Today I downloaded and applied the latest firmware update, 1.20, for the Fuji X100 and although the list of new features in the manual update seems short and unimpressive – the ability to assign the ‘RAW’ button to other purposes, a slightly handier menu position for auto ISO, the ability to zoom in on the focus area in AF-S mode and a playback zoom that may automatically detect faces – the actual differences in operation seem a little more impressive.
Fuji do actually give a slightly longer list elsewhere, where the earlier improvements in previous firmware updates are also listed. But somehow the camera just seems a little ‘snappier’ (sorry:-) and even the start up delay seemed a little shorter. Or perhaps I was just imagining it. Perhaps it was just the good weather (and a little good wine) that made everything feel better.
But it’s certainly good news that Fuji are continuing to improve what was from the start a fairly impressive camera in most ways. It’s interesting to see how the DxOMark ratings for this camera compare with those for the Leica M9 – which it outranks on every score, if not always by a great deal. My own experience puts it between the Nikon D300 and D700 for overall quality and also for use in low-light, and the DxO figures are also in agreement with this. Of course with a fixed lens it is limited in some ways compared to these other cameras.
But perhaps the most surprising of DxOMark ratings I’ve seen are those recently published for the D800, with the highest score of any “35mm” camera and which put it up into the large-format league. Most surprising of all, and something that has wrong-footed most of the pundits is its low-light rating, more or less the same as the D4 and only slightly below the leading D3S.