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Shawn Blanc pointed out after I posted my review that I didn’t include enough images of the camera itself. I’m posting now to rectify that oversight.

Back of camera, illustrating that dial I am not a fan of.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

With the 27mm f/2.8 pancake (silver variant) attached.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

With the 27mm f/2.8 pancake (silver variant) attached.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

Disclaimer: This is a review camera sent to me from Fujifilm America for the explicit purpose of a review. No money changed hands, nor was there any restriction on what I may or may not write.

While older, and therefore far less exciting than some of the newer cameras coming out (e.g. X-E2, and X-T1) the X-M1 is a very interesting model. Some would look at it as an ‘entry’ level camera, but in this case that isn’t being very accurate.

The X-M1 is smaller than the other X-series camera and lacks many of the manual controls that makes the line popular, but that doesn’t mean it is a dumbed down camera. What’s interesting about Fujifilm is that they don’t really hold back features for the sake of up-selling customers. So the X-M1 has the more traditional ‘Mode’ dial instead of the shutter speed, but otherwise it functions similarly to the X-E2, just in a smaller package.

Most notably the camera still has the X-Trans sensor (though the older version 1 sensor, not the X-Trans II) and it still has WiFi and yet adds on a tillable LCD.

Featureless this camera is not.

I’ve been keen to try this camera ever since I realized two things:

1. The X100s is about the same size as my X-E2 and thus seems silly to buy.
2. I really want to leave a good digital camera with my wife, while still also having one for me to carry, but I don’t want more lenses.

The latter is what pushed me to looking at the X-M1, so it was by happy coincidence that Fujifilm offered to send me one.

Handling

The X-M1 is not only a more compact offering (with the same APS-C sized sensor), but it is also a less expensive offering. Due to that last fact, the build of the camera is much different from the other Fujifilm cameras I reviewed — it’s made of plastic. Still the camera feels solid to hold and use, but there are a few aspects that I have yet to get used to.

The rear dial control is the first of those. On the X-E2 and X-T1 this is a horizontally placed dial. You can push in, or jog it left or right. It makes sense. On the X-M1 this is still horizontal, but positioned so that the dial spins on an axis parallel to the ground — or positioned vertically like it would be if it were on the top of the camera. It’s not bad, but it really is in an awkward spot for my thumb to reach.

I think because of that, I found myself wishing the exposure compensation dial (which is unmarked, and has no stops at either end allowing it to spin all the way around) was a dial that you could reassign. This would be near perfect for the camera, however, you cannot reprogram that button — and I do find the X-M1 to have one less programmable button than what I really need.

My complaints stop there though. As the body is very compact for the size of sensor, and quality of lenses, but still boasts niceties like a tilting LCD display.

I’m not even sure I shot with that display flush to the camera the entire time I used it — the tilting display is really nice to have after you go without one for a while.

Outside of the dial issue, I find little complain about on the X-M1’s handling. It doesn’t handle like the X-E2 and X-T1, instead opting for a more traditional configuration (like what you would find on most dSLRs, or micro four thirds offerings) and feels a lot like my old Panasonic GX1 to me.

Image Quality

I was surprised by just how good the older X-Trans sensor is, in fact the only noticeable difference I could detect is better noise handling in the X-Trans II sensor at ISO 6400. Beyond that it looks and feels like my ‘other’ Fuji X-Trans files.

To me this is the best I could have hoped for and I am very impressed. This is a smaller and cheaper camera, but is only a slight notch under the newer camera in image quality.

Overall Thoughts

The majority of my usage of the X-M1 was with the 27mm pancake lens attached. This combination is perfect, as it is sharp, fast-ish, and yet very compact with a useful focal length. I do wish that the pancake wasn’t only an f/2.8 lens — a stop faster would do wonders for indoor photography.

In all I am torn about this little camera. I love that it is smaller, but I do miss the view finder. More than anything though is that I miss the shutter speed dial (instead the X-M1 has the more common ‘mode’ dial and isn’t nearly as fun to use).

This is a solid family camera, and can be had for really great prices now. I’m thinking about adding one just so that I have a camera which can kick around the house, and car, but can still accept my other lenses if I need a backup camera for something. I can’t wait to see how the camera is updated, as I suspect it will become only more tempting.

It’s not a replacement, or even competitor, to the X-E2 and above X-system cameras, but it is a very good and increasingly inexpensive camera. I’d be more than happy with it as my full-time camera and I think you would be mistaken to think this is an entry level camera.

Buy It

• X-M1 at B&H Photo, or at Amazon
• 27mm at B&H Photo, or at Amazon

Photos

Update: I’ve posted additional images of the camera, here.

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/4000s 35mm @ f1/.4 ISO 200

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/550s 27mm @ f/4.5 ISO 400

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/900s 27mm @ f/6.4 ISO 400

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/2000s 27mm @ f/2.8 ISO 400

Since I took the time to dive into Unread and really consider the app, and the app category, I came up with a few things that I think are generally missing for some, if not all, RSS apps.

Speed Mode

Jared Sinclair, in my Unread review, talked about how most RSS apps seem to be made for what he called ‘triage’ — meaning just getting through the slog of items, but I think all RSS apps should have a triage mode. I should be able to leave my RSS feeds for a week and come back to thousands of items, and get through them all in 30 minutes.

How? I’d propose that an ideal RSS client can perform some of the magic the same as Fever’s hot list does, by telling you what was popular while you were gone. So the app mode would work something like this:

1. Enable popularity rankings. Let’s say that is on a simple five point scale, you then tell the app you want to see only articles 3 points or up — and to mark everything else as read.
2. Now you have a significantly trimmed the list, but you still have to look through all the items. From there I would hope the app can craft a conversation view of posts centering around the same article. That way you can see the main, say, New York Times article, and a listing of the blogs/articles that commented on, and linked to, that main article. This way I can judge if it really was that important based on who is commenting on it.
3. You should then quickly be able to toss articles to your read later service of choice.

The overarching goal being to use social networks, and the RSS networks in your reader, to tell you what was popular — and to then take that one step further by only showing you the popular post, and effectively burying the commentary posts about that popular post.

Two Reading Modes

For times when you are not triaging you should be able to shift the app between a casual reading mode — something like what Unread is — to a more in-depth reading app. In other words allow me to toggle between something that works like Unread, and something that works more like a (good) digital magazine.

The in-depth mode should show all the full content for the articles along with images and videos, ready to read as individual pages, so instead of looking at a list of articles you just get articles presented as pages that you flip through as you read them.

It’s like your own curated magazine. Meant to be read from cover to cover.

Auto Read Later

I’d like to be able to mark certain feeds as auto-read-later feeds. I personally know that I like to read everything that Shawn Blanc publishes to his site, so I’d like to flag that feed as one that I never need to see because everything from it just is sent directly to Safari’s reading list.

This would also weight that feed heavier in my above popularity rating scheme.

Important?

As I talked about in the triage section, I think RSS apps should give you indication if you are about to ignore a post that is generating any kind of a ‘buzz’. This could be aggregated from within your RSS feeds, to Twitter/Facebook and other sites.

Sometimes I gloss over posts that a lot of other people are talking about just because it has a shitty title — such a feature would aim to make me give that post a second thought. Kind of like a: “woah, woah, that’s an article from John Gruber, not a link.”

Link Blog

Allow me to post a linked-list style blog post from within the app. Quote, author, snarky comment, title, posted.

Yes, please.

Reading Time

I also mentioned this in my Unread review, but I think RSS apps should show you the reading time of each article right in the list view. And further I think you should be able to hide items over/under X reading time so that you can see all items that can be quickly read, and then check out the longer posts at another time when you want.

To me that would be a killer feature for allowing me to check my RSS feeds in different ways, at different times and places, throughout the day.

Handling Linked List Posts

Last, but not least, RSS feeds should be smart about linked list style posts. If I send that to read later, I don’t always want to send the linked-to article to my read later service. Most of the time I want to send the RSS article — the commentary article — to my read later service.

In fact, the ideal would be a setting to simultaneously send both the source and commentary articles to my read later service of choice. That way I can read the article and see the opinion of someone I care about.

Wrap

RSS readers are mostly differentiated by design at this point, which is good for casual users, but even the powerful Mr. Reader isn’t enough if you are a major RSS user (like me). This list is just the tip of the iceberg for creating an RSS reader that has a feature set which would take RSS from “email style inbox” to a tool for finding great things to read, and actually reading them.