Fujifilm X100VI initial review: Digital Photography Review

The Fujifilm X100VI is a photographers’ fixed-lens camera which combines a stabilized 40MP APS-C sensor with a 35mm equivalent F2 lens.

Key features:

• 40MP BSI CMOS APS-C X-Trans sensor
• 35mm equiv F2 lens
• In-body IS rated at up to 6EV of correction
• Hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder (3.69M dot OLED panel)
• Machine-learning trained subject recognition AF
• 14 film simulations
• 6.2K video capture and 10-bit recording
• Built-in ND filter
• Tilt up/down rear touchscreen

The X100VI will be available at an MSRP of $1599, a $200 increase over the previous models. It will be available from early March 2024.

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Index:

What’s new?

The biggest change in the X100VI is the addition of in-body image stabilization.

Interestingly, Fujfilm says the IS performance drops from 6.0EV of correction to 5.5EV of correction if you use the viewfinder in optical mode. We weren’t given a reason for this, so can only speculate that the 6.0EV figure is achieved with some degree of analyzing images for shake that for some reason doesn’t occur when the live view feed isn’t being used. We’ll correct this if Fujifilm provides any further explanation.

Very little appears to have changed on the back of the X100VI, except the disappearance of the phrase ‘Made in Japan.’ We traditionally don’t take a position on such issues but feel it’s worth mentioning when it comes in conjunction with a price rise.

The X100VI also sees a move to the 40MP BSI CMOS sensor used in the X-H2 and X-T5. It’s a sensor that delivers high levels of detail capture, and from what we’ve shot so far, we don’t have much concern about the lens’s ability to make the most of this resolution bump.

The VI also features Fujifilm’s X Processor V, that brings with it the machine-learning trained subject recognition algorithms. This means the X100VI has modes to recognize animals, birds, automobiles, motorcycles and bikes, airplanes or trains. As with other recent Fujifilm cameras, human face and eye detection is a separate mode, so you’ll need to configure two buttons or positions on the Q Menu if you plan to swap between photographing people and a different subject type.

Film simulations

The X100VI gains the Reala ACE film simulation first seen in the GFX 100 II. Alongside this are added the Nostalgic Neg and Eterna Bleach Bypass simulations, taking the total number to 14 simulated filmstocks or 20 if you include the faux-color-filtered variations of the mono modes.

This is a lot to choose from, even for experimenting with them after the fact, using in-camera Raw conversion. For the most part the options available represent film responses that you might actually choose to use, but the distinction between some of the modes are becoming quite subtle and there’s a balance between providing useful options and feature-bloat.

Camera to cloud

The X100VI becomes Fuijfilm’s first camera to support the camera-to-cloud (c-2-c) system using its built-in Wi-Fi. This comes in addition to the usual Wi-Fi-to-smartphone options. It lets you pair the camera with a Wi-Fi network and then have the camera upload images and video directly to Adobe’s Frame.io cloud-based collaboration platform. Even on the preproduction model we have we found it was easy to set up and gives the option to auto upload files as they’re created or to let you manually select the ones you wish to upload. You can select specific file types, too, so that it only uploads video or JPEGs, or just Raws or HEIFs, as you prefer.

Video

The X100 series has always offered video to some degree, but we’ve not heard of a lot of people making use of that capability. The X100VI offers essentially the same options as the X-T5 (itself not the company’s most video-focused model), so you gain 10-bit recording, 6.2K capture from a 1.23x (43mm equiv) cropped region or ‘HQ’ 4K derived from this footage. This exhibits appreciable rolling shutter. Alternatively there’s sub-sampled 4K at up to 30p from the sensor’s full with or at up to 60p with a 1.14x crop.

Like the recent GFX 100 II, the X100VI now has AF tracking in video mode, and this isn’t restricted to the subjects it’s been trained to recognize.

The X100VI has a mic input and can use its USB-C socket for audio monitoring though, unlike the X-T5, no USB-to-3.5mm adapter is provided.

It’s interesting to note that many of the movie mode’s settings are now accessible only when the camera is in Movie drive mode. This way there’s only a single page of basic video functions in the menu when you’re shooting stills.

Other changes:

In addition to the updates of some of the camera’s main specs, the X100VI also inherits many of the smaller refinements and updates that Fujifilm has developed in the four years since the last model was released. These include:

• HEIF capture
• Skin smoothing effect
• White priority and Ambience Priority Auto WB modes
• Custom AF zone areas
• Option to limit available AF area types for AF-S or AF-C shooting
• Pre-shot bursts (E-shutter + Cont H)
• Self timer lamp on/off
• Interval shooting with external timer
• Interval priority mode (prioritizes chosen interval, irrespective of exposure time)

Body and controls

The X100VI is 2mm deeper than the existing X100V, and 43g heavier. In practice, neither of these changes are especially noticeable. The camera still doesn’t feel overly heavy.

The body’s dimensions are similar enough that it’ll still fit in the existing LC-X100V leather camera case. It’s also still compatible with the existing tele and wide-angle converter lenses. It uses the same lens as the previous model, so you can weather-seal the camera if you add the filter ring adapter and a filter of some sort.

The rear screen on the X100VI is a refinement of the tilting touchscreen on the previous model. It now tilts down a little further (45° rather than 30°) and pulls away from the body and viewfinder a little when tilted up for waist-level shooting. It’s a small change, but a welcome one.

Controls

The control layout is identical to the previous model, with dedicated controls for aperture, shutter speed, exposure comp and ISO (albeit an ISO control that’s fiddly to the point of primarily being decorative). As with previous models and many historic film cameras, the exposure mode is dictated by the position of the dedicated dials. Essentially you turn the dial to ‘A’ if you want the camera to control that value:

Exposure compensation is available in all modes, including Manual, if you have Auto ISO selected. And, since the shutter speed dial only has whole-stop steps, you can use a command dial to give you 1/3rd stop precision, ±2/3 EV from the value selected on the dial.

Command dials

In addition there are two pressable command dials on the front and back of the camera, which can have a series of functions applied to them if the dedicated controls aren’t being used.

This is where things get a little complicated: the exposure comp and ISO dials have dedicated ‘C’ positions to pass control over to the command dials. The shutter speed dial doesn’t have a C position, so instead should be turned to its ‘T’ (Time) setting. The aperture ring doesn’t have a C position but its ‘A’ (Auto) position can be reconfigured to act as ‘C’, via the menus. This may not be obvious, given the ISO dial has both an A and a C position, but this is where the X100 series development has brought us to.

We find it hard to imagine many people are assigning three settings to the command dials, and hence needing the pressable dials to make their function toggleable, but for most permutations we can anticipate, we think you can configure them only to the functions you want to control, so at least you won’t accidentally press the dial and adjust anything unexpected.

Disappointingly, if you set ISO to ‘A’ you can’t use a command dial to select between the three Auto ISO presets that you can configure. For that you’ll need to select ‘C’ and be careful not to scroll the command dial too far and disengage Auto ISO altogether.

Hybrid viewfinder

The X100VI has the same hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder as its immediate predecessor. This has three modes: fully electronic, fully optical and optical with an inset electronic display.

As with all viewfinders that are offset from the lens and sensor, it’s affected by parallax: when focused at infinity, the difference in position between the lens and viewfinder is irrelevant, but becomes increasingly important as the focus distance decreases. Not only does the framing of the photo diverge at closer focus distances, the position of the AF points effectively moves down and to the right as you focus on closer subjects.

The X100VI finder includes the improvements made in firmware 2.0 for the X100V. A ‘Corrected AF point’ option (AF/MF Settings pg 3) that displays a bracketed indicator in the OVF, showing where your AF point will move to if you focus close to the camera. Another menu option, ‘Bright Frame Position Memory’ (Setup/Screen Setup pg 1) lets you decide if you want the AF box to revert to infinity after each shot or stay at the correct position for the last time you focused. Between these two options you should be able to get the OVF to work the way you’re most comfortable with.

Battery

The X100VI uses the same NP-W126S battery as the previous few X100 models. It’s an 8.2Wh unit from which the camera is rated to deliver 450 shots per change using the optical viewfinder or 310 shots if you use the EVF. The usual caveats come into play: in many shooting scenarios you can expect to get around double this number.

Initial impressions

Richard Butler

It’s easy to be a little underwhelmed by the X100VI at first. It looks so much like its predecessors that it’s hard to appreciate what’s new. I rarely have the need for vast pixel counts, so appreciate the move to 40MP without being especially thrilled.

Likewise, the addition of subject recognition AF is a pleasant enough addition, but like the arrival of 10-bit video and tap-to-track focus in video, it feels a lot like a feature that makes a lot more sense for a camera such as the X-H2S, instead of on a camera with a fixed 35mm equiv lens. The byproduct of Fujifilm’s developments elsewhere in its range, rather than things that the X100 series was crying out for.

And, as we noted when the lens was updated with the X100V, the new lens isn’t especially fast to focus: its design moves most of the lens to focus, prioritising sharpness over speed. So, even if you decided that you want to go birding with a 35mm-equiv camera, it’s not going to keep up with fast-moving subjects, no matter how much more sophisticated the AF algorithms are.

But then I started digging a little deeper, and started to research a look back at the development of the series. As someone who bought the original model and remembers the buzz in the office when Fujifilm first presented it to us, and who’s been involved to at least some degree in reviewing all the subsequent versions, I was still caught a little offguard by how many changes the company has made with each iteration.

So here we have the addition of a major feature: in-body image stabilization, but also a host of little tweaks and refinements. There are the subtle physical tweaks like the screen that tilts further down and pulls further away from the viewfinder when turned upwards. But there are also minor updates, such as the addition of HEIF capture, the option to use an external intervalometer and the ability to modify which of the camera’s many AF area modes are available when you go to select them. All individually minor, and probably each relevant only to a subset of users, but cumulatively these little adjustments build up into something.

For both better and worse, the X100VI operates a lot like an X100V: the model where we finally felt Fujifilm’s ‘use it however you prefer’ approach to operation risked overwhelming the camera’s original simplicity. But it also behaves like an improved, more refined X100V, which itself behaved like an improved, more refined X100F, and so on. At its heart it’s still the latest incarnation of the camera that more DPReview writers have spent their own money on than any other.

With each release of the X100 series, the question of whether owners of the current model should upgrade has typically been a fairly nuanced one. But the answer for new inductees to the question “which one should I get?” has always been “the latest one.”

Plus ça change…

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Sample gallery

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