Fujifilm X100S review

VIDEO

The video mode is hidden away at the bottom of the drive mode options. It’s reasonably well specified, though, with 1080p recording at 30 or 60fps. Picture quality was excellent but the autofocus was slow to update, and only did so when we set the focus switch to AF-C before recording commenced. Aperture and exposure compensation can be set for videos, but not adjusted while recording, and there’s no control over the shutter speed or ISO speed.

IMAGE QUALITY

Image quality needs to be pretty special for a camera as expensive as this, but the X100S delivers the goods. The unusual Trans X sensor uses an unconventional layout of red, green and blue photosites to improve image detail, and its 16-megapixel photos were impressively sharp. The lens performed well, too, with a slight softness towards the edges of the frame at the wider apertures but crisp corner-to-corner focus at f/5.6 and narrower apertures.

There’s plenty of detail in brightly lit scenes, allowing for some heavy cropping to compensate for the lack of a zoom function

By f/5.6 there’s very little focus fall off towards the edges of the frame

Noise levels in low light were nothing short of astounding. There was no visible noise at ISO 800, and only the slightest hint at ISO 3200. Even the top ISO 25600 produced perfectly usable results. Darker areas were grainy but there was still plenty of detail, and brighter areas of the frame looked remarkably intact. This sets a new bar for APS-C sensors and gives full-frame sensors a serious run for their money. Our only slight frustration is that the raw mode doesn’t go higher than ISO 6400, but the quality of the JPEGs gave us little incentive to switch to raw.

This amount of fine detail is unprecedented for an ISO 3200 photo

Again, there’s lots of detail and barely any noise, even in the dark clouds

There’s an ethereal gloss to skin textures at ISO 12800, but still very little visible noise – an incredible achievement

It might seem like a predictable conclusion that this is the best compact camera we’ve ever reviewed. After all, it’s also the most expensive. For once, though, the law of diminishing returns doesn’t apply – it’s vastly better than anything else we’ve seen. While the beautiful design and retro exposure controls make it easy to love, its ingenious viewfinder and stunning low-light image quality mean it has the goods to back it up. A CSC with a collection of lenses might be a shrewder way to spend £1,000, but it probably won’t be as rewarding to use as the X100S.