An ongoing saga that continues to thrill and exasperate.
With the recent release of the X100V, the cost of X100F ownership has come down quite a bit and refurbished/second hand examples are starting to fall in price making them a bit of a bargain if you have the funds to consider one.
My recent purchase of ‘another’ X100 series I believe brings me up to the 6th different X100 camera I’ve owned – crazy in anyone’s books I know!
I had been using a Ricoh GR2 for a little while, which is a great compact camera, but I did have a few misgivings about it. 28mm is quite wide and for me I wasn’t always comfortable at that focal length but the real dealbreaker for me was the lack of a viewfinder. It’s was starting to become a little frustrating particularly in sunny weather not being able to see the rear screen at times.
I’d looked briefly at the V but in reality it’s quite a financial step up over the F, even though the new features are compelling.
However, with my intention to use the F as a walkabout outdoor camera features such as the new sharper f2 lens wasn’t a primary feature I was concerned about. I’m shooting a lot more at f8 now than at f2 and lens sharpness isn’t an issue at those kind of apertures.
Enter the X100F
With prices dropping to under £600 for a refurbished X100f the cost to change from the GR2 to the F wasn’t too much and made it a simple choice.
My only gripe was leaving it too long and seeing the black option going out of stock with only silver being available. It wasn’t quite a dealbreaker, but I would have preferred a black model.
There isn’t really much to say about the F that hasn’t already been written elsewhere in truth. It’s a fine compact, capable of high quality images with plenty of features that really still stand up in 2020.
I like the idea of a fixed lens camera – it takes all the decisions out of hand for lens choice, the F is a small compact camera that’s easy for me to carry around whether out walking or when travelling.
With the addition of the NiSi compact filter system I can use the F as an outdoor camera for casual landscape photography, travelling light with a small footprint.
The NiSi filter system is ideal, slipping easily into a pocket and with a 3 stop ND filter I can use that in conjunction with the onboard 3 stop filter to really slow things down when I want to.
All of this kit slips easily into the small Peak Design 5 litre sling I have making it the ideal travel companion. My only issue now is what to do with my Leica M10-P!
Analog Dave 