The Lensmate LM X100S Thumbrest & The Fujifilm X100s

A few weeks ago while in New Zealand, I almost dropped my X100s. It just slipped, all sleek and slippery like, through my fingers. It happened again, now back in Japan, just yesterday evening. And like the previous time, the only reason it didn’t hit the deck was due to the strap wrapped around my wrist.

I immediately thought to myself, “By gosh, I’m frightfully pleased that I ordered a Lensmate LM X100S silver thumbrest promptly after that last incident. My word, if it were to arrive quite presently in an expedient and timely manner that would be jolly well useful to boot, given my current apparent preponderance for silly billy thumbs a gaw gaw clumsiness, say what.”*

Low and behold, it arrived most swiftly today, just now. Well done Jeeves (now, pop Bertie back in the cupboard, there’s a good fellow).**

Anyway, what’s it like? It comes in a very very nice box. Now, who doesn’t like getting something well packaged? It is very well made, with tight tolerances & thus it fits very very snuggly and although the ‘rest’ part felt like it was in slightly the wrong place at first, it now doesn’t.

What strikes me in fact, is that it was only on for about one minute before I took it off again to do a bit of highly non-scientific “switching back and forth” comparing, and when I held the camera that very first time without it on, it already felt wrong and naked and unsecured. Wow, that’s telling!

What else? Well, at first it seemed like it was going to block or make access to the Command Control awkward, but now I have discovered that when the camera is at or around eye height, it doesn’t make much difference. Holding the camera lower though does require two slightly different hand positions depending of which way I’m moving the control. This is proving a bit awkward if I miss the setting I desire and have to go back the other way. However, in the great scheme of things, it’s definitely not a big deal at all. Also, people are built different, so I suspect that there will be a huge range of variation between users over this point.

Um, oh yeah, it makes one handed vertical shots a breeze. You know, the ones where you’re framing with the rear LCD and you’re holding your arm out with the camera dangling straight down in a right handed one hand grip. Much easier now. More importantly, much safer now. Great for snapping the kids around a corner, surreptitious street shooting, or whatever. See last photo below for an example – a one handed extended arm bending around snapshot of one sick & home from school daughter sleeping next to me on the couch.

One last, but important point. It is a lever. You can see that it doesn’t take so much pressure at the “rest” end to start the base moving and, more importantly, exerting a fare amount of pressure on the hot shoe fitting. Remember, it’s called a thumbrest, not a tyre lever.***

There’s plenty of photos on the web showing the thing fitted, so I’ve instead included a few below of the box, the underside, backside, etc. Sorry about the hurried and messy nature of them.

So, satisfied customer? I should jolly well say so.

Toodle pip.

* well, something to that effect

** sorry for being so opaque

*** aka, tire iron