Today Fujifilm released update 2.0 to the firmware of the X10 camera. This is a significant upgrade, not just a minor tweaking or adjustment. The new firmware provides two enhancements to the operation of the camera. First, it adds a fourth option to the Advanced shooting mode, called Advanced Filter, which is now the top option on the Shooting menu, above the existing options, Motion Panorama, Pro Focus, and Pro Low-light. The Advanced Filter option provides you with a sub-menu of 11 special settings for creative enhancements to your images: Toy Camera, Miniature, Pop Color, High Key, Dynamic Tone, and six separate versions of the Partial Color option, which lets you take an image that is monochrome except for any object of a certain color. In other words, the resulting image will have just one or a few items in the chosen color, and the rest of the image will be black and white. The color choices are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
The other enhancement provided by the X10 firmware update is to give a new function to the RAW button. With the firmware upgrade, you can no longer assign the RAW button to a function of your choice, or have it control the selection of the RAW format. Instead, the RAW button now will call up a new menu called the Quick menu. With this system, when you press the RAW button, the Quick menu appears on the screen. You navigate through the items by pressing the four direction buttons on the sub-command dial. You then change the value of the highlighted item by turning the command dial or the sub-command dial. The items that can be controlled through the Quick menu are ISO, dynamic range, white balance, noise reduction, image size, image quality, film simulation, highlight tone, shadow tone, color, sharpness, self-timer, autofocus mode, flash mode, and LCD brightness.
I have not had time to test the new features to any large extent yet, but at first glance they look like very useful and well-implemented enhancements to the X10. The updating process is not difficult; just download the update file, called FPUPDATE.DAT, and copy it to the root (top) directory of a newly formatted SD card. Then insert that card, and turn the camera on while pressing the Back button. The camera will prompt you as to whether to continue with the upgrade. If you do, the process will take a few minutes, and then the new firmware should be installed.
To get access to the Fujfilm site with instructions for the updating process, instructions for using the new features, and the firmware file itself, you can go to this link to the firmware upgrade page.
