first, a bit of background so you understand where this review is coming from: i am used to shooting with very responsive equipment and lenses. i'm also used to carrying around this very responsive and, generally, rather bulky equipment. in an effort to shed some of the bulk at times, i have had my eye on the micro 4/3 market for a while, as well as new offerings from Sony and Nikon, as well as the Fuji x100 and, finally, the Fuji x10.
in the end i decided to try the fuji x10 above all others mentioned for several reasons:
- the 28-112 focal length is extremely useful, and wonderfully quick at f/2-2.8
- no interchangeable lenses means i don't have to start collecting more equipment (my wallet and wife are thankful)
- the fuji x10 was priced quite a bit lower than the other aforementioned options, especially considering you don't have to buy additional lenses
- i understood that i was going to make some image quality trade offs by going with a smaller sensor, but was willing to roll the dice on fuji, as they seem to be on to something as of late
- i liked the ergonomics of the camera, and the fact that it gave me easy access to all major functions (iso, shutter speed, aperture, AF point selection, AF drive, etc)
- it had a viewfinder that didn't require me to spend a lot more money as an add-on
after using this camera for a bit, here are some initial observations on its functionality:
- the viewfinder, which i thought was going to be terrible, isn't as bad as expected. that said, it's not great if you're coming from a DSLR or good EVF. it's nice and bright, and clear. on the downside there is zero information in the viewfinder, and you have to contend with (expected) parallax, so i find that i'm using it only when the screen isn't the best way to compose. this is hard for me, as i'm a huge fan of composing in the viewfinder, and i find myself frequently putting the camera up to my face only to realize i need to be focusing with the screen instead. i suspect this will take some getting used to. know that if you expect to use this camera primarily with the optical viewfinder you may be disappointed. you should try it out and see what you think.
- fuji should have put some type of anti-finger print coating on the front of the viewfinder. (the type of coating that some filter manufacturers are now using) the front element of the viewfinder seems to always get covered with finger prints, no matter how hard you try to keep it clean, and this clouds up the view.
- the mode dial, shutter, exposure compensation and zoom ring are all of excellent quality, feel good to use and are easy to operate.
- the main command dial on the back (which you will frequently use to adjust aperture or shutter speed values) feels good to operate, however i find that i frequently knock it out of position, changing accidentally changing whatever value it's controlling. i'm not sure how to fix this. there's not much space to put it elsewhere. perhaps if it were a bit harder to turn it would help.
- the sub-command dial is oddly cheap feelings on a camera where everything else feels very solid. it has no detent and therefore spins too easily and feels kind of loose. this is by no means a deal breaker, just a minor annoyance. the camera, on the whole, is very well put together and feels solid.
- there is an annoying camera shake alert that pops up onto the screen when shooting at slow shutter speeds that gets in the way of composing. as far as i can tell, you can't turn this off. i know when i'm shooting at a low shutter speed, and what the effects of this are, so i'd really prefer to be able to turn off this annoying "WARNING!" that pops up all the time. (it looks like a little shaky camera on the display)
- despite what i read, i found the menu layout to be very intuitive and easy to navigate. i read the manual and basically had the functionality of this camera down in about 24 hours after receiving it. if you've wrapped your head around the technicalities of a DSLR this really shouldn't pose a challenge.
- the lack of shallow depth of field isn't really that big of an issue. you CAN get shallow depth of field using wide apertures and longer focal lengths. but one of the nice benefits of a large depth of field is that you can shoot at 28mm f/2 and NOT have extremely shallow depth of field. this is very useful if you're shooting indoors in low light, because your DoF isn't razor thin, meaning your AF doesn't miss nearly as frequently as it might on a full frame DSLR.
- the macro and super-macro modes are great! i had zero expectation for macro ability, but i find myself using this often. it's easy to turn on and allows you to get very close to your subject. an unexpected plus.
- the panorama function actually works. i might be late to the party on this one. i never expected it to be any good, but it really does work. another unexpected plus.
- the "pro photo" function that blow out backgrounds yields fairly cheesy results. doesn't look like proper shallow DoF. skip this one.
- the expanded dynamic range and low light modes are nice to have. and if you hand the camera to someone who knows nothing about photography and set it to EXR Auto, chances are they'll get usable results even in high contrast or low light situations. these modes do reduce the resolution of the files, so use them sparingly if this is a concern.
- why on earth do i have to change the ISO in every different camera mode instead of changing it once and having it carry over to other modes? ISO is easily changed, but this is still kind of annoying.
- the dedicated RAW button is ridiculous. at least make it programmable so i can make it something else. an easy firmware fix, no?
- i found i was having faster AF times in low light without the AF assist beam. try turning this off if you experience the same issue. overall AF performance is pretty good. not spectacular, not instant, but not slow enough that it's frustrating to use. (i wouldn't buy this camera to shoot sports, obviously.)
- the face of the camera is clean and doesn't draw a lot of attention to itself when shooting on the street. the strap that comes with the camera is fine. it does have some white branding on it, but it's easily covered up with a little tape or black sharpie, if, like me, you can't stand to have logos all over you.
- speaking of shooting on the street, if you turn off the sounds on the X10 the camera is essentially silent. this is fantastic. if you use the viewfinder with your left eye you can see the AF confirmation light come on with your right eye, so you know you've locked focus even with the sound off and no confirmation in the viewfinder.
now that i've gone on about using the camera, how about image quality? first, the following impressions are only based on out of camera JPG files. i plan to update this part of the review when the RAW files can be opened in Lightroom/Photoshop. the included RAW conversion software, Silkypix, is absolutely horrible and i quit bothering trying to use it after a couple of days. here's hoping lightroom 3.6 supports x10 RAW.
if you are coming from something like an 18 or 24 megapixel DSLR, allow me to re-calibrate your expectations right off the bat. this is NOT going to deliver DSLR image quality. even inexpensive DSLR image quality. if you are used to working on your RAW files in Lightroom/Aperture/Photoshop, and frequently view them at 100%, you might have a minor heart attack when you open up in-camera JPG files from the X10. (we'll see how this changes when we can really dig into the RAW files.)
out of camera JPG's are very nice up to about ISO 800. ISO 1600 aren't bad a lot of the time, but sometimes the noise is a bit much. low light images at ISO 3200 aren't good for anything but viewing at snapshot size. i even fiddled with the NR settings (turn it down a bit, IMO, unless you want the image to look like plastic) but it didn't help the ISO 3200 files much. applying some NR to the JPG files in lightroom helped a bit, but couldn't save the worst of the bunch. this is where RAW processing may help a lot. i'm hoping RAW processing in lightroom will make using ISO 3200 regularly usable. we will have to wait and see.
so, what do i think of the fuji x10 so far? i like it quite a bit, actually. it feels great in the hand, is fairly intuitive to use and has a very nice feature set. fuji has made a nice little camera here. a good substitute when you don't want to walk around with your DSLR and a camera bag. a good alternative when you don't feel like going down the road of another camera system like micro 4/3 or Nex (not that these systems are bad at all). i'm happy with the image quality, although i would like to see high ISO cleaned up a bit, as i really do shoot in low light regularly. i'll plan to update this part of my review when RAW support is enabled in lightroom. all told, considering the sensor size it's really not bad. but i want a lot of bang for my buck!
december 13th update: adobe has just released new versions of Lightroom and ACR with support for X10 RAW files.
december 14th update: a few impressions after working with the RAW files in Lightroom: my main desire was to try to tame high iso noise in lightroom. i think it's safe to say that if you expose the image properly, you can get a useable result at ISO 3200. certainly useable for online use, or prints MAYBE up to 8x10 or so upon first impression. and that's pushing it - that's if the stars align. i feel comfortable using the X10 at ISO 1600, and if i calibrate my expectations accordingly, 3200.
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