Fujifilm X100V: After 2 years

This is my personal (short) review and thoughts on the Fujifilm X100V. I am one of the people who succumbed to the hype of the camera after it boomed on TikTok, was it worth the hype? For me it was. Not only because I got to take good pictures almost immediately with limited photography knowledge, but also because it got me into photography.

I always enjoyed the concept of a fixed lens compact camera that can effectively make me pull it out ‘quicker’ than my smartphone. I think this is the market that Fujifilm was trying to capture, same as the RICOH GR or the Sony RX100 lineups, and many more. While many of these other cameras from other lineups may tick all the boxes when it comes to specs, none came close to the enjoyment I got while using the X100V. I’ve taken it on every trip for the past 2 years and it’s my main travel camera, which is also 99% of the time when I’m actively taking pictures.

What I love about it

Size

I’m really not inclined to travel with larger cameras and a selection of lenses. I don’t want to hesitate between taking a picture or not because of the size factor or the conveniency. But I still want high quality beautiful pictures.

Design

The look and feel of Fujifilm cameras is unmatched to me, and the X100V is no exception. The design actually inspires me to take it out and shoot. I don’t have the same connection with the X-T5, to be perfectly honest. I really look forward to using it. If you don’t enjoy or don’t look forward to using something, you are probably not going to get much use out of it.

The camera features mechanical dials for ISO, shutter speed, and aperture, providing a tactile experience reminiscent of film photography. However, you can set all the settings to auto mode and let the camera do everything for you.

Film simulation recipes

The Fujifilm X100V is like shooting with an endless roll of film. Actually, it’s like shooting with up to seven endless rolls of film. You can capture as many frames as you wish on each roll, and change the film anytime you want. You’ll just have to decide which ones you want. These recipes mimic different films or aesthetics through customized JPEG settings. A good resource for film simulation recipes I use a lot is Fuji X Weekly (the sensor for the X100V is the X-Trans IV). Because of these simulations, I don’t edit my pictures, apart from some minor cropping or straightening. All of them are straight out of the camera!

What I don’t like about it

There aren’t many things that I don’t like about the X100V, although I have some points (as always).

The Fujifilm app

Okay, this is not actually about the camera, but it’s one of the most annoying things. Fujifilm’s ‘FUJIFILM XApp’ allows to connect to your X100V camera via your smartphone to download images as well as a couple of other features such as remote control, which I don’t really use. I’m just interested in download the pictures to my phone without having to use a cable. The problem is that the app is quite unreliable at making this connection between the camera and the smartphone, and also excruciatingly slow to transfer the photos. It also consumes a lot of battery (which is reasonable), but that could just be from the long time to transfer.

Weather sealing

Maybe this is my own shortcoming in research, but when I bought the camera I was under the assumption that it was weather sealed. Turns out it’s not exactly the case; it’s only weather sealed if you buy and attach an optional lens cover. It would be nice to have it properly done out of the box.

Why I ‘upgraded’ to the Fujifilm X-T5

Take this with a grain of salt, because of course the X100V and X-T5 serve different purposes, although still under the same X series. As I progressed on my photography journey, I naturally was curious about experimenting with different lenses for different situations. For example in my recent Vietnam trip, I really wanted to capture a couple of rare birds far in the distance, but it was impossibly with my baby X100V. It’s okay, my eyes still barely caught the birds shape.

In the end, it comes down to this: the X100V is my favourite camera, until it’s not ideal for a certain situation (like the one above), and a interchangeable-lens comes in clutch. I do still think that the X100V and the X-T5 make a good couple, but I am not sure yet if I will keep the X100V alongside the newer brother. What do you think?