Right, just been out with the X100 again (in the rain), and I’ve noticed a few more things worth mentioning, that I haven’t seen reported elsewhere…

Highlight / overexposure warnings: they’re there, just not on the first page of playback.  I was told there wouldn’t be blinking highlights to show areas of overexposure, but in fact if you press ‘Disp/Back’ four times when you’re viewing an image, that cycles through your options from ‘Information On’ (where highlights would, admittedly, be very useful) to ‘Information Off’, ‘Favourites’ (where you can put star ratings on your images) and finally to ‘Detail Information’ which gives you lots of info, including a smaller preview with the warnings and a luminosity histogram.

Other useful playback tricks: pressing the jog lever (top right of camera) during playback jumps to a 100% view of the centre of the image; at least, that’s what it does for me at the moment, but I rather suspect it’s jumping to the focus point used, which would be rather a handy quick-access feature.

Also - flicking the jog lever right or left during playback gives you a few more screens of info, two showing all the EXIF info from the file (colour space, film mode, focal length - um, duh, I’m guessing that’ll be 23mm most of the time?) and one showing where your focus point was; which can be handy if you’re letting the camera choose where to focus (Multi AF Mode in the menus).  Personally, I’m using the centre point and recomposing at the moment.

Speaking of which - I had a call from a friend last week who had been using one of these in-store, and complained that while he was being shown the centre focus point as active in the optical viewfinder, secretly the camera was choosing where to AF for him, as if Multi AF Mode had been selected.  Now, that’s not something I’m seeing with my camera - and I did specifically test it, since I’d been warned about this!  When it’s in Multi AF, the point in the OVF jumps to where the focus is happening, on mine at least.  Anyone else?

Menu buttons - helps to use your thumbnail with the controls on the back, as mashing with my thumb on the centre Menu button is as likely to go up or down in the menu as it is to do what I wanted.  Just another habit to learn, not a big deal.

Low-light AF - I’m finding it to be great, just as fast / accurate as in any other light; so I’m pleased about that.  I was able to test it in the church (1/13th at f/2.8 on 1600ISO), as I forgot to turn off the Neutral Density filter again…

Lens flare or ghosting - haven’t had major problems as yet, you can see a little (maybe) in the shot of the church, but I wouldn’t call it outrageously bad.  That said, those are pretty diffused lights - a point source might show the ghosting / halos others have seen.  I’m not sure if they’re better or worse wide open vs. stopped down.

Crooked / conservative framelines - there’s been much discussion about whether the framelines shown in the optical viewfinder are crooked or not, and to be honest I’m probably not the best person to test this simply because I live in Wellington.  That is to say, trying to find a street or house that’s level to test it on would be difficult!  But having tried, the only observations I can make are that the optical viewfinder looked to me like it had some distortion - call it ballooning if you like - at the outer edges, which made lining up a straight edge tricky as it became a curve.  I could be wrong on that, though.

The other thing I have noticed is just that (as with many rangefinders) the framelines tend to be a little conservative, which is to say you get more than you’d think in the final image.  If you line up the top of a house with the top frameline, for example, you’ll probably find you get a bit of sky and the chimney in the frame as well.  It doesn’t bother me, frankly, as I’m used to it from my Epson R-D1s; and I’d rather have a little more than a little less!

There’s a fair bit to learn with this camera, obviously - in terms of little tricks and things - but it does reward you once you get to know its quirks.  (My wife has dubbed the camera ‘Quirky’, I’m not sure that’ll stick in the long term though.  Hopefully not!)

p.s. as before, I’ve send these images through Alien Skin Exposure 3 for colour, just because I like them better that way.  You may also be seeing grain from that, rather than the camera…and the first three images are actually from yesterday afternoon, that’s why the sky’s blue.  Not so much, today.