Fujifilm X10 Preview

Preview based on a production X10 with firmware 1.0

The revival of the enthusiast camera sector over the past few years has been a surprising but welcome development in the industry. The widespread acclaim for the Panasonic LX3 has encouraged other manufacturers to join or re-enter the fray with high-end offerings of their own, resulting in excellent, high-spec cameras such as the Samsung TL500, Olympus XZ-1 and Canon S95.

Now it’s time for Fujifilm to play its hand, which it has done with its X10. Conceptually it borrows our favorite features from the two distinct sub-types that have emerged in this category – it takes the fast lens from cameras such as the TL500 and XZ-1 and combines it with the optical viewfinder and extensive controls of the Canon G12 and Nikon P7100. Just to finish things off, Fujifilm wraps the whole thing in magnesium alloy bodywork that evokes its huge brother, the X100 and the 1960′s rangefinders it borrowed its styling from.

The X10′s innards are as progressive as its exterior is staid. It features a 12MP, ’2/3″ type’ sensor, which means it’s between 26% and 40% bigger than the sensors used by its enthusiast compact peers and twice as massive as those used in nearly all regular compacts. It also uses the company’s unique ‘EXR’ technology that makes it simple to combine pairs of pixels to produce 6MP images that have either been averaged to reduce noise or differently exposed so that more highlight information is captured. The underlying chip uses conventional CMOS arrangement, rather than the back-side illuminated type that can help improve light capture in small sensors.

Bright manual zoom lens

Despite the bigger sensor, Fujifilm manages to find room for an image-stabilized, retracting 28-112mm equivalent F2.0-2.8 lens. The wide aperture, combined with massive sensor means not only does the X10 offer more control over depth-of-field than any other camera in its class – it also grants for shallower depth of field than most DSLRs when used with their kit zooms.

The lens is manually zoomed, more like those on interchangeable lens cameras and this movement is mechanically linked to an optical viewfinder, meaning you drive the viewfinder as you extend the lens. The mechanically-driven lens and viewfinder design has two key advantages. The first is that it gives a pleasantly direct feeling of control over the lens’ behavior, allowing continuous (rather than stepped) zooming. Crucially it also means the camera is not dependent on its battery for driving the lens and viewfinder. The X10′s rather small battery is rated at 270 shots per charge – which would be considerably lower if it also had more motors to drive.

The fast readout from the CMOS sensor grants the camera to shoot at up to 7 frames-per-second at full resolution and 10fps at 6MP. It also enables 1080p30 motion picture shooting and the creation of panoramas in a single sweep of the camera.

As befits a camera in this class, the X10 can capture Raw images and, in an welcome addition, it can also re-process its own Raw files in-camera (the Olympus XZ-1 is the only other camera in this class we can think of that can do this). Combine this feature with the X10′s film simulation modes and color-filtered mono modes and it can be really useful for getting the ideal of the pics after shooting.

Fujifilm X10 specification highlights 12MP EXR CMOS sensor 28-112mm F2.0-2.8 lens Optical viewfinder (85% coverage) 2.8″, 460,000 dot LCD Extensive manual control Raw shooting and in-camera Raw conversion Continuous shooting up to 7fps at full resolution (10fps at 6MP)

The Fujifilm X10 essentially brings together all the ideal features of its rivals – a very bright, reasonably lengthy zoom and a high quality glass viewfinder (they’re usually plastic in compact cameras). Add to this its larger, EXR sensor and it’s astonishing the camera is not much bigger than its peers. Understandably, it is rather more costly (its launch price was 20% above that of the XZ-1).

Its bright lens means the X10 offers slightly shallower depth-of-field than a DSLR or large-sensor mirrorless camera with a typical kit zoom.

If you are new to digital photography you may wish to read the DigitalPhotography Glossary before diving into this article (it may help you comprehend some of the terms used).

Conclusion / Recommendation / Ratings are based on the opinion of the reviewer, you should read the ENTIRE review before coming to your own conclusions.

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DPReview calibrate their monitors using Color Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can make out the difference between all of the (computer generated) grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and ideally A,B and C.

source : www.dpreview.com

Fujifilm X10 Preview

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