COLOGNE—One of the cameras I was most eager to get some hands-on time with at Photokina was the Fujifilm X100T. On paper it’s a modest update to the excellent X100S . Most of the improvements come in the viewfinder, and Wi-Fi has been added. Internally it uses the same image sensor and processor, and externally the control layout has been tweaked, but that’s about it.

The X100T and its predecessors use a hybrid viewfinder, which switches between an optical view and an electronic one with a flip of a lever. Previous versions limited you to autofocus when using the optical finder—it doesn’t show the view through the lens, so there’s no way to gauge focus by looking through it. That left manual focus shooters, many of whom are used to shooting with Leica rangefinders, which use a similar viewfinder design but have optical focus capability in the viewfinder, feeling a bit unfulfilled. It wasn’t possible to get the best of both worlds at one time—you could use the optical finder and rely on autofocus, or you could use the EVF and focus manually to your heart’s content.

Fuji came up with an innovative solution to this problem with the X100T. If you’re looking through the optical finder, a flip of a lever engages a small pop-up EVF in the bottom right corner of the frame. It projects a magnified view of the scene so you can adjust the focus manually to get your shot. There are two focus aids available, a Digital Split Image, which is as close to a rangefinder patch as you’ll get in an electronic form, and focus peaking.

I found that the system worked better than I expected. Using the Digital Split Image aid I was able to adjust focus quickly and accurately. The projected frame lines move in real time as you adjust the focus to show you how your frame changes because of parallax, and a half-press of the shutter switches from the magnified view to a full view of the shot. My only real complaint is one that’s inherent to the camera; the focus adjustment is electronic, not mechanical. That means that turning the focus ring activates the same motor used when in autofocus mode to adjust the lens, rather than physically moving the elements. There’s less tactile feedback than you’d get with a real manual lens.

Fuji has also added a new film simulation to the camera, Classic Chrome. I wasn’t able to take the X100T out of the briefing area to take some real photos, but the images I’ve seen remind me a lot of the colors captured by Kodachrome. That film hasn’t been around for a while, but if you’re yearning to shoot images with that look again, Classic Chrome seems like a reasonable substitute.

The X100T is priced at $1,299.95 and will go on sale in November.