“The inside story of how the excellent X-T1 came to be” (The Verge)

image courtesy: theverge

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The Verge publshed a very nice piece about Fuji’s industrial design team and the development of the X-T1. They talk about it with X-series’ product manager Toshi Iida and designer Masazumi Imai. Read the whole article “The inside story of how the excellent X-T1 came to be” here at theverge. Here some excerpts:

Making Of

The X-T1’s new direction ran the risk of disappointing Fujifilm fans. Every X-series mirrorless camera to date had featured a slick, compact rangefinder-style design that took cues from the likes of Leica and Contax, but Fujifilm started afresh with a silhouette that looks much closer to an SLR. It’s an interesting move — while mirrorless cameras haven’t yet made much impact on DSLR sales, they fill a similar role to light, travel-friendly rangefinders did in the film era. With the X-T1, however, Fujifilm is making a statement that its mirrorless cameras can compete on the same level as SLRs.

“Our X design is classic and authentic,” says Imai. “I could have chosen an ergonomic style but our X design is completely different. It’s flat and straight and based on ‘good-old-days’ camera style.” In particular, Fujifilm’s own [shoplink 20357 ebay]Fujica[/shoplink] ST901 from 1974 served as inspiration for Imai. “Late ’70s to ’80s SLRs were very cool to me,” he recalls. “The ST901 was very small with a very characteristic finder, so this was very close to the X-T1 concept. Very simple, not so ergonomic — this was the basic inspiration.”

“Nowadays we don’t need special technique, the camera does everything,” says Iida. “We think we should go back to basics. The photographer can control the camera, the camera doesn’t control the photographer.”

FF vs APS-C

“There are pros and cons which we need to carefully check and investigate, but some of the points we think we should do as quickly as possible,” says Imai. “For example, the movie button — many customers say that this is too easy to press. So that is the kind of thing that we should improve as soon as possible.” Fujifilm plans to make this button customizable in a future update.

“When we talk with professional photographers, they don’t care about the sensor size” That’s not to say that a larger sensor is off Fujifilm’s radar entirely, though — “Our R&D team is doing investigation,” allows Iida.

Improvements

Although the X-T1 feels like more of a complete package at launch than its predecessors, Imai says the team has already collated a list of 140 potential improvements based on customer feedback. […] “For example, the movie button — many customers say that this is too easy to press. So that is the kind of thing that we should improve as soon as possible.” Fujifilm plans to make this button customizable in a future update.