Kaizen-spirit (X100 firmware): “Fuji is the only one doing it. I’d love this to be industry standard”

Three years have passed since the X100 was announced at the photokina 2010 (and, as you know, three years are a long time in the this business). Now, I don’t think that many X100 photographers expected such a major improvement for their camera after all these years.

But Fujifilm did it. The company invested time, effort and money to give your classic X100 a fresh, new software look. The camera is now significantly better than before.

diyphotography said here: “So why would a company release an update that is not going to generate any sales or hold users from moving to another system? If anything this update might slow down the move to Fuji’s X100s. They do it because they care about their customers. […] Fuji is the only one doing it. I would love this to be industry standard. Release new features on old cameras. I really can’t see why this would be too hard on camera makers. […] It is not enough because the camera can do more. This is just my wild guess here, and since the X100 is not firmware broken yet, we can’t really tell. But I think it is not pushed to the limits yet. […]”

Another feedback of long time X100 photographer Luke Bhothipiti can be read over here at Craig Litten’s website: “WHOA.  Manual focus WORKS now.  Like. . . it WORKS. […] However, all is not well with 2.0 as now the meter that was so fantastic before is now a little dodgy.  Shooting from the hip in aperture priority, I found that the camera was dramatically underexposing the images in bright scenes, regardless of which metering mode I was in.”

I’ve already shared the AF comparison firmware 1.30 vs 2.00 here. Many of you were enthusiastic about the new firmware, other still have some firmware wishes for the future. So, given Fuji’s Kaizen spirit (listen to feedback of customers and continuously improve its products through firmware updates), why shouldn’t we ask for more?

Now you know it, Fuji is listening. So don’t hesitate to extend the “TO DO” list in the comments! ;-)

Here is some feedback from the previous comments about the X100 firmware.

DONE

– “AF in low light seems much improved. MF works waaaay better, and the peaking is nice. General operation feels faster. I’m super pleased.”
– “The turn-on process is improved also, but it is not as impressive as the Af performance.”
– “Seems that the focus ring sensitivity was also improved. Chapeau!”
– “Manual focus actually works now! You don’t have to strain your arm turning the focus ring anymore!”
– “I have to say this is a spectacular improvement!”
– “So hats off to the team at Fujifilm, this is an amazing update! My X100 just got about 50% better and just feels faster overall. Thank you very much!!!”
– “New life for that little guy.”

TO DO

– “[…] the Q function […] (for the 3.0 version :-D ).”
– “Perhaps a “final”update with red focus peaking?”
– “Unfortunately, with all the nice things in FW 2.00 there also is a rather severe bug that renders manual focus highly unreliable, for detailed description see for example here (focus shift issue at fujix-series)”

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