I recently spent a week in Singapore with my family. We went to the usual tourist attractions, Universal Studios, Night Safari etc. Definitely enjoyed the place, but the people? Not so much. We had a particularly nasty encounter with a shop owner at Orchard Road, but I’ll save that for a later post. What I really wanted to talk about was a new piece of gear I acquired during the trip, the Fujifilm X100.
There are already plenty of reviews available online, but I recommend reading Jonathan Fleming’s and Zack Arias’s take on it. To sum it up in one word? Incredible. You really have to experience the hybrid viewfinder yourself to truly understand why everybody’s raving about it, and the IQ from this thing is superb. Despite looking like a camera from the 60’s, this thing is loaded with so many technical doodads it’s almost overwhelming. Once you get the hang of it though it becomes a joy to shoot with, and shooting street is almost as pleasurable as shooting with my Leica’s.
Despite these praises, the X100 does have a couple of issues. The most apparent being the manual focusing system, which has such a long focus throw that you’re better off just using it to fine tune the AF (which has it’s own issues as well). It’s not the fastest camera either, the menu can be a bit confusing and the camera was prone to locking up in certain modes. That said, Fujifilm are aware of these complaints and have been cranking out firmware updates to fix this. I’ve recently upgraded to the latest firmware (1.10) and that seems to have fixed the lockups.
I’ll post some more thoughts on this camera as the weeks go by. As of right now I’ve only had it for a few days :)
LASALLE College of Arts. Limkokwing on steroids :)
The X100 produces some of the best OOC jpegs, almost to the point where I don't even bother shooting RAW. Skin tones are pretty accurate too, good Fuji colours.
The lady managed to hide her face under the umbrella. My bad, I fumbled with camera menu for too long :)
Pretty cool that these two buildings were right next to each other.
Pretty intense glare from a guy selling handbags, but then again that's pretty much the standard response over there.
I thought it was pretty sad seeing old people having to work, from what I'm told it's hard to make a living there.
Reminded me of an old friend from school.
Taking the train..
Stopped here to take the bus to the Night Safari.
Probably bad news?
Skin tones hold up even under weird white balance.
Night Safari was pretty good, but walking around the compound was even better. Pretty packed too, and it was a week day.
This kid was part of a school trip and non of his schoolmates wanted to sit with him. Caused quite a scene too. ISO 6400.
Wish they sold replicas of these skulls, would be pretty cool to have one on my desk.
Heading back to the hotel. Reminded me of my trips to Japan a few years back, everyone has their phones out in the train.
Quite a number of people were sleeping in McDonald's, but the staff didn't mind.
Breakfast.
Best ice cream ever :)
Took a walk through Bugis Street, pretty mad stuff. Definitely need to go there again someday.
Dinner at McDonald's again, they have a few interesting menu items that we don't. Still weirds me out that it varies from country to country.
Last night in Singapore, this was our hotel for the past week.
At the airport getting our tax refunds.
The X100 has a built in panorama feature that's pretty cool. It automatically stitches together a panoramic image as you pan from left to right (or even up to down)
Saw this kid looking at me right as I finished the panorama. Couldn't help but take a snap :)
Finally! Airplane food that doesn't suck. I'm glad I went with the roasted chicken.
Back in Penang, and very happy to be back.
