wonders of the marketplace, continued

We stand by our earlier statement agreeing with Fuji that their new thousand-dollar FinePix X100 camera is "in a class by itself" – as long as you realize that building a piece of dark grey glass into the lens makes that the class of cameras that are expensive and stupid.

But what about the new Leica M9 Titanium, which costs thirty-two thousand dollars? Is that expensive and stupid? Nope. That's just stupidly expensive. And stupidly expensive is not the same as stupid.

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Note: The above reflects only my opinion, which could be wrong, but which does reflect my honest understanding per this grab from the FinePix x100 website:

Got that? "A built-in neutral density filter (equivalent f-stop reduction of 3)." That means that seven-eighths of the incoming light is absorbed by the filter, and never gets to the sensor. Evidently this camera is designed exclusively for bright days & waterfalls.

[Late edit: I was wrong about that Fuji.]