I called it “2025’s weirdest camera” when it launched in June 2025. Fujifilm’s X Half was nothing like the Fujifilm X1000. The latter is a serious tool for street photographers, despite its fixed lens, and its APS-C sensor shoots the digital equivalent of 35mm film shots. It also costs twice as much as the X Half.
The X Half shoots vertical photographs, like how TikTok’s rise made taking smartphone pics in portrait mode popular. It’s funky but well suited to today’s social media, and right now it’s down to $549. Its retail price is listed everywhere as $850, but its street price has consistently been $650. Still, $100 off is nothing to sneeze at.
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a weird but fun camera indeed
X Half (opens in a new window)
The X Half is a digital camera, but it mimics a strange and unique film camera from the old days. Back in the days before digital photography took over, a half frame camera would capture two vertically oriented photographs on a single 35mm film still. That means that you’d get double the number of shots on a roll of 35mm as normally, and each photograph would be in portrait orientation.
The X Half does the same thing. There’s no film, of course, but every shot comes out in portrait mode. You can’t toggle the camera to shoot a standard horizontal photograph, but you can just turn it 90 degrees if you want a landscape shot.
Having to use that workaround and not being able to toggle between portrait and landscape modes makes the X Half a unique bird. It’s not going to replace your regular camera, and if you find yourself taking regular, landscape-oriented shots most often then you should look for another camera.
But if you want another tool in your camera tool belt, one that’s meant from the get-go to take the vertical photos that pepper social media, the X Half is one of the few purpose-made tools for that. And this is just my personal opinion, but Fujifilm has the nicest-looking colors and film simulation modes of all the digital camera brands.
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