itai195
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I really wanted to love the X-Pro1. I'm infatuated with the Fuji colors and the IQ is superb. The control dials and aperture ring are wonderful, every camera should have those. The Q menu is excellent, as is the 35mm lens. High ISO image quality is easily best in class. I found the body to be a good size and weight, with most of the controls falling into easily accessed locations. Shooting with the camera can be a real joy in many situations. The build quality, overall, is solid.
That said, there are issues. The OVF has good and bad sides. The optical view and the ability to see outside the frame lines are great. The inaccurate frame lines, AF inaccuracy, and need to deal with parallax make the OVF a bit fiddly to use in practice. Having the OVF is great, it's just not an unmitigated positive.
The AF is speedy enough for most of my needs. Really, in the past it would've been fine for all of my needs. But I have a family now and would prefer my small camera to be one that can easily do double duty for family photos. I just can't see the Fuji doing that. I don't want to sound like I'm whining here... I shoot MF glass on my DSLR, and ordinarily I take a fairly slow paced approach with my photography. But I really feel like a 2012 camera should focus faster. The lenses have old fashioned external focus mechanisms. The 35mm frequently pinched my thumb as it focused. The aperture chatter is a nonissue, but the noisy focusing mechanism was distracting to both me and several portrait subjects.
The EVF is not particularly good. Certainly, it would be a deal breaker if the EVF was the only viewfinder on the camera. As it is, I could have lived with it, except for a big issue I'll describe below.
The lens selection won't be ideal for me until sometime next year. That said, 28/50/90mm is a fine combo and I could have lived with this except for three issues. First, the 60mm is the only tele option right now, and it's the slowest focusing lens. I use this focal length a lot. Second, the 18mm is the only wide angle option, and its IQ is just okay. I also use wide angles a lot, and the lens just isn't good enough for my needs. Third, every tele lens, and probably the 14mm as well, will require use of that substandard EVF. That's pretty much the biggest negative for me. The EVF is not terrible, but I didn't feel happy with the thought of spending so much money on a camera with a mediocre viewfinder.
There are also some smaller issues. No rgb histogram that I could find, no histogram in image review, limited bracketing options, the poorly conceived naming scheme for images shot in continuous drive, the very existence of the macro button, and the poorly placed AF button. Every camera has small, irksome issues of this nature. The long running problem Fuji has with Mac/iOS hidden files falls into this category too, but leaves me with a very negative impression. I really hoped that Fuji would have finally fixed this ridiculous issue by now. All I can say is WTF. Actually, no, that's not all I can say. What in the world is Fuji thinking?! Who, other than Sony and Microsoft, makes a premium product that spurns Mac users so visibly in this day and age? It's just plain stupid and the persistence of the issue is mind boggling.
So all in all, there are a lot of positives, but I just don't feel the Fuji system is mature enough for me to adopt it yet. There are too many compromises. None of the issues are deal breakers on their own, but in a rational assessment they add up to an overall negative impression for me for now. What makes the most sense for me is to stick with m43, provided that the E-M5 offers improved handling and IQ compared to my G3 (which it does). I'll reevaluate when the X-Pro2 comes out. I've got my fingers crossed, hoping that as Fuji develops the system they'll resolve most of these issues so that I can jump back in.
So the X-Pro1 went to a friend who is elated with it, and the E-M5 is basically everything I wanted in an m4/3 body. Oly has great colors and the body handles well, albeit with the usual Oly quirks. I still don't really love the super control panel (Fuji's Q menu is better), I want to be able to set a minimum shutter speed for auto ISO (Fuji has the same problem), image playback in the EVF is only possible with a laborious workaround, the auto WB is hit or miss (the Fuji's was great), and I feel like I have to press the info button to cycle through various displays way too often. But I can live with these. Like I said, every camera has issues of this nature. The camera is built like a tank, handles well, and the lens selection is perfect. Regarding the Fuji 18mm, I decided that I'd rather have a slightly worse sensor paired with a much better lens. The sensor will improve over time with new bodies, but the lens will not.
Throughout all of this, part of me really wanted to take a deep breath, calm down, and just evaluate the Fuji as a simple photographic tool. From this point of view, the camera has everything it needs to have: wonderful controls, a great lens, a nice viewfinder, autofocus, and image quality to die for straight out of the camera. Anybody should be able to make great images with just these few features. But I just couldn't put the laundry list of niggles to rest.
Edited on Apr 22, 2012 at 12:36 AM · View previous versions
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