If you’re not familiar with the Fujifilm X-Pro1, it’s a souped up range finder that is sort of in direct competition with the Sony Nex cameras, because it offers an interchangeable lenses and its Mirrorless. The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 uses the all new X-Mount system to accommodate their new lens line-up which consists of a 35mm f/1.4 lens, 18mm f/2 wide angle lens, and a 60mm f/2.4 Macro lens.
In addition to this incredible fast lens line-up, Fuji makes a great product and develops it’s own camera sensors just like Sony. In fact Sony considers Fuji their top competition as far as innovation and sensor technology is concerned.
Notes Specific to this Review
I’m going to take the approach of comparing the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 to the Sony Nex-7 and Nex-5n when applicable as I know many of you are not sure where to invest your money. Where talking High ISO abilities, dynamic range abilities, image quality, build quality and sensor sharpness due to the X-Trans technology which eliminates the need for the Anti Aliasing filter found on most other sensors including the Sony Nex-7 and Nex-5n.
This is going to be a Continuous Review as I have the camera for a few more weeks and I need to learn Fujifilm camera system, try all the features, and test it for all the regular criteria I normally do. This reviewing method is not the norm or me, but I want to give it a go and see how it works out. You can also ask questions or provide requests as this review evolves over the next few weeks, so get involved if you like in the comment area!!
Now, I don’t have advanced sensor testing methods like DXOMark.com for example, but I will try and compare the Fuji X-Pro 1 sensor to the Sony sensors as best I can using real world and perhaps some “Lab” testing. I really want to know if this APS-C sensor is a good as it’s expected to be, but even more importantly how it compares to the Sony APS-C sensors!!
Fuji X-Pro 1 Price: ~$1700 US @ BHPhotoVideo >> | Amazon >>
XF Lens
- Designed especially for the X-Pro 1, the FUJINON XF Lens series promises enhanced resolution and light volume in image edge areas as well as reduced chromatic aberration for exceptional image quality. Featuring an all-glass aspherical lens and other elements, the lens is polished to perfection and treated with Super EBC coating. Holding the high-quality metal barrel and operating the precision-machined 1/3-step aperture ring is a sensation that fires the desire to capture every scene. For photographers who seek the peak of photographic excellence, Fujifilm raises the curtain on a new era of interchangeable lenses and unveils a premium line up of 3 single-focal length lenses (lenses not included with camera body)
- A wider opening and deeper mounting of the lens:
- Back Focus:1.Specifically designed to maximize the mirrorless design of the body, the X-Mount has a short flange back distance of just 17.7mm. This means the rear lens elements are as close as possible to the sensor. The wide opening allows the lens to be mounted deeper within the body – up to 7.5mm (approx) from the mount surface – reducing the back focus distance of each lens to the minimum possible, thus achieving high resolution all the way to the edge of the image.XF18mm / Back focus distance: 11.0mm XF35mm / Back focus distance: 21.9mm XF60mm / Back focus distance: 21.0mm
XF 18mm F2 R
-
- 27mm (135 equivalent)
- 7 groups / 8 elements (2 aspherical lenses)
- Aperture range: f/2-16 (1/3 step)
- Minimum focusing distance: 18.0cm (reproduction ratio: 0.14x)
- Filter size: 52mm
- Dimensions: 64.5 x 40.6mm
- Weight: 4.1 oz / 116g
Price: ~$599.95 Compare Prices @ BHPhoto (Click Here)
XF 35mm F1.4 R- 53mm (135 equivalent)
- 6 groups / 8 elements (1 aspherical lens)
- Aperture range: f/1.4-16 (1/3 step)
- Minimum focusing distance: 28.0cm (reproduction ratio: 0.17x)
- Filter size: 52mm
- Dimensions: 65 x 54.9mm
- Weight: 6.6 oz / 187g
Price: ~$599.95 Compare Prices @ BHPhoto (Click Here)
XF 60mm F2.4 R Macro- 91mm (135 equivalent)
- 8 groups / 10 elements (1 aspherical lens, 1 ED lens)
- Aperture range: f/2.4-22 (1/3 step)
- Minimum focusing distance: 26.7cm (reproduction ratio: 0.5x)
- Filter size: 39mm
- Dimensions: 64.1 x 70.9mm
- Weight: 7.6oz / 215g
Price: ~$649.00 Compare Prices @ BHPhoto (Click Here)
Fujifilm X-Pro 1 – Product Shots from the “Lab”
Click the pics for larger 1200px version!!
A few shots of the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 in Action at the Rally Racing last weekend:
Fujifilm X-Pro 1 – Build Quality and Design
What I noticed immediately with the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 was the actual physical size of the camera body. It’s very large in comparison to any of the Sony Nex cameras and weighs almost double the Nex-7 (= 292g), at 450g (body only). However, with that weight and size comes one of the most rugged cameras I’ve ever held in my hands!! The camera is solid as a rock and feels like I could hammer a nail into tree with it, no joke!
The 3 inch RGBW (White) LCD monitor with approx. 1,230,000 dots and 100% viewing coverage, is probably the best I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to say for sure without a and b’ing them, but I’m telling you this screen is incredible crisp and dynamic. Surprisingly though, the LCD screen protrudes out of the back making it much more likely to get scratched and bumped. Seems like it should have a thicker border/ bumper at the very least to offer a little more screen protection considering the rest of the camera is so incredible durable and well built. I personally like the Retro style of the Fujifilm, but looks are totally a personal thing. I also like the Ultra Modern Nex-7 look so…
Holding the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 in my hands it feels pretty big, but comfortable. Lite compared to a DSLR, but it has hefty feel to in a rangefinder form factor. Again, coming from the Nex-7 that makes sense, but I just want to make sure you know where I’m coming from. The hand grip on the right side of the camera is a bit small for my liking. I much prefer a deeper SLR style grip for my fingers to wrap around as it makes holding with one hand much easier. Like when the camera is down at your side for example. I’m not sure if it was a style design or an engineering decision, but it’s worth noting in my opinion.
A few more Design Special Mentions
A few things I noticed that seemed worth special mention as far as the design/ build quality goes besides the LCD screen and grip mentioned above.
- The tri-pod mount on the bottom of the X-Pro 1 is off center from the lens
- Battery not keyed, so it can go in either with door closed
- The Memory card/ battery door has the same Nex-7 style slide lock. Please make this a push close style like the SLR’s!!
- The memory card itself is kinda tuff to get in and out as it’s on the door hinged side. Why not hinge the door on the opposite side of the memory card? Sony does the same thing for some reason.
- Tons of physical buttons and dials to make camera changes, Huge Plus!!
- Very nice locking/ limiting shutter speed dial – Locks in Auto mode to avoid accidentally turning
Hybrid Multi View Viewfinder
Moving on to the Hybrid Multi Viewfinder; its very nice, and I find the optical view feature a nice addition, but certainly not a necessary as it has a great EVF. The viewfinder its not center on the camera though, so when your in optical view mode you see the lens to the right with the 18mm wide angle lens mounted. You can flip then little view toggle on the front of the camera and turn on the overlay information when in optical view mode! That is awesome and took me a minute to figure out. The EVF is great! Not a s good as the Nex-7 OLED, but it looks very good and it overlays all the important camera info for you. Simple pressing the View mode button on the back will also switch the View modes for you.
Menu System:
When comparing the Fujifilm X-Pro 1’s Menu system to the Nex-7, the X-Pro 1 is definitely catered more towards the professional user. The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 has one of the most in depth menu systems I’ve ever seen and reminds me of my Canon 5D mark II. This is a great thing speaking as a professional photographer, but it can be incredible daunting for a beginner. This is major difference between the Sony Nex menu systems which are picture based beginner oriented in my opinion. The Q Button is great and gives you access to pretty much everything you need and evolves depending on what Mode your in. I really liked it and used it primary to change the menu settings I needed such as ISO.
AutoFocus and Shutter Lag
Pretty fast and accurate!! On average I would say it’s a bit faster than the Nex-7 and Nex-5n as far a focus confirmation goes. Also, when the X-Pro 1 cannot focus it tells you almost immediately without hunting around for seconds trying to find something. This is great, because you know right away whether you need to change your AF point, or perhaps switch to manual focus without any wasted time. The Sony’s tend to hunt around much longer in my experience leading you to believe it may achieve focus only to eventually fail. It’s pretty predictable though when the camera is going to struggle, so I usually just use manual focus and then magnify zoom to fine tune it. Once autofocus is complete, release time lag is the delay between fully pressing the shutter release and when the camera actually starts taking the picture. Long lag makes it harder to capture fast-moving objects.
The Sony NEX-7 boasts the shortest release time in the world (as of August 2011) at only 0.02 second while the Fujifim X-Pro 1 trails behind at 0.05 second which is very noticeable with moving objects!!
Fuji X-Pro 1 – Image Quality
The Fijufilm X-Pro 1 took a slightly different direction than the norm when it comes to their color filter array. Basically they completely changed the pattern making it more random. This allows for the Anti-Aliasing filter to go bye bye, as it normally corrects issues caused by the color filter pattern. In theory the image quality should be a bit sharper than sensors with the filter, because the light has to travel through less filters.
I’ve taken a bunch of photos so far and the image quality is consistently excellent across the board in my opinion. The Jpegs are not over-processed at all which is nice as the creative modes can easily add more saturation for you if you want. The sharpness is also excellent across the board. The images are incredible sharp in fact, especially in the center area. I’ll go into more specific image quality details as I go through the sample photos below 😉
Sample Pics
Just to let you know their is no raw converter program out their for the Mac yet unfortunately. Adobe is working on it, and so are the other aftermarket companies and the Fujifilm software is limiting for Mac just like the Sony software. Hmm strange similarity. What that means is I’m going to shoot Raw + Jpeg or just Jpeg format from now on as the raw files are just sitting unreadable taking up my hard drive space.. One of the first photos I took believe it or not were of Layla’s Easter Basket on Sunday Morning 🙂
The light was poor and figured it was a good time to try out some High ISO shots. I set the camera from Raw to Jpeg Fine and then the grayed out High ISO’s of 12800 and 25600 were then available for selection. They don’t work in raw I guess, or I need to turn something on that I have not figured out yet.
High ISO Jpeg Fine
As always, be sure to CLICK on the photos for the large and crisp 100% crop version!!
ISO 25600
ISO 12800
From what I can see these images look great and are on par with the Nex-5n High ISO abilities in JPEG mode. The X-Pro 1 seems to go less far on the post processing than the Sony and I personally tend to like this. Sharpening applied to the Fujifilm JPEGs is less although the noise reduction applied is pretty high just like the Sony’s when shooting High ISO. The Fujifilm JPEGs are also much saturated than the Sony’s for sure.
Check this shot out of this highly detailed building just down the road from where we live.
The scene has a lot of dynamic range and I had the metering mode of the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 set to Average Metering. Focus was on Auto and in the center of the frame.
f/8
This photo is looking down the road behind me towards the sun and clouds that were lighting the building above. The dynamic range in this scene was off the charts and the sky clipped out on the upper left. The shadows are also pretty dark, but for a scene like this on average metering it looks pretty good to me.
Here’s a few more snapshots from around the house that really show off what the Fujifilm can do in the real world. For example, if you’ve ever tried to take a picture of a moving child, you know what I mean!! Layla never stops moving and with the slight shutter lag of the X-Pro 1 I wanted to see what kind of hit rate I would get. Overall, with the 18mm wide angle lens it was pretty easy although a bit distorted for portraits 😉
As always, be sure to CLICK on the photos for the large and crisp 100% crop version!!
Fujifilm 18mm f/2.0 XF R Lens
I’m really liking the fast Fujifilm 18mm f/2.0 XF R Lens big time. The Bokeh is really creamy and reminds me of the Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 a bit. I also like the fact that it has a minimum focus distance of 8.0cm, which allows you to take advantage of the sensor resolution more by getting close to your small subject. In addition, being able to focus close to objects is the best, and easiest way to exploit the incredible Depth of Field that this lens and camera combo offers. The sharpness is excellent in the center of the frame wide open at f/2 and softens a bit towards the corners. I still need to do some “lab” style testing to compare the aperture’s and exact sharpness fall off, etc.. but overall the lens is a solid performer in my opinion and I would totally buy it. The build quality is rugged style, just like the camera body, and doesn’t look afraid of much!
I wish Sony offered something like this for the Nex E-Mount line-up!! Here’s a few snapshots showing off the lens bokeh a bit.
As always, be sure to CLICK on the photos for the large and crisp 100% crop version!!
f/2.0
f/8
I got a chance to take a few more pics over the last few days and I think these highly detailed shots will add a nice real world variety to the mix. They will also highlight some lens flaws a bit in the process as well. Check out this awesome sculpture in a nearby industrial park. These guys are clearly masters at the art of welding!!
Specific to the photos though, check out the detail that the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 is able to retain using the 18mm lens @ f/8 in aperture priority mode ISO 400, handheld. In the 100% Crops you will see some noticeable blue Chromatic Aberrations on the high contrast edges where the metal meets the sky.
As always, be sure to CLICK on the photos for the large and crisp 100% crop version!!
Check out this really cool old abandoned pool I found a few miles from home. It offers a nice amount of detail and the color is spot on!
Here’s another angle and a few different Aperture’s using the same scene.
And here is a few flowers from the front steps that Michele and I planted the other day. Their starting to look pretty good and I was able to get really close with the 18mm lens.
Lastly for Today I wanted to show you one more image I cropped as a pano just cause I thought it made for a stronger comp. I love the way the Bokeh is rendered by the Fujifilm 18mm lens, and the senor can handle a lot of dynamic range!!
Rally Car Pics
There is a Rally Race this weekend near my house and I grabbed a few snapshots of the cars lined up at the Meet the Driver time last night. Some nice looking cars for sure!!
Dinner the other night was Awesome!! Michele and I watched the Sandwich King the other night and the Burgers looked incredible so we did our best 😉 The Lighting is pretty bad in this snapshot as natural light is coming in from camera left and the Tungsten light is above the Burger creating all sorts of white balance issues in the shadows and highlights.
Conclusions
The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 is an extremely well built tank of a mirrorless camera!! It’s overall larger and heavier than the Sony Nex-7, but it still so lite compared to a DSLR that the weight difference isn’t that noticeable to me at all when actually using it with the XF F/2 18mm lens. The 18mm lens is very lite and was the only lens I used for this review. That is important as it pertains to the Autoficus, because it worked pretty darn good for me with that lens and you can see it for yourself in the video above.
With the larger lenses, especially the 60mm Macro, the Autofocus is much slower and hunts around more. I’ve read this on other reviews and forums and in the comments below, but with the 18mm XF f/2 lens the Auto Focus works really good in almost all the situations I through at it. It did struggle a bit on the pool shots on the fence railing, but I simple moved the AF point and it locked right on.
The Image quality on the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 using the 18mm lens is excellent. The colors, dynamic range, noise, and sharpness are all on par with the Sony Nex Cameras with a good lens attached. The Jpeg files are a little better on the fujifilm in my opinion and appear more natural in the colors and sharpness . I am a Raw shooter though, so I’m used to seeing that type of file come of cameras so keep that in mind. As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, I could not process the Raw files off the Fujifilm X-pro 1 so I shot all jpeg default. I could have in hindsight used the built in raw converter and pumped out jpegs using different developing settings, but I did not have time to try this feature unfortunately.
The High ISO images are heavily noise reduced just like the Sony’s, and they retain most of the detail as far as usability in the real world goes. I wouldn’t be using images higher than ISO 6400 in the real world most likely, but the option to go higher is nice!
The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 costs ~$1700 US at the time of this review and to spend that kind of cash your going to be a Pro most likely or hardcore hobbyist looking for the best.
Fuji was thinking the same thing I believe for a number of reasons. The manual settings for the shutter and aperture are catered to the professional, the menu system is deep and designed with a Pro in mind, and the lens line-up has top quality optics to complete the package. Another nice pro oriented feature of the X-Pro 1 is the built in Hot Shoe which makes using studio lights and pro-grade flash units very easy.
The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 makes for a great investment if you have the cash for it and know how to use a camera. I personally fall into the category of “It’s a bit to expensive for what you get”, but if I had the money I would consider it as the lens line-up is very strong. Image quality is in my opinion about the same as the Sony Nex-5n if you boil it all down. I honestly can’t give an edge one way or another as both cameras take phenomenal pictures.
The Fujifilm X-pro 1 is so much more expensive though if you look at from an image quality stand point per buck. Just y opinion mind you 😉 If you’re looking for the best bang for the buck image quality and features wise, I recommend checking out my Sony Nex-C3, Nex-5n, or Nex-7 Hands on Reviews!!
The Sony products in my opinion are a better bang for the buck even though the E-mount Lens line-up is a bit weak at the moment to say the least.
Please feel free to ask questions if you have any, and I hope you all got something out of this Hands on Review of the Fuji X-Pro 1!! Stay Tuned for the New Sony Alpha 57 and Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 Lens, which is on its way to the “Lab” as I type this!! Should be a fun camera and lens combo to review I think.
Fuji X-Pro 1 Price: ~$1700 US @ BHPhotoVideo >> | Amazon >>
Firmware Update Ver 1.01
A new firmware is now available for the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 and can be downloaded (Click Here). I already sent the camera back otherwise I would have updated and addressed the issue below. The firmware update Ver.1.01 incorporates the following issues:
- 1.Reduction of chattering noise from iris of lenses in shooting mode.
- 2.Improvement of phenomenon that parallax compensation does not work under condition of manual focus with OVF bright frame mode.
- 3.Improvement of phenomenon that OVF quality as low visibility due to too bright OVF under the condition of power save mode during pressing the shutter button halfway.
- 4.Improvement of phenomenon that delete function does not work after viewing continues shooting mode images.
For activate above issues completely, firmware update for XF lens is also required. Please update the firmware of XF lens. Precaution
- 1.If firmware updating fails, the camera may no longer operate correctly in some cases.Carefully read the notes provided here.
- 2.Always use the fully-charged battery when updating the firmware as a basic manner. Never turn the camera off or attempt to use any of the camera controls while the firmware is being overwritten.
- 3.Firmware updating requires approximately 90 seconds.
- 4.Once the firmware has been updated, the previous version cannot be restored.
Fuji X-Pro 1 Price: ~$1700 US @ BHPhotoVideo >> | Amazon >>
