Into Day 4 now and that means my week with this camera is half over. I’m already preparing myself for the eventual loss of this camera… so I guess I better take a picture of me with it, for nostalgic purposes – Today’s featured image is me holding the X100 on the street – doing what a photographer does best – shooting! I looked for something reflective when I wanted my self-portrait and the closest thing I could find was a pedestrian traffic signal. I guess I made do with what I had around me!

In this post I’m writing about some of the various “drives” and “modes” of the camera and what they mean to me as a photographer. Before I get started… none of these are really game-changing features or abilities. They’re all common to digital cameras nowadays but for completeness, I did want to dedicate a post to them since they are somewhat part of the appeal. When you’re shooting, there are a couple of modes you can be in – flash or no flash, or macro or not macro. Same goes for drives. The  X100 definition of drive is something like shooting in bursts of 5 frames per second, or bracketing. There are a couple of other drives, but before I get into that, let’s talk macro…

Gettin’ Up Close & Personal

Macro mode let’s you shoot really close to your subject. I’m talkin really close. The lens of my camera was but a few centimetres away from touch this flower. It’s pretty easy to activate too, one click of the a button and you’re on your way. The image was shot at ISO 800, f/2, automatic shutter speed. The X100 worked it out to be 1/200th of a second.

I don’t usually shoot a lot of macro images. It’s rare to me to find the subject (or the need) to really get in close and capture all the minute details. One reason is with the SLR, I don’t have the lenses to do so. It’s pretty great that while this camera is able to shoot at (effectively) 35mm, it can get in real close if need be. I did find the focus to be a little soft wide open at f/2. It’s not quite tack sharp, but it’s close. As with most lenses, narrowed in a little bit at f/2.8 it gets much better.

Craving Some HDR?

I do have a soft spot for HDR processing, and this is the section of the review for this particular aspect. The X100 lets you bracket by exposure or ISO. I don’t know why you’d ever want to ever bracket by changing your ISO… but it is an option (actually, I should say, a drive) in-built into the camera. In terms of exposure bracketing, you can choose to shoot 3 brackets, separated by an entire stop, 2/3 of a stop, or 1/3 of a stop of light. As I always tell people, 5 brackets can usually get you most of the dynamic range out of a scene. You can try to compensate with 3, by taking copies of your highlight and shadow brackets and adjusting the exposures up and down a unit of exposure, leaving you with “5″.

It would have been easy for Fuji to build in HDR processing for the 3 images… and they didn’t. I’m glad for it. Other modes of the camera have “built-in processing” that leave you without the original images (see below). With my HDR post-processing, I prefer to do the tonemapping and post-processing myself to allow greater control.

The above image is 3 exposures separated by a stop, shot at ISO 800 hand-held. In terms of post-processing, it’s just tonemapped and some simple contrast work and selective burning. There is no noise reduction in this image. Very, very impressive results shooting HDR, a technique known for the side-effect of noise, at higher ISO ranges for a compact camera. Bravo, Fuji. Bravo. This was a home run in my book since it’s something I will look for and need out of a camera.

Feeling the Drive

Burst, burst, burst. As I’ve done more street photography this week than I have in a long time, I’ve realised that shooting single exposures is very hit and miss. Ever-s0-slightly wrong framing. Wrong angle of rotation of the frame. Someone is blinking. This is made especially harder when shooting from the hip as I so often find myself doing when walking around. Also, the single shot mode has a pretty long recycle time when shooting in RAW. At least a couple of seconds – long enough to miss that moment that prompted you to shoot.

Burst mode to the rescue! Here’s a shot of a police officer directing traffic:

This was one of 5, taken in the camera’s burst drive mode at 5fps. You get to choose either 5 or 3. I chose 5. 3 out of 5 of the images were of the police officer in a pose that wasn’t effective for the shot. His head isn’t looking the right way, his arm looks weird, or something like that. Not quite the right pose for the image. With the luxury of shooting multiple frames, I get to have my selection and select the best one.

Taking It Wide

Panoramas. Perfect for a beautiful landscape. This is I think more of a novelty than anything else, but the camera does a really great job of making photographing a panoramic image a breeze. Like bracketing, panoramas are one of the drives. You can choose between a 120 degree and 180 degree field of view. You choose your direction to pan, click the shutter, and start panning slowly. That’s it. There’s a little progress meter to tell you when the camera is done. When it’s all done with, you’ve got one stitched, ready to rock panoramic image.

Here’s a view of Seattle (optimised for the blog), straight out of the camera. At full resolution, it’s 7670×1440 pixels.

The full size image (again, straight out of the camera) is available here.

All These Options

There is really a ton you can do with this camera, and one little 23mm lens. It’s kind of impressive. But on the other hand, it does mean that to support it all, there needs to be menus, and options, and selections. It does get a little cumbersome to find some of the “core” functionality that supports your needs. Everyone is different, and they’re certainly accounting for that. There’s obvious flexibility in this camera, but it is coming at a cost. To flip out of macro mode, or bracketing drive, I definitely need to pull the camera away from my eye to adjust the right settings. Did I just miss my shot by doing so?

More tomorrow!

If you’ve read this far and want to catch up,

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3