A Review of the FUJIFILM X-T100 Camera

This post contains FUJIFILM X-T100 advertorial content, however all thoughts and opinions are my own.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been trying out the mirrorless FUJIFILM X-T100 digital camera on loan and so I thought I would put together a blog post to let you know how I got on.

As I’m not a professional photographer, but rather, I use my camera for my work and leisure, this blog will be an insight into the things that are important to me when looking for a new camera. For a run down of the more technical ins and outs of this cameras functions and capabilities, read this.

FUJIFILM X-T100 – The Basics

Let’s cover the basics first. This is a mid-range compact system camera, priced at £599, with wireless transfer of images to smartphones, an electronic viewfinder, three-way tilting touchscreen, 24 megapixel sensor and 4k video.

Design

I love the look of this camera, it has a vintage style design that I think looks quite cool and retro. The overall size of the camera is also much smaller than my usual DSLR, which is a bonus for when I’m on the go with the kids.

The X-T100 easy to hold and grip, which trust me, is important. The last small camera I had was slippier than a greased eel and so fell victim to a fall on more than one occasion. This camera feels nice to hold and easy to shoot with.

Smartphone Connectivity

The ease of smartphone connectivity on this camera, quite literally blows my own camera out of the water!

One of the most frustrating things about my own camera is how useless the smart phone app is. It rarely connects first time and even when it does, it’s slow, clunky and often disconnects halfway through use. I’d go as far as to say it’s one of, if not the biggest, frustration I have when creating content at the moment.

The FUJIFILM app, on the other hand, is faultless. It took minutes, if that, to download and connect to my camera. The app connects each and every time and what a joy that is!

You can set images to automatically transfer to your phone or you can upload via the app, by connecting to the camera and selecting the images you want to transfer from there. Again, I’m really impressed with how this worked. Transfers are complete in at least half the time it takes to transfer them from my usual camera.

Aspect Ratios Options

One of the things I like most about this camera, is that it has the option to shoot in 1:1. If you’re big on using your camera for Instagram, then this is invaluable.

My current camera doesn’t offer the option to shoot in square for Instagram, which means a lot of guess work goes into the composition of my photographs. Some of which, never see the light of day, purely because they don’t look right after cropping to square.

Above is an example of a photo I shot using the FUJIFILM X-T100, using the 1:1 aspect ratio.

In the past, it’s been much harder for me to get a shot of this window that I’m happy with, because moving the crop tool around get the subject (in this case, my daughter) in the right position, often means I end up cutting off the top of the window arch. With the FUJIFILM X-T100, set to 1:1, I got the photo I wanted much more quickly and I’m so pleased with how it turned out.

This feature alone, makes me think that it might be time to replace my current camera with something new.

Low Light Capabilities

At this time of year, there’s much less daylight, so having a camera that performs well in low light is super important to me. This was one of the major reasons why, when I started to get more serious about my instagram, I upgraded from my smartphone to a DSLR.

The photo of my younger daughter, above, was taken with the FUJIFILM X-T100 in low light. The curtains were closed, with only lamplight and fairy lights on in the room, but the shot still came out really nice and clear. This is something I would find much harder to achieve with a smartphone.

The cons

The points that I’ve covered so far in this post touch on the things I love about the FUJIFILM X-T100 camera and overall, I have really enjoyed trying the camera out. Particularly, as I’ve said above, for the ease of smartphone image transfer and 1:1 shooting options.

There is, however, one thing I’m less keen on, which is how the camera focuses. To give the camera its dues, this may be down to user error and perhaps if I had a more time using the camera, I might find my way around it.

That said, I found that the autofocus doesn’t always focus where I’d like it to. And I also found that when tapping the screen to move the focus point, the camera isn’t always all that responsive.

Overall

Overall, I will be sad to hand this camera back and it’s made me realise that I’d love to own a big collection of cameras, because they each have their own selling points.

The selling points of this camera, for me, are that you get a lot of the benefits of a bigger DSLR, in a smaller compact mirrorless camera. Furthermore, it has a really cool design and is incredibly easy to use. I picked it up and started taking photos, without really having to give anything a second thought.

The menus and controls are really intuitive and I’ve said it over and again, but the smart phone connectivity is a huge selling point for this camera. Largely because being able to transfer photos and set up remote photography with ease, is a huge time saver for anyone who uses their camera for things, like social media, as often as I do.

FUJIFILM have given me a 10% discount code (valid until the 6th January 2019)  to share with you, just add the code KERRY10 at the checkout on their website. 

If you’re interested in how I take photos for instagram, then you may enjoy this post on forced perspective photography.