The Fujifilm X half

When Fujifilm announced their X half camera, I was very intrigued. Fujifilm seems to always try to satisfy their film shooters who reluctantly shoot digital. Or perhaps their digital shooters who hold on to a certain nostalgia for film. At times, I am both of those things, but generally I still shoot film the most in my spare time. I already have an X-T2 and love the tactile dials and a real aperture ring on the lens, all film camera throwbacks and part of why I love shooting film – the actual mechanical experience of it as much as the end results. That is a huge part of why I do already enjoy my Fujifilm camera and the thought of a smaller Fujifilm camera really focused on their film simulations as well was exciting. As someone who shoots a half frame film camera quite often I was even more excited to hear it had a vertical sensor, unlike any of their other cameras, as I really have a lot of fun with that portrait orientation. The vertical sensor also makes it so you can embrace the diptych of a half frame film camera, which I thoroughly enjoy too.

 

 

We have put this camera into our Rental Department, as I felt many would have to see it or try it out to really understand what it was all about. So I took it out for the weekend to give it a try myself. Make no mistake, this is not going to be a technical heavy review such as Mike might offer you! But I think I am probably pretty close to Fujifilm’s target audience for this camera – a film shooter who would like a small digital to document the everyday, to post online and perhaps print on their Instax printer. So here I go!

Physically, I loved this little camera. It is the perfect size to fit in your hand and carry around all day long or pop in your bag. The touch screen on the back and minimal other physical buttons took a bit of getting used to, but I found it to be fairly intuitive. Though when I’d hold it with two hands to look at the screen, I tended to accidentally shut the screen off by swiping with my left thumb and accidentally covering the sensor near the viewfinder that shuts off the screen. I loved the second smaller screen that acts as your film ‘window’ though, and displays which film simulation you are using. You can swipe through the different “films” on this window too to easily change to a different one. Perhaps it didn’t have as many of the tactile dials that I previously mentioned that I do indeed love, but granted it is hard to fit that into a small camera such as this and still keep it “point and shoot” size.

 

As well, the camera includes an advance lever, which in this case allows you the option to make your digital diptych with two frames as you swipe the lever to tell the camera you want to add a second image to the frame (or you can do a still and a video). In full film simulation mode, the lever also must be swiped for the camera to let you take another photo (more on that in a bit.)

 

 

Aside from the different film simulations the camera offers, there are a few other fun settings you can play around with. I didn’t get the chance to really use these much, but there is a toy camera setting, which gives you a bit of a centre focus or Holga type look, a fisheye view, soft focus, retro, canvas, mirror, double exposure and a few others. These could be fun to play around with, but didn’t interest me as much as the different film looks. I tried out mostly the Provia, Velvia and Reala film settings. I found both of the slide film options to be quite contrasty however, though the Velvia slightly less so. I think overall, this camera seemed to be quite contrasty when shot on its Auto setting. Its dynamic range is not as great I would have liked or perhaps its reading of a scene wasn’t always that accurate, as it often gave me blown out highlights and very dark shadows. It was in fact a difficult day to read for many cameras though, with a very white-grey cloudy sky and dark buildings.

Using the camera in Auto seemed to me to be what I would want to do most of the time, treating this camera more like a point and shoot. However, it does have aperture priority, shutter priority and manual settings available as well, which is great if you want to force the exposure in more difficult settings. I tried it in manual for a short time, but later found once I had downloaded the images that perhaps the screen display wasn’t as accurate to what the results were, as my images were quite blown out. With this camera though, I think auto is really what I’d mostly be shooting it on. If I wanted to bother with a manual setup, I would be using a different camera.

 

 

I enjoyed the fact that this camera has a viewfinder as well as the screen, but would have liked at least some sort of information to be shown in the viewfinder. It’s very much JUST a viewfinder, and because it’s offset from the lens, you do have to take that into account when framing your photo. But perhaps giving it any type of digital display in the viewfinder would be at the sacrifice of its size. This brings me to my favourite part of the camera however…

What I enjoyed the most about this camera was its film camera setting. This may sound quite gimmicky to some, but I truly enjoyed this feature quite a lot and in the end was what endeared this little camera to me. This feature allows you to choose how many photos you want to shoot, and the film type – then once you have that locked in, the screen on the back changes to a data back, like on some (more advanced/newer) film cameras, that only shows you what frame you are on, the date and the distance of focus. You cannot review any of your photos until you get through the whole “roll” and download the images to the X half app for your smartphone. Which means now you only have the viewfinder to set up your shots. The film advance style winder on the camera provides you with that film camera feel too, as you must swipe it like you are advancing the film before it will let you take another photo. Sometimes I forgot to do this, and the camera wouldn’t take a photo, but once I got into the rhythm of it, I quite liked that. I would have loved it if the lever had a bit more resistance to it though. It has no noticeable gears, no feeling like it is truly DOING something. They should have thrown some gears and springs in there, just to actually give that lever a real feeling of usefulness. Nonetheless, I loved shooting away in film mode and not thinking about each photo as much or getting distracted by looking at the back of the camera. I think instead of, or at least as well as, I would’ve liked to see the shutter speed, aperture and iso the camera was choosing however on the back display screen.

 

I did not shoot much video in my time with the camera, as it is not usually something that interests me too much, but I did try one. It was pretty decent quality but the movement in it of it being unstabilized is a bit distracting I found.

The other interesting feature to me was in fact the digital diptychs, which were fun to do and I liked the thoughtfulness it required of not only the current frame but what your next frame would be (or previous frame was.)

Here are a few that I took:

 

The app that goes with the X half works pretty seamlessly as well, whether you just want to transfer the images you took or to “develop” the rolls you took. They slowly download onto a contact sheet and then show up individually in your photos app (on iOS anyway). Any diptychs taken show up as individual photos as well as the diptych created.

 

 

Overall, I had a blast using this camera and could see myself using it every day. However, I was a bit disappointed with its overall image quality at times and the focus ability. Indeed it has a small sensor, and that does show in lower light conditions or if you have a penchant for pixel peeping. It also often missed the main focus of the photo, whether it be friends or my dog, or even a flower – tending to focus on the background instead. Perhaps there is more focusing options to be explored in its menus that I missed or that a firmware update could help with.

 

 

 

I think if you are someone who loves to always have a camera on you to document your every day, to post online, share with friends or print on your Instax printer for scrapbooks and journaling, this camera would be an excellent daily companion. If you are looking to get the same out of it as you would your X-T5 and use it in your professional work, that is not what this camera is intended to do and you would be disappointed. It is a really enjoyable camera overall, but why not try it for yourself? It is available now in our rental department for $30/day or weekend. As well, if you purchase this camera or any other that you rented within 30 days, we will give you up to 2 days rental back on your purchase! It is available now to order here: https://www.beauphoto.com/product/fujifilm-x-half/

Here are a few more photos I took too. All the photos in this post are very minimally edited, but have been resized for the website. Also note, you can turn the date stamp on or off.