The very first thing I seen concerning the Fujifilm X Half is simply how small and light-weight it’s. The digital camera is designed to provide you no excuses — you need to be capable of deliver it with you in all places. And after spending just a few hours strolling round LA with the digital camera, I’m beginning to perceive why you’d need to.
Fujifilm’s disaster doesn’t essentially impress on paper. The X Half is an $850 digital camera with a vertically oriented 1-inch sensor able to taking 18MP images. There’s no electrical or hybrid viewfinder, no stabilization, no scorching shoe, and it may well’t even take RAW images. It’s very simple to have a look at that record of lacking options and disrespect the digital camera altogether.
However the X Half’s simplicity may be very a lot the purpose. This can be a digital camera for taking scrappy, fast images and capturing recollections. A whole lot of its flaws are masked with movie simulations, filters, and superimposed grain. Its limitations are a function, not a bug.
The digital camera comes with a hard and fast 32mm equal f/2.8 lens. Even with all of the added grain and filters turned off, I discovered it to carry out very nicely. The dynamic vary is appropriate with pure spotlight falloff, edges are sharp, and there’s even some bokeh should you plan accordingly. However I didn’t need to take these sorts of images with this digital camera.
Fujifilm loaded the X Half with various its hottest movie simulations, which mimic the look of basic movies, and it additionally added a bunch of latest filters. There’s halation, mirror mode (throwback to Apple’s Picture Sales space, anybody?), selective colour, dynamic tone, fish eye, and a lot extra. A few of these are downright foolish, however some are endearing and kooky. My favourite was the sunshine leak. It provides mild leaks to your images in a random trend, so that you by no means know what you’ll get till after you shoot.
On the highest of the digital camera is one thing distinctive: a digital “movie advance” lever. Cranking the lever is integral to 2 of the digital camera’s new options, 2-in-1 diptychs and movie mode.
Diptychs allow you to merge two pictures facet by facet. This function makes an entire lot extra sense in a movie digital camera, however Fujifilm is making an attempt to copy the concept for a digital world. You begin a diptych by cranking the lever such as you would on a movie digital camera. (Though not like a movie digital camera, a digital digital camera can even document a video, so that may now be a part of your diptych, too.)
Then there’s movie mode, which is designed to extra carefully mimic an analog digital camera. It principally locks you out of utilizing fashionable options and transferring too rapidly. There’s no solution to preview your shot on the principle display, you’re compelled to crank the lever to advance your imaginary movie earlier than taking the subsequent photograph, you’re locked into a selected look till you’ve completed your “roll,” and there’s no solution to play again the images you’ve simply taken both. It’s simply my favourite mode right here as a result of it strips a lot of what we’re used to with digital cameras and makes us use this digital camera solely otherwise.
This mode completely encapsulates why I don’t thoughts the exclusion of an electrical viewfinder. Utilizing the optical one on this mode makes you guess your composition and your framing, and also you merely gained’t know the outcomes till you’re carried out along with your complete roll. When you’re carried out, the digital roll “rewinds” and you’ll take a look at your images within the app. Sadly the app isn’t finalized and wasn’t accessible throughout my demo, however the information are nonetheless saved on the SD card.
The one speedy destructive, no pun supposed, I’ve seen up to now is that the digital camera simply feels a bit gradual. Regardless of utilizing a reasonably quick SD card, write speeds appeared gradual and took me out of the second various occasions. Making a diptych with a photograph and a video took a very long time to avoid wasting onto the SD. It additionally slowed me down when utilizing Movie mode, the place you must “advance the movie” after every shot. I discovered myself having to attend for the earlier photograph to avoid wasting earlier than cranking the lever.
Even the principle touchscreen, which is essentially the way you work together with this digital camera, wasn’t as responsive as I’d need it to be. There are two screens on the again — a pill-shaped display that permits you to select movie sims and navigate menus, and a vertical display for altering settings and previewing pictures. Some inputs weren’t registering even after just a few makes an attempt, and I wasn’t the one one on the digital camera occasion with the identical problem.
Regardless of these points, I completely loved my temporary time with the digital camera and was steadily delighted by the intelligent concepts the Fujifilm crew carried out right here. I hope to see extra corporations making daring selections with {hardware} and software program like this that alter the expertise of utilizing the digital camera.
There are much more succesful cameras at an identical worth level. However should you’re in search of one thing refreshing and joyful, the X Half is shaping as much as be a superb little digital camera.