Digital Home Thoughts: Fujifilm Announces Development of Finepix X100; Makes Many Photographers Excited.

"This is certainly the most enjoyable camera news I've gotten in a long while. Fujifilm has made a "development announcement" at Photokina for a camera to be called the X100: a high-quality, fixed-lens, 12-MP, viewfinder-window compact digital camera with an APS-C sensor. The lens is a 23mm ƒ/2 Fujinon...exactly equivalent, in 35mm terms, to a 35mm ƒ/2."

Fujifilm has made a development announcement (ie the product is not ready but we went you to know it exists and is coming) on the Finepix X100, one of the more interesting announcements at this year's Photokina. It is a camera with styling and operations like the old rangefinders, but is not quite a rangefinder; there is no rangefinder mechanism in this camera. Instead, the prism transmits an image from a LCD, which makes this a hybrid optical electronic viewfinder system. It solves the main issue I have with rangefinders (the parallex errors), since you can switch to a purely electronic view to see the image as it is on the sensor, and keeps the main advantage of rangefinders (the very bright view). In optical viewfinder mode, the LCD overlays information like camera settings. It's a pretty neat system! Other highlights include a 12 megapixel APS-C EXR sensor, which is the first large Fujifilm sensor since the Fuji S5pro from four years ago, a 35mm f/2 equivalent lens (unfortunately, not my favourite focal length), full manual controls via dedicated dials, a built-in 3 stop ND filter, and a 2.8" HVGA screen. And yes, it autofocuses. No word on price yet, but don't expect it to be cheap, given the main competition is a Leica X1. The Online Photographer has a nice writeup on the camera as well as the hybrid mechanism, so hit the link to find out more!