CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Anyone who reads this blog will know that the Fujifilm Finepix X100 is my favourite walkabout camera. It can produce images that rival the much larger Nikon D800, it is beautiful to look at and is so well screwed together that I'm sure it will last me years.  My X100 is a limited edition 'black' version and came with a few special extras in the box when I bought it last October. In March 2013 Fuji unveiled the X100S, an updated version of the X100 with improvements in several areas including the use of a 16mp X-Trans sensor from the X-Pro1 / XE-1, full 1080P HD video and a faster AF system.  I played with an X100S at the Focus on Imaging Show in March but last week I was able to get my hands on one for a long term test. X100 on the left and the new X100S on the right REAL WORLD TESTING: Like all my tests on this blog there is nothing scientific about how I go about assessing a camera. I use it in real world situations and then report how I found using th...

Yesterday evening one of the contributors on a Facebook group I belong to saw yesterday's blog on the X100 and asked how close the macro facility would focus.  I wasn't sure, so I set up one of my non scientific tests to find out. One Dollar bill - this is full frame (ie not cropped) - The ISO is 2000 and shows very little noise I had to use something that would be instantly recognisable for size and I decided to use a one dollar bill that I had from my trip to Florida last March.  Setting the Fuji on a tripod I set about getting the closest focus I could using the macro facility.  I switched the camera to manual focus and set it at its minimum focus distance.   I then set the camera on the tripod and moved the centre column up and down until the camera focused on the dollar bill.  I measured the distance between the camera and the object and the answer came out at 8cm or 3.2 inches. This is pretty impressive for a small camera. Howeve...