There has long been a gaping hole in the pro camera market for a fast lens, great quality digital rangefinder style camera … say …  something to bring the Leica rangefinder into the 21st century. Something that photojournalists can have slung over their shoulder and the street photographer can use as his or hers everyday ‘tool of trade’.

Both Sony and Leica themselves have made attempts to fill this void but all have fallen short of the mark, let down by slow operation, lousy LCD’s and other unwelcome quirks.

An offering from Fuji due out in March – the FinePix X100 – is looking good to fill the gap.

A beautiful retro design body harking back to R/F’s of yesteryear, it is fitted with a fast F2 35mm equivalent lens and traditional analogue dials for shutter speed, aperture and exposure compensation, alongside an electronically coupled (‘focus-by-wire’) manual focus ring. But the biggest story is its innovative hybrid viewfinder, which combines a conventional direct-vision optical viewfinder with a high-resolution electronic viewfinder, offering the best of both worlds.

All in all the the X100 package is definately ‘looking the goods’ – and if the image quality stacks up I’m sure it will be on the shopping lists of many street photographers and photojournalists come March. I’m certainly interested.

DPReview has published an extensive detailed ‘first look’ at the camera which may be found here .

I wonder what Henri Cartier Bresson would have made of it ??