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Fujifilm’s half-frame camera ditches modern features for retro fun

by admin May 24, 2025

The first thing I noticed about the Fujifilm X Half is just how small and light it is. The camera is designed to give you no excuses — you should be able to bring it with you everywhere. And after spending a few hours walking around LA with the camera, I’m starting to understand why you’d want to.

Fujifilm’s latest doesn’t necessarily impress on paper. The X Half is an $850 camera with a vertically oriented 1-inch sensor capable of taking 18MP photos. There’s no electric or hybrid viewfinder, no stabilization, no hot shoe, and it can’t even take RAW photos. It’s very easy to look at that list of missing features and disregard the camera altogether.

An interactive small sub monitor show you which film simulations you are currently using. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

But the X Half’s simplicity is very much the point. This is a camera for taking scrappy, quick photos and capturing memories. A lot of its flaws are masked with film simulations, filters, and superimposed grain. Its limitations are a feature, not a bug.

The camera comes with a fixed 32mm equivalent f/2.8 lens. Even with all the added grain and filters turned off, I found it to perform very well. The dynamic range is acceptable with natural highlight falloff, edges are sharp, and there’s even some bokeh if you plan accordingly. But I didn’t want to take those kinds of photos with this camera.

Fujifilm loaded the X Half with a number of its most popular film simulations, which mimic the look of classic films, and it also added a bunch of new filters. There’s halation, mirror mode (throwback to Apple’s Photo Booth, anyone?), selective color, dynamic tone, fish eye, and so much more. Some of these are downright silly, but some are endearing and whimsical. My favorite was the light leak. It adds light leaks to your photos in a random fashion, so you never know what you’ll get until after you shoot.

On the top of the camera is something unique: a digital “film advance” lever. Cranking the lever is integral to two of the camera’s new features, 2-in-1 diptychs and film mode.

You can even choose to burn-in the current date in your photo for true 2000’s nostalgia. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Diptychs let you merge two images side by side. This feature makes a whole lot more sense in a film camera, but Fujifilm is trying to replicate the idea for a digital world. You start a diptych by cranking the lever like you would on a film camera. (Although unlike a film camera, a digital camera can also record a video, so that can now be part of your diptych, too.)

Then there’s film mode, which is designed to more closely mimic an analog camera. It basically locks you out of using modern features and moving too quickly. There’s no way to preview your shot on the main screen, you’re forced to crank the lever to advance your imaginary film before taking the next photo, you’re locked into a specific look until you’ve finished your “roll,” and there’s no way to play back the photos you’ve just taken either. It is easily my favorite mode here because it strips so much of what we’re used to with digital cameras and makes us use this camera entirely differently.

This mode perfectly encapsulates why I don’t mind the exclusion of an electric viewfinder. Using the optical one in this mode makes you guess your composition and your framing, and you simply won’t know the results until you’re done with your whole roll. Once you’re done, the digital roll “rewinds” and you can look at your photos in the app. Unfortunately the app isn’t finalized and wasn’t available during my demo, but the files are still saved on the SD card.

Once you are done with you digital roll of film, you can look over your contact sheet. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The only immediate negative, no pun intended, I have noticed so far is that the camera just feels a bit slow. Despite using a fairly fast SD card, write speeds seemed slow and took me out of the moment more than a few times. Creating a diptych with a photo and a video took a long time to save onto the SD. It also slowed me down when using Film mode, where you have to “advance the film” after each shot. I found myself having to wait for the previous photo to save before cranking the lever.

Even the main touchscreen, which is largely how you interact with this camera, wasn’t as responsive as I’d want it to be. There are two screens on the back — a pill-shaped screen that lets you choose film sims and navigate menus, and a vertical screen for changing settings and previewing images. Some inputs weren’t registering even after a few attempts, and I wasn’t the only one at the camera event with the same issue.

Despite those issues, I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time with the camera and was frequently delighted by the clever ideas the Fujifilm team implemented here. I hope to see more companies making bold decisions with hardware and software like this that alter the experience of using the camera.

There are far more capable cameras at a similar price point. But if you’re looking for something refreshing and joyful, the X Half is shaping up to be a brilliant little camera.

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May 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Fujifilm’s X Half is an $850 digital camera with an analog film aesthetic

by admin May 22, 2025

Fujifilm has already released one unusual camera this year in the GFX100 RF medium format compact, but it’s latest model may be the most offbeat yet. The $850 X Half is an 18-megapixel digital compact camera, but it uses half of a 1-inch sensor to shoot 3:4 vertical photos. To drive home the retro vibe, it has a rear screen dedicated to displaying the camera’s 13 film simulation modes and can only shoot JPEG and not RAW images.

The name comes from “half-frame” cameras popular in the ’60s, like the famous Olympus Pen F, that use a 35mm film frame sawed in half (18mm x 24mm in size). The backside-illuminated sensor on Fujifilm’s X Half is, well, half that size in both dimensions (8.8mm x 13.3mm) or a quarter the area. It’s also the smallest sensor on any recent Fujifilm digital camera, as the X-series uses the APS-C format and GFX models medium format. In fact, the X Half has the same 3:4 vertical ratio as Fuji’s Instax Mini instant cameras — so you can make prints using an Instax Mini printer via the new dedicated X Half smartphone app.

Fujifilm

The X Half naturally uses Fujifilm’s film simulation and grain effect modes. Among the new ones are “light leak” for a blown-out quality that happens when film get exposed to light inadvertently, “expired film” and “halation,” an effect caused by light bouncing off film emulsion layers. To really get you into that analog film mood, you can switch to the new Film Camera Mode that limits your view to the optical viewfinder, makes you pull a frame advance lever for each new shot and only lets you see the photos once they’re “developed” through the X Half app. It even produces a “contact sheet” layout for 36, 54 or 72 images.

Another feature is 2-in-1 images that let you combine two still images or movies into one composition in-camera for extra artistic possibilities (using the film advance lever again). That also means the X Half can shoot video as well as photos, with a vertical or square size (up to 2,160 x 2,160) that looks ideal for social media — especially with film simulations applied. Also exuding nostalgic vibes is the “Date Stamp” function that lets you imprint dates in the bottom right of images, just like on old-school Kodak-style film camera.

On top of the main rear 2.40inch LCD 3:4 monitor, the X Half has an optical rather than an electronic viewfinder, adding another analog touch (and the accompanying parallax distortion errors). The camera itself is small enough to slide into a pocket and weighs just 210 grams (7.4 ounces). Other features include a built-in flash, massive 880 frame battery life and SD UHS-I card slot.

The X Half looks like it could be coveted by social media users or anyone looking for a fun party or vacation camera. However, it’s expensive considering that you can just get an Instax (or regular film camera and a lot of film) for a lot less. Fujifilm has definitely captured the photography zeitgeist before with models like the X100 VI, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a hit. The X Half is now on preorder for $850 (in black, charcoal silver and silver) with shipping set to start on June 12.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Fujifilm’s X Half camera is so dedicated to the analog vibes, it can’t shoot RAW

by admin May 22, 2025

Fujifilm has a new pint-size addition to its X-series cameras coming in late June: the X Half. It’s an 18-megapixel “half-frame” camera with a portrait-oriented sensor and viewfinder and a fixed 32mm-equivalent f/2.8 lens.

Despite being digital, the X Half is all about the vintage film aesthetic. The $849.99 camera is so dedicated to an analog-like lifestyle that it’s got an entire secondary screen just for picking one of its 13 film simulations, and it doesn’t shoot RAW photos at all — just JPGs, for a more what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience.

Fujifilm’s definition of a half-frame is a bit different from the traditional one. Usually, a half-frame film camera like the Pentax 17 captures images measuring 18mm x 24mm (around half the size of full-frame / 35mm format). But the X Half uses a 1-inch-type sensor measuring 8.8mm x 13.3mm, which is about half the dimensions of the APS-C sensors in other Fujifilm cameras like the X100VI and X-T5. So I guess it counts on a technicality.

But like the Pentax 17 and other actual half-frame cameras, the X Half is all about taking casual, fun snapshots and bringing it with you everywhere. It weighs just 8.5 ounces / 240 grams and is small enough to fit in most small bags or even some oversized pockets. The X Half is close in size to a traditional disposable camera, but unlike a one-time-use film camera it has a proper glass autofocusing lens with aspherical corrections, and it even shoots some basic 1080 x 1440 video. (Though, in my briefing on the camera, Justin Stailey of Fujifilm North America described the lens as having “some character.” Which is often a colorful way of saying the lens isn’t the sharpest.)

Once you take some shots via the X Half’s traditional optical viewfinder (that’s right, there’s no EVF or hybrid finder here) or its portrait-orientation 2.4-inch touchscreen, you can connect to a dedicated smartphone app (launching slightly after the camera) for extra functions. You can create your own two-up diptychs like a traditional half-frame camera, though here you can pick out the two side-by-side pictures, or you can opt for two videos or one picture and one video.

Fujifilm has baked other analog-inspired features into the X Half app, like a Film Camera Mode that collects your next 36, 54, or 72 images and arranges them into a contact sheet. But the film nerdiness goes deeper than that, as the digital film strip will be branded with the film simulation you used. There’s even a faux film advance lever for making diptychs, and in Film Camera Mode it forces you to use it between taking each shot.

You can lean further into the film kitsch by adding filters, like a light leak effect, expired film look, or a ’90s-era time and date stamp to the corner. Of course, since the camera does not shoot RAW, your chosen filter and film simulation are fully baked into the JPG file. You can’t undo any of them or change it later in post-processing like you’d normally be able to with a RAW.

Fujifilm is certainly taking a unique approach with the X Half, trying to capture the interest of younger photo enthusiasts who in recent years have been drawn to the imperfections and vibes of vintage film and aging point-and-shoot digital cameras. I don’t know how many of them will be jumping at the opportunity to scratch that creative itch with an $850 camera compared to alternatives costing a fraction of that — like a $70 Camp Snap for digital or any 35mm disposable film camera for $10 to $20 — but even if it’s half the fun I had with the Pentax 17 it should prove a good time.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments