This was supposed to be the ISO ladder with the D7000, X100 and F550. The reason why it isn’t happening this evening is that the X100 made me want to throw it against the wall.
Yes, this nice little piece of hardware engineering is in fact pretty terrible in a couple of areas that matter to me.
- HORRIBLE rear 4 way controller with wheel. On the F550 I can just hit any button and it all works perfectly. As with the dial. On the X100, the dial is smaller and I did not even know it had one until I moved it accidentally one day. But that’s not the real problem, the real problem is that hitting the OK button invariably selects “down” instead of “ok” … and I am not exaggerating. I hit the button 6 straight times a few moments ago without any success, and I had used the corner of my thumb nail 5 of those times. I had to carefully position my thumb nail corner dead center and then press slowly to get the right action.
- So I got that done and moved on with the torture. I try to set Low ISO (100) to start the test and it won’t let me. I look and I look and it remains greyed out. I can find no menu item that deals with this, nor an extra button (but two wasted levers are in evidence, my goodness) and so I use Google. Surely someone has written up how to set to a boost ISO. And the answer is, not so you would know. Wow … after 10 minutes, I simply gave up in anger. I will do the test later in the week when the X100 has less chance of being flung at 100mph into a wall. (I’m kidding, my arm has been clocked at an embarrassing 45mph, so that’s the best I could do.)
- The controls really feel wrong to me. I shot the Pentax Spotmatic II for a long time and it just worked. Simple, yet really effective. Despite its simplicity, the X100 does not give me that feeling. It just feels a little clunky. And that is compared to both the D7000 and the F550EXR. I would pick either up over this camera.
Its one saving grace so far is pretty decent ISO 3200. But even then, the lack of wide angle is getting to be a drag when shooting indoors (trying to finish up my kitchen renovation) …
Anyway, apologies for ranting, but your reading this has saved the life of this X100
