Fuji has announced a new firmware update to the original X100 premium compact camera, enhancing three major areas of the camera's performance.
Firstly addressing focus issues, owners of the original X100 will be please to hear that the focus, both manual and automatic have been greatly improved.
Whilst the X100's focusing was accurate, the time it took to lock onto a subject, especially a moving one, using AF, would often result in a missed shot.
Switching to manual focus mode also had its issues with a noticeable delay between the lenses focus ring movement and the live view preview updating. As you can imagine, this is not ideal when you're trying to get pin sharp and accurate focus.
The first part of this firmware update addresses the AF issues, improving the speed by 20% in a variety of lighting conditions. In practice this difference is instantly apparent when compared with the previous firmware version.
Fuji has also managed to reduce the shortest focus distance from subject to lens before needing to switch to macro mode by up to 30%.
Focus peaking
If you like the creative control of manual focus you'll be glad to hear that this feature has also been overhauled, with the addition of focus peaking. This highlights the highest contrast areas of the scene, which are usually the sharpest, to indicate when focus has been achieved.
The other major issue was the speed at which the live view preview would update as the manual focus ring was turned. The firmware update has addressed this delay and with the new focus peaking, the manual focus option is much more usable.
Start it up
Finally, there are a few enhancements to the cameras actual operation with a 0.2 second faster start-up time, and improved access to focus area selection.
These firmware enhancements are by no means small, and the focusing enhancements should make a big difference existing X100 owners.
It will be interesting to see if this firmware update brings the X100's performance inline with the X100s. If it does it could not only breath new life into the cameras of existing X100 owners, but also appeal to new buyers who can't quite afford the X100s and aren't to worried about the lower pixel count.
