Fujifilm X Half

I want to thank the people who let me spend the last couple of months with the Fujifilm X Half. It's a fascinating take on bringing the spirit of film photography into a digital format, and the creativity and craftsmanship behind it comes through fast.

I think of this as a digital camera built to replace a film camera. From a creativity and workflow standpoint, it mostly succeeds. It's fun. It gets out of the way and lets you focus on shooting. I love the simplicity and the lack of buttons. It feels intentional, almost pure.

The viewfinder isn't accurate, though. I'm particular about the edges of a frame (exceedingly careful to keep things out) and more than once, they showed up anyway. The LCD lets the camera disappear nicely, but I still reach for a viewfinder by instinct, so this was the one place the X Half fought my habits instead of matching them.

The field of view runs wide... a little too wide for my taste. Something closer to 50mm would be ideal. Probably not fixable, and it's a personal thing more than a flaw, but it's the one change that would make this camera close to unbeatable for me.

• Let me adjust aperture and shutter speed mid-roll in film camera mode. And let me apply filters to Acros. That last one would be a huge benefit.
• The shutter click could be louder. A little more tactile/audio feedback goes a long way.
• The film crank feels good in the hand (I always rest my thumb on it) but it isn't that helpful in practice. More than once I cranked it and nothing advanced, or I meant to shoot normally and landed in diptych mode instead. I'd rather have automatic advance in film mode, and a dedicated diptych button otherwise.
• I'm not convinced exposure compensation is necessary, unless ISO/film speed options were more fixed. I mostly just set everything to ISO 200 for consistency and left the dial alone.
• It's tough. I dropped it more than once and couldn't even tell where it landed. That's a great sign.