You may have noticed the wealth of interchangeable-lens “enthusiast” compact cameras that have bundled onto the market a late. They have most of the bells and whistles of digi SLRs, including the possibility of a bag of lenses, the occasional quandary of which lens to use (occasionally resulting in missing the Kodak moment), and then the later possible considering if the photo wouldn’t have looked better at a different focal length.

Fuji are throwing all that dilemma crap out of the window, though, with their forthcoming X100. They’ve gone and stuck an 35mm (equivalent) lens on the front, which let them optimise the mechanics to that specific collection of glass. This should result in better quality images, as the Fuji boffins didn’t need to make the technical stuff jack of all focal lengths, but master of one.

That, and the old-fangled twiddly knobs for the essentials, hybrid optical viewfinder, a robust build that looks like it was designed in the 70s, 12Mp RAW and 720p shooting (and a bunch of that nerdy hoo-haa hidden in the menus) should make this a very welcome addition to any proper shooter’s bag.

—Chris Noble, 19 January 2011