My Fujifilm X100VI is a great small fixed-lens camera, it’s the only camera I've taken on the last few trips to Europe when traveling light, I love the Fuji colours that come out of it, and I never thought I needed anything else, or anything smaller... Then Fujifilm announced the X half and I grew curious about an even smaller camera with those same Fuji colours, and the potential to travel even lighter…

X half | F/8 | SS 1/250 | ISO 200 shot vertical cropped to 4×3 landscape orientation

Only one way to find out, so I ordered it and took a bike ride down to Vancouver, taking various photos along the way as I typically would. The X half is never going to be as good as the X100VI due to the smaller sensor and fewer megapixels… The detail just isn’t going to be there, but maybe it is sufficient for some blog photos…

The camera can work like a normal digital camera, but it’s one trick beyond being incredibly small is that it can function like an old film camera. I figured I might as well jump in and go full film mode… 36 frames of Classic Neg… Viewing only through the pretty poor viewfinder… No checking if you got the shot and retaking it without at least using another frame…

People Rolling in the City

Starting on our Frances-Union Bicycle Street project in Burnaby, only phase 1 complete at this time… We don’t do the jog down to Adanac when crossing Boundary Road into Vancouver, instead choosing to use the neighbourhood slow zone streets to the north which are much quieter and more comfortable than the east end of Adanac. The City of Vancouver does have plans for bike lanes there at some point and the route will be more practical, but for now… Click the images to view full screen…

Safe crossings of major streets are critical on a bike route, plus modal filters to reduce vehicle volumes, while the centre mounted push buttons keep people on bikes to the left and out of the way of any vehicles turning right which is the only option they have…

Just missed the crossing light, but the sunlight was shining on this push button… Never seen a bike bus stop before… Very cool…

Impromptu meetings in the park as people ride along the bike route… It’s easier to stop and chat on the bike… The camera shoots vertically in its normal orientation, but you can of course turn it 90 degrees…

Docked scooters… Curbless streets…

The Adanac to Union switch… This is the place…

Heading up onto the viaduct… Was going to grab a top down shot of people biking underneath, but nobody came, so here’s a pic of my bike… New front basket makes camera access much easier…

Lens cap string getting in the way… Delivery riders a common sight…

I finished the digital film roll at the new Bute plaza… It’s still not quite finished… I didn’t include every photo from the film roll here, but you should get a fair idea of what this little camera is capable of…

The camera gives you a neat little film roll when you’re done… Cool the first time…

Thoughts… The photos are decent, but this thing is incredibly slow to start up, to the point you wonder if it’s broken. In film mode, there’s no ability to change the exposure triangle which is odd, it’s auto exposure only and it picks the settings, it seems like it defaulted to f8, and varies the shutter speed to keep ISO at 200, at least on this day in this light…

X half side by side with the X100VI

I had looked for some side-by-side comparisons with the X100 before ordering and couldn’t find a good resource. If you were curious how big a downgrade it is, I also took a wander around the SFU Burnaby Mountain campus with both cameras… It was a dull day with no good light anywhere… Both cameras were set to take jpegs, both set to Classic Chrome film simulation, no filters or grain effects, just the straight jpegs…

The new Art Museum… or gallery really… the X100 really cranked up the ISO here, maybe I focussed in a different place causing the ISO to bump up… The perspective difference is most noticeable here as I'm close to the building…

Academic Quadrangle… Looks pretty similar…

Bus passing underneath… Not much in it…

Bus stop… Reasonable detail in the bus stop flags…

Bike Share… About 1 step forward gets you a similar focal length…

There is definitely more fine detail in the X100 images, but the little X-Half did pretty well when viewed at normal size… It’s everything I thought I was looking for from this little camera… But I can’t see me choosing it over the X100… Maybe if they come out with an X half pro, similar size, bigger sensor, faster processor, better viewfinder… That would be reason to give up the X100… For now, the X-Half is going back…

Is the Fujifilm X half good for photos of people rolling in the city?

People Rolling in the City

X half side by side with the X100VI

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