How to make your own X100

I would love a Fujifilm X100VI. Something portable and light that I can take on daily walks because taking our camera with us always is a sure fire way to get better. But right now they are quite hard to get and also crazy overpriced on the second hand market. Here is my alternative for 340€ / $380! We’re building something:

Portable
Good image quality
Cheap

Make use of what you’ve already got!

I have a pancake 40mm equiv. which is the smallest I own. Using existing lenses allows us to put more money into the body. If you don’t own anything small, keep reading. You’ll notice it’s manual focus.

Bring on the wonderful world of manual glass

You can get a 50mm equiv. NEW for 80€ from TTArtisan. Here’s some sample images. It’s got retro rendering and because there’s no autofocus - it’s smaller, lighter and cheaper than the AF equivalent.

This main issues with older cameras (the X-M1 is from 2013) is worse autofocus which we are bypassing here by the use of manual lenses.

If you’ve not tried manual glass until now - it’s a great time to start! There’s something very fulfilling about doing the work ourselves and when we nail that focus - ah! Chef’s kiss!

What to look for in a camera

I got the Fujifilm X-M1 for 340€ second hand with the condition listed as “good.” The reason it’s a winner is for the following in order of importance:

It’s small and light at only 330g - with the lens combo, totally pocketable.
It’s got an APS-C sensor which is one of the two sensor sizes I recommend for a first camera. According to Photons To Photos (see graph below) it’s got comparable dynamic range to the X100VI.
It’s got 16 megapixels, which - cropping aside (I found I could still crop with 12 MP), keeps a high signal to noise ratio because the pixels are relatively large.
Last one for me is a big one, a tilting screen which I love for street photography.

Sure there are compromises

It’’s not a 2000€ X100VI. There’s some compromises but there always are.

The fastest a minimum shutter it can maintain when in Auto ISO is only 1/125.
The older body can’t receive aperture metadata that the my manual Voigtländer provides.
The screen isn’t great which makes focusing hard, even with peaking enabled. This seems to be Fujifilm problem though as it’s also bad on my X-T5. Lucky manual lenses have a focus scale on them which is a great opportunity to get good at zone focusing.

Enough talk. Show me sample pics!

Conclusion

Granted a lot of the image quality comes from the the lens and the post processing but I hope you got some ideas on how to make something small, good and cheap. Happy shooting!

Fujifilm X100 Alternative