ISO 800, 23mm, f/4.0, 1/140 sec

It has been a while since I posted a photo of Viking ships. A thousand years ago, Roskilde was the home of the vikings and the king of Denmark. The second king of Denmark Harald Bluetooth (the modern technology is actually named after that guy!) rests in our Cathedral. That kind of puts Roskilde on the map, so to speak. We also have the worlds largest replica of a viking ship called the Sea Stalion. These are some of the smaller viking ships, and you can get to sail with them, as a tourist attraction.

I shot this photo with my Fuji FinepixX100, a camera that I both love and hate and use far too little, and should have got rid of. The camera can take absolutely fantastic photos, but also has it’s flaws.

The camera looks awesome – like an old Leica or similar. I bought the brown leather cage for it as well, which only emphasizes the looks of an antique camera. And when ever I carry it around, it is always commented “Oh – that’s an old camera” – but it is not.

Basic facts:

• 12 Mega pixels using an APS-C sensor. APS-C is awesome, compared to user smallish cameras. 12 Mega pixels is just a little to little.
• Dynamic range 12.4 EVS (See dxomark for the lab test)
• Maximum auto bracketing (aeb) is -1, 0, +1. As a photographer of HDR, this is just not good enough
• Built-in Neutral Density filter ND 3. This is cool! I have used it far too little.
• The lens is fixed at 23mm – equivalent of 35mm. A good all round size, but due to the small mega pixel cropping options are not that great. If I have the “wrong lens” attached, I will crop an image. 12 Megapixel just leaves less to crop from.
• Weight Approx 0.5 kg. It’s not a light weight small camera.
• Pretty awesome low light performance.

I have had the camera with me on a few vacations, but I tend to get annoyed with it. As you can see on the image of this post and this image the camera can produce absolutely awesome photos. But it has problems getting the focus spot on. I tend to get maybe 10% or 20% of my photos not tack sharp. But when it hits the focus point, the photos are awesome sharp. And the saturation I just love.

The camera is slow – it takes a long time to start up. And because of the mirrorless technology, it also focuses slowly.

The lens is fixed and not possible to switch – however, the lens is totally awesome. f/2.0 and produces fantastic images. The limit comes with the fairly low mega pixel count. If it had been a higher mega pixel count, I would have shot more shots and just cropped them.

It has a panorama feature, which works quite well. If you do it hand held, you of course have to have a fairly steady hand, otherwise you get skewed merges between images.

About low light performance. The camera is known for it’s low light performance, and that is in all fairness. However, it still get’s it ass kicked, by high level DSLRs. There is an upper limit for the everything, including Low light performance of the X100.

I love the camera because of the looks, the high image quality and the fairly compact format.

I hate the camera because, it is not good for HDR, because it only does -1, 0, +1 in automatic exposure bracketing mode. I also hate it because it fails on getting the focus spot on, in far too many photos, just as well as it is a slow camera, both in starting up and focusing.

For the casual shooter, that want’s something that that is siginificant better than the average snapshot camera, this camera really kicks in. But for the serious photographer, the camera comes in almost good enough. No doubt the image quality is totally awesome, but it’s flaws are considerate, and for that reason I use it far too little.