth, Ben, Sarah and Lincoln, Steven, Sophie, Miranda, Raylee and Steve.

Simply saying thank you isn’t enough. But I want to thank my wife Lorna for her enormous support. By now, she could surely write a book titled: Chasing the Photographer :-)

For Those of You Who Bought the Printed B&W or E-reader Version

The price of the printed books come with a free, full-color .pdf version of the book. Just send an email to info@FriedmanArchives.com. Attach the receipt of the book you bought (if you didn’t buy it from the FriedmanArchivesPress.com website, then Friedman Archives does not have your customer information), and we’ll send you a download link. (The same thing goes for those who bought this book a B&W e-reader.)

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All Fujifilm content used with permission. Thank you.

About the Author

Tony Phillips is a photographer, writer, pilot and teacher, who, among other things, has a passion for photography. He conducts photographic seminars teaching the fundamentals of digital photography through advanced lighting techniques, believing that anyone can learn to take great pictures if they want; and, it is not so much the equipment (though that is obviously important), as the photographer, that makes those pictures great. He is widely travelled, and rarely without a camera. Visit www.TonyPhillips.org for more.

While Tony is both businessman and entrepenuer, he now spends much of his time writing, teaching, travelling and capturing that great image.

A personal note: During the writing of this book my son had an accident in Greece that left him in a coma – and for quite some time he clung to life by the merest thread.

Many people (a lot of them strangers) leaped in to lend assistance, showing the great depth of the human spirit. To those folks, I am most grateful. My son’s partner Sarah displayed enormous strength for one so young, even when things turned bad and it seemed everything was lost. I applaud her courage. My wife was a stalwart, uprooting herself to rush straight to him, unrelentingly pushing through the hard issues as mothers so often do. J

I am pleased to say my son is home now, and mending. You will see him on the cover of this book, and wheelchair-bound in its pages. In fact, he has improved so much I had to reshoot the cover image just before we went to publication.

Needless to say, several months went by where I never touched either a camera or keyboard in the pursuit of this project. And for a while there, it seemed it might never get finished. But here we are. I hope you enjoy!

You can email Tony at Tony@TonyPhillips.org.

Chapter 0 Introduction

The revolution is taking place right before our eyes. For many years, your choice in high-end photography was an SLR / DSLR / SLT / large-format camera. But in recent years, all that has changed. Now we have cameras like the Fujifilm X100S with the same APS-C sensors that were previously the exclusive purview of larger-bodied cameras – that rival them (and some might argue, eclipse them) in image quality.

Whatever opinion you hold on this, a revolution in how we take pictures is underway. One which I believe is seeing DSLR’s rapidly being displaced by smaller, highly refined cameras. And Fujifilm seem to be placed well at the forefront of this revolution.

Fujifilm has a long history in the production of fine photographic film, and more recently in pocket-sized cameras. That is, until the past few years when they firmly set their foot in the high-end arena with the X-Pro 1, the X100, and the X-E1/X-E2.

Recently, we saw them do something few other camera manufacturers do. They released a version two of the X100 - the X100s (I know, they all do that J), that actually took on board feedback from their customer base, radically improving the camera while keeping features their loyal base loved about its predecessor.

And to do that required upgrading the technology – adding phase detection pixels to the sensor for instance, to get AF focus as close to DSLR capability as possible.

Of course, it’s not my intention to compare camera models in this book. Suffice it to say that I find it entirely satisfying to find a high-end camera manufacturer who listens to their customers (even seeking customer opinion and studying forum feedback), as well as maintaining a clear vision for their own development, improving areas of their cameras’ operation via firmware where possible (the addition of focus peaking in other X models for example). One can argue that this might rob Fujifilm of sales for future releases – yet it is equally probable that this loyalty garners loyalty in their customer base. And, since the jump in real features in the newest release has been significant, I dare say it attracts customers to upgrade as newer models become available.

All that aside…

It takes a little focus and imagination to drive this beauty. But when you put in the effort (which, let’s face it, is no drudgery at all), the rewards are most enjoyable.

The X100s contains a boat-load of features that cater to the unique needs of photographers, making this a camera for high-end users who don’t think conventionally. (That would be you.)

Perhaps it’s not too large a leap to think you’ve fallen in love with your gorgeous little X100s, and you’re reading this book to try to ring every delightful drop from each click of the shutter.

I know I have.

This Book

Unlike my previous books, in this book I make the assumption that you’re already an experienced photographer, and therefore you don’t need tutorials on downloading images, the basics of ISO, f/stops, shutter speeds, or light and composition (I do include an appendix on this for reference though). Nor do I plan to delve into the software that came with your camera, or how best to retouch images on your PC.

While many of the explanations for the X100S’s features and functions are tutorial in nature with plenty of examples (a hallmark of my previous books), about half of this book will is reference – allowing you to delve into every function and menu feature and learn all about it.

Arnold Newman said We do not take pictures with our cameras but with our hearts and minds.

If you want a camera suited to taking these kinds of pictures, you’ll find it hard to better your X100S.

Let’s begin!

Chapter 1 The X100s in a Nutshell

Why an X100S? I mean, it’s small. It has a fixed focal length lens. It’s nothing like a DSLR. So why did you buy one?

Let me be brash and share with you the things I like most about this camera:

· Image quality (duh!). (See Figure 1‑1) What else is a camera if it isn’t about capturing the image you want? You don’t really need more pixels. It’s so nice Fujifilm concentrated on image quality above raw resolution alone. This quality comes about largely through the combo of sensor, processor / processing and lens.

· Camera handling. It’s intuitively easy to operate the X100S without taking your eye from the viewfinder. There’s a raft of reasons for this: careful placement and operation of controls and buttons; the OVF/EVF hybrid viewfinder (with shooting information); and direct analogue primary controls (aperture, shutter, EV). It’s a total package.

· The leaf shutter! Or what it offers. When combined with flash and the built-in ND filter, I get real flash sync at high shutter speeds. Meaning I can shoot wide open in the noon-day sun, with great results. I love this feature! And you will be too when you see how the shutter/flash/filter combo gives you the ability to compete with ambient light!

· Bygone good looks. All this comes nicely packaged in a handsome look so–reminiscent (as you’ve undoubtedly heard everyone say) of cameras from a bygone era (Figure 1‑2). (See. I studiously avoided mentioning ‘retro’, ‘rangefinder(esque)’, or anything to do with Leica!). But bygone it is no more, and I’m really enjoying the comeback.

So what’s new about the X100S since the X100?

New Features since the X100

I know I told you I wouldn’t compare, and I don’t intend to. But it might be helpful to know what the main changes are, and why they’re significant.

New 16 MP X-Trans Cmos II Sensor

OK. So here’s a fairly unsexy place to start. But wouldn’t I be remiss if I didn’t? Let me share with you an interesting image comparison I did. Figure 1‑3 shows a nice cityscape test shot containing a mix of bright and dark, with high levels of detail. Figure 1‑4 and Figure 1‑5 shows a comparative close up of the selection.

Lining up a bank of DSLR’s and firing the same test shot with the same settings quite surprised me! In these tests the quality from the X100S seems second to none!

So what specifically did Fujifilm do to improve their X-Trans sensor (Figure 1‑6)?

More Pixels

1. 16-megapixel sensor, up from 12-megapixel

It is popular marketing to cram more pixels onto a sensor. But all this really does is lull the unwary into thinking one product is superior to another. Yet anyone who studies the results knows this is a flawed premise. True, you generally get greater sharpness from higher resolution, but there are significant drawbacks too – like added noise.

So an increase from 12 megapixels in the X100, to 16 megapixels in the X100S is both modest, and wise, and one of the reasons the resultant image quality is so good.

Baked-In Phase Detection Pixels

One of the most-heralded new features of the X100S is the Phase Detection Pixels now baked right into the centre area of the sensor – and the meaning behind the ‘II’ designation in ‘X-Trans CMOS II’. See Figure 1‑7.

The obvious benefit of Phase Detection over Contrast Detection is speed of focusing especially in low-contrast compositions (low light, indoor shooting springs to mind), and I must say the system works quite well – as long as your subject is in the centre of the frame (See Figure 1‑8). If you are a ‘focus-recompose shooter’, this won’t phase you a bit (J).

According to Fujifilm, the X100S achieves autofocus in in 0.07 of a second, using 145,000 phase-detect pixels covering 40% of the sensor! (Figure 1‑8)

Putting phase-detect autofocus into a camera sensor is a work of genius – and a Fujifilm innovation back in 2010. I should explain how it works, but the best explanation I’ve read came from dpreview.com at the time: http://tinyurl.com/acr4no7. I can’t improve upon it.

Because these PDAF pixel pairs gather some light, you don’t see holes in your image as a result of masked pixels overlaying the sensor (Figure 1‑7).

Other things that haven’t changed, but make this a great sensor.

This is probably the best place to remind you that the sensor in the X100 is no slouch either, and there are a few things which have carried over from it into the X100S that bear mentioning while we’re discussing the sensor.

Optical Low Pass Filter – There Isn’t One!

You’ve probably read the X100S’s X-Trans CMOS II sensor eliminates the need for an Optical Low Pass filter. So how does that improve image quality?

Well, let’s start with something simple. If virtually every other digital camera uses an Optical Low Pass filter (film does not have this issue), what does it do?

In the simplest sense, the regular 2x2 Bayer arrangement of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) pixels on a sensor creates moiré patterns (colour bands) in the image. You’ve probably seen these in some pictures, on TV etc. They’re especially noticeable in clothing with fine repeating patterns and the like. Placing an anti-aliasing Optical Low Pass filter over the sensor reduces these patterns – but at a cost. It robs the image of clarity by blurring away the fine detail that leads to these moiré patterns. So if you could remove the filter, you’d have sharper pictures, but unwanted colour banding.

To eliminate both the filter, and the resultant moiré patterns, Fujifilm engineers, arrived at a brilliant solution. They changed the regular 2x2 arrangement of pixels in the RGB colour filter array to the less regular 6x6 pattern seen in Figure 1‑9. (You must remember that Fujifilm have been film experts for quite some time, and film has a random grain structure – which is the logic behind their new 6x6 color filter array.)

So there you go. New thinking re the Colour Filter Array minus the OLP filter = improved image quality (sharper pictures, lower noise).

Big Pixels and Micro-lenses

The bigger the pixel, the lower the noise – and a modest number of pixels on a large sensor means big pixels. If you place a carefully-crafted lens on top of each pixel (nobody said making sensors was easy!), you can improve light gathering ability markedly, even in the corners where digital cameras are traditionally at their weakest. The X100s’s 16 megapixel sensor was constructed just this way (see Figure 1‑6), contributing to, amongst other things, improved edge to edge image sharpness (See Figure 1‑10 and Figure 1‑11).

Less Noise

Fujifilm says its new 16 MP X-Trans II sensor has an excellent S/N ratio – meaning a significant reduction in dark noise – especially noticeable at high ISO’s (see Figure 1‑12). So what is Dark Noise, I hear you ask, and why do I care?

Don’t be disappointed with this, but I’m going to give you a back of the envelope explanation rather than twenty pages. OK?

Dark noise is unwanted signal induced into the image by its electronic circuitry (primarily the sensor) - and obviously it is not part of the intended composition. It is random, meaning it does not show up in the same place in every captured image, and as the sensor heats up from frequent use or long exposures, so dark noise increases too. You can easily see dark noise if you shoot with a lens cap on. You still get noise even in this kind of black image – and it’s especially visible after long time exposures.

Dark noise is a huge bugbear for astrophotographers who employ a method called dark frame subtraction to eliminate this unwanted signal from time exposure pictures. Put simply, dark frame subtraction uses a dark picture usually taken with the lens cap on, immediately after a time exposure so the sensor is at its hottest. Any signal in this black image is subtracted, or removed from the desired light frame image in software, thereby reducing noise in the final picture.

So in this case, less is better. And the result of these signal to noise improvements is your camera produces lower noise images (most visible in low light and high ISO situations). Which is something you knew already, of course. :-)

Given that this is only the second iteration of their top-end imaging sensor (subsequently deployed in other X cameras), my guess, is this X-Trans II sensor is just another of Fujifilm’s steps along a pathway that will largely replace DSLRs in the hands of many photographers. When a camera of this size can produce DSLR quality images at DSLR speeds, with a hybrid viewfinder, no mirror, and phase detect for fast focusing, many, many photographers will be asking what some now are: Why have a DSLR at all?

EXR Processor II

Like all other forms of personal computing, the processing power in cameras continues to increase (almost exponentially, it seems). And with it comes the capacity to add new ‘features’ – new ways of processing raw data to optimize it for the sensor and lenses on the camera. And to do some pretty tricky in-camera post processing for great results too. (Figure 1‑14)

The X100S has a new EXR Processor II with some new, special capabilities, and Fujifilm say it is twice as fast as its predecessor. A remarkable feat; but what does it mean for photographers?

The Need for Speed

A most welcome faster startup speed, for one. Now, an impressive half second instead of two seconds! And since there’s no waiting for the lens to initialize like many other cameras your X100S is pretty much on tap all the time.

Shutter lag is – well, less laggy too, at .01 of a second, and the time between shots has dropped to half a second instead of almost a full second!

Continuous Shooting now pops off 6 pictures per second, instead of 5. A useful improvement if you’re shooting anything other than sleeping kids and animals (who don’t seem to understand the concept of posing for a good picture :-) ).

Even Less Noise

I always love speed improvements, but more significant (to image quality at least) is an overall 30% reduction in noise. I’ve already mentioned sensor dark noise, but examine Figure 1‑12 again. HALF of all noise improvements comes about through the EXR II processor!

If you’re wondering how, consider this. While the unique X-Trans II sensor delivers less dark noise, it also produces quite unique data. It’s the job of the camera’s processor to crunch this data, and deliver it as an image onto your memory card. Optimized processing algorithms coupled with added processor speed mean the EXR II can chew through data more thoroughly, more quickly, to deliver these additional noise reductions.

LMO - Lens Modulation Optimizer

Actually, this is pretty cool. Fujifilm says: "Lens Modulation Optimizer overcomes the limit of [the] optics. By modeling optical phenomenon such as diffraction and aberration, it minimizes the phenomenon by digital processing and achieves better sharpness than before."

In essence, putting a lens and aperture in the light path (which cameras must do), induces a variety of aberrations and diffractions. Most of us are familiar with chromatic aberration – where colours bend by differing amounts, but there are a host of other similar issues as shown in Figure 1‑15.

If you know how your camera induces aberrations, and you have enough on board computing power (which we do), you can essentially post process the raw data in-camera, and write corrected, (and therefore clearer/sharper) images to the memory chip as the final captured image. Enter LMO!

This LMO processing is applied to aperture diffraction also. As you can see in Figure 1‑16, diffraction varies according to aperture size, and it gets stronger as the aperture gets smaller. Which is partly why f/16 (or greater) for many lenses is far too soft.

Incidentally, diffraction is not your enemy. This same Huygens-Fresnel principle is gainfully employed in the camera’s onboard flash (the front diffuser), to scatter light for even coverage. And now you know that, you’ll see it everywhere, even in the tail-lights of your car.

And, now you know another reason why images from the X100S are so, so sharp – and why LMO is so geekily cool :-).

14-bit RAW

More bits are better, right? The improved sensor now outputs 14-bit RAW (16,384 tones), up from 12-bit Raw (4,096 tones) in the X100. This is generally a feature found on higher end DSLRs. I’ve included this in the processor section of this book because only the fastest processors can handle the extra data involved.

Nikon first introduced 14-bit imaging back in 2008, and many customers found it hard to see any difference at all. Maybe this is true for you too. In fact, the only time you’re really likely to notice it is if you’ve underexposed by quite a lot, and you’re desperately hoping to recover detail from the shadows. Now, speaking from experience, I know it happens sometimes J, so good to know, I suppose.

Not that you’re likely to notice it on the average computer monitor or printer anyway – since they simply don’t display this nuance in tonality, even though the images can withstand much more aggressive editing.

These two articles written by a Nikon owner will give you some insight into just how little difference this makes in the real world: http://tinyurl.com/2e4nss and http://tinyurl.com/4enno8).

World’s Best Hybrid Optical & Electronic Viewfinder

This isn’t hyperbole - I’m serious. Anyone who has ever picked up this camera, looks through the hybrid viewfinder and says, Wow!.

Let me be quick to point out that the X100 has this same outstanding technology, though now, electronic viewfinder resolution has been radically bumped from 1.44 to 2.35 million pixels! Which is my justification for including this (one of my favorite features) in this section of the book.

As you can imagine, I handle my share of cameras – some with and without electronic viewfinders – so when I first picked up the X100S, I was already wary of the hype heaped on its hybrid viewfinder. But I’m pleased to say that this is one of the best features you could imagine, and like other voices before me, I can’t help wondering why no one thought of doing this before.

One of the things that makes this viewfinder so special and fun to use is Fujifilm’s implementation of it. It is perfect.

First off, the viewfinder is hybrid, with two completely different personalities. It can be an electronic viewfinder (EVF), an optical viewfinder (OVF), or an optical viewfinder with a digital overlay of all the useful shooting information you could wish for.

Secondly, it’s elegantly simple to jump between OVF and EVF just by dabbing the tiny lever (it’s a toggle) on the front of the camera. Once the electronic viewfinder is engaged, a svelte curtain closes across the inside of the glass viewfinder, and you get to see exactly what you see on the rear LCD screen (except in much higher resolution) through the eyepiece. This works in all shooting modes, and in playback – reducing chimping (moving the camera from your eye to view your last capture on the LCD), since you can see it right in the viewfinder. For this to work, set the review option via MENU --> 2 --> Screen Set-Up --> Image Disp. --> (Continuous, 1.5 sec, 0.5 sec, OFF) to review your image in the EVF.

What makes the electronic viewfinder so good? It’s an Organic L.E.D. (OLED) display – the same kind used on high-end smart phones. They’re brighter, have a wider color gamut, and have a faster refresh rate (and resolution) than the camera’s rear LCD.

The EVF isn’t perfect, though. Eyeglass wearers shooting outdoors on a bright day say they sometimes have to shield the sun when it shines between their face and the eyeglasses. And if you’re panning the camera quickly to track your subject, you’ll notice some lag as the camera struggles to keep feeding high resolution images onto the EVF screen.

One benefit the EVF brings to outdoor videography is you don’t have to strain your eyes looking at a sun-washed LCD on a bright day. Simply switch to EVF instead!

The Optical aspect of the viewfinder is pure genius, and a pleasure to use. It’s bright, with an astounding field of view that lets you see well outside your image frame. This is helpful for several reasons: You can easily see other potential framing without moving the camera; and it’s a snap to spot things which might imminently enter or impede your composition before it happens. Anticipating the precise moment to press the shutter button becomes just that much easier too, as you have a wider field of view - and therefore more lead time to process information.

But wait. There’s more! There’s quite a wide range of shooting information available for digital overlay onto the OVF – the kind of detail previously the exclusive domain of electronic viewfinders and LCD screens. What’s more you have some control over what you see. Just press the DISP button in shooting mode to cycle through the two OVF screens seen in Figure 1‑19.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but you must be in OVF mode for this to work. Meaning you must have your eye at the viewfinder when you press the DISP button. Fortunately, the button is in a good location when holding the camera to your face, so you are unlikely to confuse it with other buttons.

There’s another bit of special magic worth considering. Because the X100s’s OVF is offset from its imaging sensor, it is not at all like a TTL (Through The Lens) OVF found in your typical DSLR. This offset leads to parallax errors in both image framing and the location of the focus frame as you look through the viewfinder. This becomes more pronounced the closer your subject (focal point) is to the camera.

Fujifilm’s engineers have tackled this conundrum by moving the digital frame overlay within the available OVF field of view once you have locked focus – causing both the image frame and focus frame to apparently move with reference to the entire OVF field of view. Of course, these frames don’t really move. It only appears this way as the display attempts to account for the difference between what your eye sees from its offset position left of the lens, and what the sensor sees directly behind the lens.

And the reason it appears to move? Once it locks focus, the camera knows the distance from the sensor to the focal point in your composition and can now redraw the display (both image and focus frame) accordingly. As this distance shortens (your camera moves closer to the subject), parallax error increases, and the apparent movement of the frame becomes much more obvious.

The X100s’s hybrid viewfinder is the third in a pentad of wonderful quintessential ingredients that bring all of the benefits of Fujifilm’s outstanding design together to make great images. (The five are: the sensor, the processor, the viewfinder, the leaf shutter, and the controls themselves).

With the EVF:

You can see how your image will look before you shoot (exposure,white balanceand depth of field),

Yougeta live histogram,

Youhavegreattools formanualfocusing (FocusZoom,Focus Peak Highlighting andDigitalSplit Imaging),

You have compositional guidelinesand a digital levelshould you want,

You can display customizable shooting information,

TheEVFis not hopelessly dark shooting in low light.

With the OVF

7. Your field of view exceeds the limits of the image frame allowing you access to activities that might enter or impede your composition,

8. The OVF also overlays important shooting information,

9. You have a live histogram,

10. Compositional guidelines and a digital level are available,

11. You have parallax correction via the electronic overlay,

12. View is in real time with no lag,

13. The OVF isn’t effected (dark) when shooting with neutral density filters.

I review viewfinder (OVF/EVF) and LCD display modes in detail starting on pages 98 and 246.