When the Fujifilm X100 was released in 2011, I was blown away by the quality of the images it was able to produce, but the first X100 was flawed in many ways. Fuji’s latest article “most loved” could easily be renamed most frustrating because the rest of the X series has shown us what the Fujifilm X100 could become. The original X100 is one of the few cameras I have repurchased, due to Fujifilm addressing many of the early issues with the camera via firmware updates, but by the time the corrections were made, there were a variety of compelling X series cameras on the market for substantially less money. Two years later, when the X100S was released, there was finally parity between the X100 and the rest of the line up, which peaked my interest, but then, for some reason, they quickly followed it up with the X100T, so I purchased a used X100S and saved a substantial amount of money.
The serialization of cameras, especially when there aren’t improvements, is a problem for photographers because it greatly increases the depreciation of our equipment, even when there are only incremental improvements. Fujifilm didn’t rush the release of the X-Pro 2, even with a variety of less expensive Fuji cameras on the market. That caused many X-Pro 1 owners to sell/exchange their cameras for features like phase detect pixels and weather sealing.
If the X100 was really the most loved camera from Fujifilm, they would have treated it similarly to the X-Pro series of cameras. In “most loved,” they even discuss how photographers did not want Fuji to change anything about the camera, but Fuji still made an effort to serialize a camera that should have been a flagship product like the X-Pro by introducing useless incremental improvements between the X100S and X100T. Let’s hope we see more X-Pro series DNA in the Fujifilm X200 when it is released because serialization is the quickest way to kill a special product like the X100 or X-Pro. When the X200 is released, I will likely buy one, but if they serialize it, I will never buy another one.
