Well, as the title suggests, this is not a review. Or at least, not yet. For now, it's more of my personal disappointment toward Fuji X100 which I happily purchased about (or a little less) two moths ago. Here I wouldn't like to talk about its pictures quality which is surprisingly fantastic (even for a DSLR standard). I pushed quite often into ISO 3200 and the result is amazing. Even 6400 still usable for some case. Of course it will never surpass the 5D markII in term of picture quality. The X100 is still far in the game into this. But for street photography, for the discreet and being unobtrusive (for the cliche & pretend to be the pricey Leica), this is a small beast. Oh wait, I just went too far. So where's the disappointment?
My Fuji X100 and the Chinese cheap cigarette
The shitty thing about Fuji X100 (the one mine) is it started to fail since a week ago. I was traveling in China and for some cases I need this compact monster. The China trip was also my reason forcing myself to get one. And yet, for the first two weeks, X100 was combat proven. I managed to shot some of my favourite image of the trip with this camera. But suddenly it started to shoot inconsitently. I could get three very different exposure at the same setting (ISO, shutter speed, and aperture). At first, I thought the bracketing was turned on. But that wasn't. The control was in full manual. Without Auto ISO nor auto-else. What the hell was happening?
I then started to analyze some of my photographs. My habit of shooting in the street , I usually stop the lens down to f8 or f11 in order to gain wider depth of field. But some pictures ended up nasty blurry while over-exposed at the same time. And there was another trial. Shooting portrait at f11 will never get you a perfect out of focus background. But it did happen. By then, I knew that the aperture is stuck.
Leshan, China
(The unconsistent exposure is also seen from panorama of the Leshan's Giant Buddha. I adjusted the contrast to see the problem more clearly. Click to see it larger. Notice the left corner and the Buddha's head. This problem occured in all shooting modes)
I started to browse about this problem over the web. I found this and that. And this means I'm not the only one who experienced the very similar problem. So what I have (hate) to do is waiting to get home and send this monster back to Fuji Indonesia. I will not be able to use it perfectly until it is fixed. Shit does happen when you travel!!!
However, there are some positive comments regarding how Fuji responding to this situation. Let's see.
Anyway, I will try to compile a deep review about Fuji X100 later, complete with its service report.