Fuji X100 - Close Focus

Sometimes I think the Fuji X100 is like Supermodels and Italian Sports Cars.  It's beautiful, amazing at what it does; but sometimes it can be a huge pain in the ass.  For me the pain comes when trying to focus on anything closer than 3ft, and it just gets worse the closer you go.

Between 2ft and 3ft, using the electronic viewfinder will usually (but not always) get you what you want after a few trys, however it is useless closer than that.  Using the optical viewfinder for focusing closer than 4ft will get you absolutely nothing.    The only way I can get close up shots to work is manually pre-focus according to the distance you are away from the subject, and then fine tune by moving back and forward slightly.  Convoluted, but it does work.  

The big problem though is turning the manual focus to the desired position.  It is focus by wire, and the amount you turn seems to bear no relevance to how much the focus changes.  Sometimes half a turn will move it a lot, often not at all.  Eventually though, and maybe after several full turns it might get you to where you need to be.  So it could take 30 seconds to a minute to set the camera up for a shot closer than 2 feet away, which is totally unacceptable.

However, at close focus the lens is still reasonably sharp, particularly if you stop down.  It's a pain to get there, but close ups do turn out very well with this camera.