A love letter to the Fujifilm X100 series
I bought an X100V before TikTok found it, upgraded to the X100VI, sold it over a fake shutter sound, and just bought another one. Four years of photos and why.
By Abu Ashraf Masnun ·
I have bought an X100VI twice now. Silver first, then black, with the better part of a year in between where I genuinely believed an X-E5 and a small 23mm would cover the same ground. It did not, and this is the post where I confess why. Every photo in this article was taken on an X100V or an X100VI, pulled straight out of my own archive.
Onboard, before the TikTok hype
I bought my X100V in the autumn of 2022 at a price that felt like a normal price for a camera. Within weeks that stopped being true for everyone else. Kylie Katich posted a TikTok in September 2022 telling her followers she had found a camera that would change their life, the #fujifilmx100v hashtag went past 3.2 million views, and the second-hand market lost its mind.
PetaPixel reported used X100V bodies listed at around $3,000 on Amazon, against a launch price of $1,399. Even the original 2011 X100 went from a few hundred dollars to roughly $1,000, purely because it looked like the camera in the video. Then in November 2022 Fujifilm Japan published a supply notice saying orders had greatly exceeded plan and that it would temporarily stop accepting them. That pause lasted a lot longer than the word temporary suggests. I had bought a small fixed-lens compact because I wanted a small fixed-lens compact, and a year later it was a status object with a waiting list.
What I loved
The spec sheet reads like a list of small conveniences, and that undersells it badly. Each one removes a decision you would otherwise have to make in the street with a bag on your shoulder.
- The four-stop ND filter, built in, on a switch. Bright afternoon, want f/2, do not want a 1/8000 shutter or a filter in your pocket. Flip it on.
- The leaf shutter. Almost no noise, almost no vibration, and flash sync at speeds a focal plane shutter cannot touch.
- The built-in flash. It is not a good flash. It is a usable one, and a usable flash you have with you beats a good one at home.
- Fujifilm colour. I do edit in Lightroom, but I start from the Fujifilm profiles rather than Adobe Color, and that baseline makes getting good colour insanely easy even for a novice like me. Most of the photos on this page needed almost nothing after that.
- A 23mm f/2 lens that is part of the body, so the whole camera stays flat enough to sit under a jacket.
- Weather resistance, once you screw a protective filter onto the front. It is a caveat, but it is a cheap caveat.
A fixed lens can be designed into the body rather than bolted onto it. You get an f/2 lens, an ND filter, a flash and a leaf shutter in a package that no interchangeable-lens setup matches at the same thickness. If 35mm is the focal length you shoot anyway, you are not giving anything up.
Seeing in 35mm
The 35mm-equivalent view felt wide to me at first. I kept framing things and finding a third of the picture was floor, or wall, or a stranger's shoulder. For a few weeks I quietly wondered whether I had bought the wrong camera.
What fixed it was not a technique. It was time. You stop composing at arm's length and start walking closer, and after a while 35mm becomes the distance your feet already know. I had the same thing to do with the depth of field. f/2 on APS-C is not f/1.4 on full frame, the background stays more legible than you expect, and there is a moment where you either accept that or spend two years being annoyed by it. I accepted it, and then I started liking it, because a background you can still read is often the better photo of a place.
Autofocus was the other thing people warned me about. It was fine. Not fast even by 2023 standards, occasionally hunting in low contrast, but it caught what I pointed it at. I photographed my eldest daughter with that camera through a year of ordinary days, and the hit rate was never the reason a photo failed.
The X100VI, and the 43 grams of inconvenience
When the X100VI was announced in February 2024 I sold the X100V immediately and upgraded, which in hindsight was the easiest camera decision I have ever made. Two things did it. The sensor went from 26 to 40 megapixels, and the body got IBIS. More resolution and stabilisation in the same small camera was the entire pitch as far as I was concerned, and I did not need a third reason.
It also weighs 521g against the X100V's 478g. Forty-three grams is nothing written down and it is not nothing in your hand, and for a few weeks the camera felt like it had put on a coat. Then I shot a series of handheld frames at a quarter of a second that I would never have attempted before, and I stopped noticing the weight in the same afternoon. Stabilisation in a camera you carry everywhere buys you photos, and 43g does not cost you any.
The supply story never really ended, by the way. Fujifilm roughly doubled planned output to about 15,000 units a month and was still working through backorders into 2025. In August 2025 the US price went from $1,599 to $1,799, and a second increase followed at the end of that month on the back of tariffs. Bloomberg was still writing about how hard the thing was to buy a year and a half after launch.
I used mine constantly. On the fifth of August 2024 it was the camera in my hand. That was the final day of the July revolution, the day the fascist government was ousted, and I spent it on the streets of Khulna photographing the celebrations. A silent shutter and a 35mm view turned out to be exactly the right tool for a day nobody had planned for.
These are the ones I published from that day, 19 frames, all of it at f/4 with the leaf shutter at 1/250. The collection page has them at full size.
Then I sold it, over a little annoyance
What pushed me to sell the X100VI was the shutter sound. Every other Fujifilm I have owned has a mechanical shutter you can hear and feel, and I had spent years being quietly rewarded by that click every time a photo happened. The leaf shutter gives you almost nothing. Fujifilm papers over the gap with a synthetic click through the speaker, and after the real thing that fake one grated on me every single time.
I did not sit down and think it through. I just started resenting the noise, decided the whole camera was a luxury I could argue myself out of, and let it go.
My replacement plan was reasonable on paper. An X-E5 with a small 23mm gives you the same field of view, the same sensor, the film simulation dial, and the option of changing lenses when you want to. I wrote a whole article about that setup and I meant every word of it at the time.
The focal length kept dragging me back
In the months after, I went through bodies and lenses in the way people do when they are looking for something they have already owned. And every time I checked what I had actually shot, the answer came back somewhere between 28mm and 40mm, with 35mm winning by a distance. That is not a preference any more. That is just how I see.
Once you know that about yourself, the math gets uncomfortable. The XF 23mm f/2.8 pancake is a lovely 90g lens and it is a full stop slower than the X100's f/2. The XF 23mm f/2 fixes the stop and costs 180g and a lot more depth in the bag. Neither one gives you a four-stop ND on a switch, and neither one gives you a flash, and an X-E5 with the pancake lands at 535g against 521g for an X100VI that has all of it built in.
The X-E5 is the better camera for someone who wants two or three focal lengths. I am not that someone. I kept proving it to myself in the folder of photos I actually kept.
So here I am, in black
There is a black X100VI on my desk. First thing I did was go into the sound settings and turn the fake shutter noise off, which took about eleven seconds and solved the problem that cost me a camera. What is left is a shutter you genuinely cannot hear, and it turns out that is a feature. People do not stop talking when you raise it. The photo happens before anyone works out that a photo is happening.
The colour is the same idea. I loved the silver one and it is the prettier camera, and it also announces itself from across a room. Black does not. I bought this one to be less visible while I use it, which is roughly the opposite of what the camera has come to mean to a lot of people who bought it in the last three years.
If you are thinking about one, my honest advice has not changed: work out what focal length you actually shoot first. Look at your own files, not at a video. If the answer is 35mm and it keeps being 35mm, the X100VI is not an expensive toy, it is the correct tool, and the ND filter and the flash and the leaf shutter are the reasons it stays correct. If the answer is anything else, buy an X-E5 and a lens and be happier for less money.
I have let an X100 go twice now, and I have bought one three times. I am going to stop pretending that is a coincidence. So this is my unwritten love letter to the X100 line - "Dear X100VI, I am sorry I let you go once, I will never again let you go!"
Photo samples
Where to buy
These are Amazon links and I earn a small commission if you buy through one, at no extra cost to you. The X100VI is the one camera on this list where I would tell you to check the used market first, because stock has been strange since 2022 and it has never fully settled.
- Fujifilm X100VIThe camera this whole post is about. Black if you want to be ignored while you use it.
- Fujifilm X-E5The honest alternative if you shoot more than one focal length. Same sensor, changeable lenses.
- Fujifilm XF 23mm F2.8 R WR90g pancake. The closest an X-E5 gets to X100 pocketability, at a stop slower.
- Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2 R WRMatches the X100 aperture at 180g. The one to get if you shoot indoors and at night.
- 49mm protective filterCheap, and it is what turns the X100V or X100VI's weather resistance on. Buy it with the camera.
Read the full reviews
Sources
- Used Fujifilm X100 series camera prices are surging thanks to TikTok (PetaPixel, November 2022)
- Fujifilm Japan temporarily stops accepting X100V orders (DPReview, November 2022)
- Fujifilm increased X100VI production, is closer to shipping outstanding orders (PetaPixel, March 2025)
- Tariffs prompt Fujifilm to raise camera prices by up to $800 (Fortune, August 2025)
- Fujifilm's X100V, the viral TikTok camera, is still hard to buy (Bloomberg, September 2024)