Fujifilm X10: Review

Hey, everybody. I’ve been a bit out of it the last couple of weeks, and my site has been going through a few upgrades…but I’m back now! I’m back, with my review of the Fujifilm X10 premium compact camera! Unfortunately, for this post, I wasn’t able to get any sample images – I got this camera for myself and didn’t really use it with a review in mind – so don’t expect to find loads of sample images, rows upon rows of 100% crops comparing different ISO settings, and all that stuff. Sorry about that. Anyway, here you will find, similar to many of my other posts, a sort of discussion on the X10, and my thoughts on this camera…and that’s about it. Read on and you will realize why I didn’t have this camera long enough to take as many sample images as I would have liked!

If you wish to buy this camera, getting it from this link (Amazon) or here from B&H Photo would help me keep this site going – running a blog isn’t cheap, you know!

So this camera, the Fuji X10…well, it’s not really a new model… around a year old now I believe…but it’s still one of the top compact cameras out there. It’s one of those high end ‘enthusiast’ compact cameras that attempt to pack in high image quality, plenty of manual controls, a very good lens, and all that sort of thing, into a (fairly) compact body. It used to be the best of its kind until a couple of months ago, when the Sony Cybershot RX100 stole the title, with even better image quality and an actually compact body, but it’s still pretty impressive. Look out for my RX100 review coming up soon, but until then, let’s look at the very good Fujifilm X10 (my RX100 review is already up, check it out)

Fujifilm X10: Specifications You Want To Know

• Body: Compact, Magnesium Alloy
• Resolution: 12 MP
• Sensor Size: 2/3”
• Sensor Type: EXR CMOS

• Lens: Fujinon 7.1-28.4mm (28-112mm equivalent) f2.0-2.8
• Image Stabilization: Yes

• Shutter speed: Max 1/4000, Min 30sec
• ISO range: 100-12800 (with expansion)
• Video: 1920×1080 (30fps) with lower quality options available (obviously!)

• Metering mode: Multi, average, spot
• Exposure modes: P, A, S, M (among many other auto/scene modes)
• Built-in flash: Yes (range – 9m)
• Hot-shoe: Yes

• Autofocus: Contrast detection
• AF modes: multi-area, center area, single, tracking, continuous
• Number of focus points: 49
• Manual Focus: Yes
• Macro Focus Range: 1cm

• Screen: 2.8” LCD (460k resolution) non-touch screen, non-articulated
• Optical viewfinder: Yes (85% coverage)

• Max Drive speed: 7fps (at full resolution) 10fps (at lower resolution)
• File formats: JPEG, RAW

• Connections: USB 2.0, HDMI (mini connector)
• Memory card type: SD/SDHC/SDXC

• Dimensions: 117x70x57mm
• Weight: 350g including battery pack

If I’ve missed out any important spec (or more importantly, if I’ve screwed up any particular spec), please let me know!

First Thoughts

Ok, so now that I’ve got the specs out of the way, let’s get down to the camera itself. First thoughts for me…when I actually saw it on the Fuji site, even before I got my own one…it’s the best looking compact I’ve ever seen! It still is. Nothing, not the Lumix LX7, or the Cybershot RX100, comes close to the super good looks of the X10. Looks aren’t important in a camera’s performance, but it definitely helps sales…I took a lot of time debating if I wanted to actually go for the RX100 instead of the X10 (some other factors helped that decision, more on that later), but one of the main reasons I really wanted to stick to the X10 was how cool it looks…

Ok, it looks great…wonderful. Then I see the lens…a lovely Fujinon 28-112mm equivalent lens, with a very fast f2.0-2.8 aperture. Now that is fast – even at the extreme tele end, it only slows down to f2.8 – impressive. The Lumix LX7 by Panasonic now seems to be the fastest lens going around on a compact, but comparing the X10 to the RX100 again, it’s 12mm longer at the tele end, and while the RX100 slows down to f4.9, the X10 remains at just f2.8. However, the RX100 is a very different beast, with a sensor twice the size of the X10, so there’s a lot more than aperture to be discussed when comparing them. But anyhow, the Fujinon lens is great, and performs as well as expected. With compacts, the biggest problem is often the low-light performance, and in this department, the X10 can do a very respectable job with it’s fairly large 2/3” sensor handling high ISO speeds well – and combined with the fast lens, it’s excellent overall

Controls and Handling

I love the controls on this camera. There are a ton of buttons, but all so well placed that it never feels cluttered, difficult to use, or hard to find…and is just helpful. In contrast, the Sony RX100 has a very few controls set out on the back…yes, the RX100 is much more compact and has less room in the back for controls, whereas the X10 actually has the space… but you have to give it them, they really used that space well

 

On the top of the X10, there’s a mode dial, a separate exposure compensation dial, the shutter button, and an Fn (customizable) button. Superb. The back has a bunch of other buttons, as you can see in the picture, but again…it never feels cluttered. I’m not going through each one as it’s pretty self-explanatory if you look at the above image, but really…the X10 has a button or dial for pretty much any setting you would need to change while shooting. In addition to the buttons are not one but TWO command wheels that are used to control aperture/shutter speed, browse menus, etc. The options truly are plenty…a very well designed control setup

 

And talking about controls…the zoom ring on the X10! The ring around the lens barrel! Ah, that is just genius. You turn on the camera by turning the zoom ring from the Off position to the 28mm position (see the picture above)…and you’re ready to shoot. It starts up super fast, almost instantly…which is wonderful…and using the manual zoom ring to control the zoom is a fantastic experience. The ring is buttery smooth, and it is by far the best way to control zoom on a compact. It is a mechanical zoom ring, therefore it cannot be customized to control any other feature, but just use it once, and you will never want to use any other camera with those awful rocker-type zoom controls! Shooting this way, with your left hand around the little zoom ring, it actually feels like you’re using an old rangefinder camera, or a mini SLR

And to add to all this, the camera feels great in your hand. It’s built solidly from a magnesium alloy, so it feels like a premium compact camera from the moment you touch it. The size is not very compact, though – it’s fairly large, and with the shoulder strap that it comes with, putting it into a pocket is impossible, meaning you have to get your camera bag (or some other bag) if you’re taking this thing out…which kinda defeated the purpose of a compact camera for me – but if that’s no issue for you, the size does help improve the grip and overall handling of this camera, and you’d never feel like you’re about to drop it. The only issue for me is the size – which makes it not pocketable

Performance

Like I already said, the camera starts up very fast. However, I find that with the lens cap, which has to be removed (like the Lumix LX5/LX7 etc.) it is always slower than the RX100 or most compacts with an automatic lens cover thing (what do you call those?) – so even if the X10 starts in around a second, it takes a couple of seconds to remove the lens cap…so you’re looking at around 4-5 seconds before you’re ready to shoot – whereas the RX100 is ready in 2 seconds. It’s not a long time, but if you’re really in need to get the camera ready to shoot to capture a fast shot, the separate lens cap can be a bit cumbersome

The general speed of operating the camera is fine…menus are zippy, the controls respond great…the buttons feel solid…no issues here at all. The menu system, I find to be fine…I’ve read complaints of people who don’t enjoy the X10’s menu…I find it perfectly adequate and does the job without any problem

As the zoom ring is manual, you can go from 28mm to the full 112mm in absolutely no time…the only question is how fast you can turn the zoom ring!

Focusing speed is very good. It focuses really fast, compared to any other compact, and again, compared to the RX100, they both focus at around the same speed. Obviously, it’s slower than DSLRs and some mirrorless cameras…but using this camera, I was always impressed in general with the focus speed. However, I did notice that focusing at objects at a greater distance resulted in slightly sluggish AF speed. Never had an issue once with closer objects or even when focusing in macro mode…but when focusing to infinity or objects at great distances, the AF speed was noticeably slower. Accuracy was spot-on 100% of the time I used this camera

Continuous shooting was a good experience, with the X10 firing off 7fps at full resolution. Buffering JPEGs was no issue, but very limited with RAW – in other words, if you’re shooting RAW, don’t shoot in drive mode with the X10. If you need to shoot at 7fps (or even slower), shoot JPEG

Features of the X10

The optical viewfinder: Ok, this viewfinder is being marketed by Fuji as something fantastic – it’s not. It’s a useful thing, but it adds a fair amount to the size of this camera, and I find I never used it. Even with the lens at the widest 28mm setting, a good portion of the lens obstructs the viewfinder…and gets even worse as you zoom in..and of course it has rather severe parallax error unless you take landscape pictures at a great distance. So although it is useful (especially if your battery is too low to use the LCD too long) and fairly bright, I never used the optical viewfinder, and if there was an option of having the X10 in a more compact form without this viewfinder, I’d definitely choose that

Zoom ring: I mentioned this already, but it’s something so fantastic and puts the operation of this camera ahead of others in this sense, that I feel I must mention it again. It is really, really smart, and it’s going to be only a matter of time before other companies start incorporating this control in their cameras, much like the Canon S95’s control ring started appearing on other compacts soon after. I hope that happens. Please! t

EXR Mode: The EXR sensor on the X10 is something new. If you want to know more about it, check out DPreview’s excellent post on this sensor. However, the EXR mode is designed to give the user a direct access to the benefits of this new sensor. It is an automatic mode in general, a sort of super-auto mode, that detects the scene, and accordingly increases ISO/reduces noise, or increases dynamic range, or increases resolution. Alternatively you could manually select the EXR mode you wish to use, by using your own eyes to detect the scene…and either set it for high ISO/low noise, or increased dynamic range, or increased resolution ‘for super sharp images’ (or something like that). Basically, think of it like a souped up auto mode that works very well. If you’re used to using auto modes, you’d enjoy this one

The EXR sensor’s dynamic range is impressive…you can get pretty decent HDR-type photos in-camera…and I’ve found it to be less dramatic and more realistic than most post-processed HDR images

Macro mode: The macro mode (or super macro mode, no idea why they decided to include two macro modes) works better than any compact I’ve used. It can focus up to 1cm at the wide angle end! That is insanely close, even though at the tele end it can’t focus quite so close…and it focuses very fast, and the results are excellent. It can go quite close at the tele end too…but I find that going up to 1cm at the wide end gave great results. Superb

Other interesting features: Film simulation is what Fuji calls the picture styles that other cameras also use…and instead of Portrat/Vivid/Landscape etc., Fuji opts to use their old film names such as Velvia, Astia, etc. It’s an original idea, but does the same as any other camera’s picture styles. Motion panorama is another feature that many cameras these days include, but it works well in the X10…just sweep the camera slowly in one direction, and it stitches together a good panorama in-camera. Good stuff

Image Quality

So none of the above stuff really would matter to me if this, the image quality, wasn’t impressive… and it’s here that the X10 sets itself apart from the rest of the compacts in its class…it’s here that the X10 gets pretty impressive. The combination of the fast Fujinon lens along with the 2/3” EXR sensor really delivers. For a compact, images are very, very sharp, colors are great, natural…there’s no severe distortions that I noticed…and it just does a great job where it matters. Until the RX100 came out and changed everything, the X10’s pictures were easily the best I’ve seen come out of a compact camera. That should say a lot

White balance is usually spot on, when set to auto…making colors look natural, and I haven’t noticed any color casts in any of the images I shot with this camera. It has custom WB, of course, so it’s no big deal even if it gets it slightly wrong – but it’s very good by itself as well

ISO performance is very good…I can safely go down to ISO 800 and end up with very useable pictures…in fact, ISO 1600 gives ‘useable’ pictures…ISO 800 gives great results. This EXR sensor, being fairly large, does a very fine job in this aspect. Add this to the fast f2.0 lens and low light is never a problem

At f2.0 and apertures around that, the depth of field can be quite shallow, especially if you’re taking subjects at nearer distances…and this really makes the picture look like something taken from a DSLR or something. Even at f4.0 or 5.6, if you zoom in and move in to your subject, you can get a very nice blurred background, far easier than is usually possible on compacts thanks to the larger sensor…and the bokeh is quite smooth

I mentioned earlier about macro images and well, the results produced using the super macro mode are super sharp, and the shallow DOF really makes these pictures look like something taken from a more powerful (larger) camera. Very impressive, again

Movie mode: I do not use movie mode on any of my cameras – I’m a photographer, I do not shoot videos, so I will not be reviewing this part – but from what I’ve read on other reviews, the video mode is not that great if you’re looking for the same manual controls that the X10 features when shooting stills. If you’re looking to shoot some ordinary home videos in 1080p HD, I’m sure the X10 will handle it fine

*Like I said in the beginning of this post, this isn’t your usual review…so I will not be posting a bunch of sample images, crops etc. Plenty of other sites for that…just take my word for it…the pictures are excellent. Purely for completeness, I’m adding a couple of links below to some sample image galleries…so if you haven’t already seen these, check out some of the images produced by the X10

DPreview Samples Gallery

Fujifilm X10 Sample Images

The Verge: Fujifilm X10 Sample Pictures

Issues with the X10

Alas, the issues I’ve had with the X10! Ah, I wish I didn’t have to write this bit. But I do. It’s the reason I got two Fuji X10 cameras, and returned them both

Firstly, if you’ve been researching at all about the X10, you would’ve read about the now-famous ‘white orbs’ or ‘blooming’ issue. It’s the result of a defect in the X10’s imaging sensor. What is it? Well, it’s not an issue you might come across much (or at all), but if you shoot a picture with any small point of light or highlight, the X10 will give you an image where the point of light appears as a very harsh-looking white ‘orb’…a very unnatural artifact in the image, if you ask me. If you want to see examples, check out dpreview’s article on it, they’re the guys who first spotted it I think. It is quite shocking that this was not spotted by Fuji before it was released. Poor quality control indeed

Is it a reason not to buy this camera? Well no, not any more. Fuji is replacing the sensor now with a new one, which they claim to be fixed, and looking at reviews (again, dpreview) it does seems to have been fixed…

Some of you might not even notice the issue, although in some pictures the ‘orbs’ can look quite obvious. This problem becomes quite clear when you shoot night shots, where you would be definitely shooting into small light sources – so you would definitely notice this ‘white orb’ issue in some cases here. Even in daylight, light reflecting off water, other small bright spots on your image would come off looking quite harsh and unnatural. Check out some reviews of the worst case this ‘orbs’ problem can put you through, and if you decide you can live with that, then definitely go for it. If you find it annoying, like I did, you need to plan on getting the sensor replaced by Fuji after buying it. This can be annoying too, especially when you consider you paid top dollar (USD600 at the moment) for a ‘premium’ compact, only to find this sort of issue present. Not to mention it feels really sad to give away your new toy for a week or two, just as you feel like taking it out to play!

Note: New Fuji X10 cameras in stores starting with serial number 22M are supposed to be cameras with the sensor already replaced. Don’t trust the sales guy –  do your research and make sure that 22M serial numbers contain the new sensor, that’s what I last heard…and if that’s the case, definitely go ahead and get one

The other problem I, and others, have noticed is the dust found in the lens, in a brand new camera. Not just a speck or two…but quite a bit. Noticeable when you look at the lens even in dim light…and I’m talking inside the lens, behind the front element…where it could easily work its way down into the sensor. One of my X10s had a sort of smudge/smear on the lens as well – quite shocking, considering it was right out of the box

When I got my first X10, I went out to get the sensor changed as soon as my local Fuji guys got the new sensor in stock. Then they told me that my warranty was not an international warranty, and that I would have to go get it in the country I bought it from, or some nonsense like that. So I returned it to the store, and got a second one locally – however, this one had that smudge/smear sort of thing in the lens, as well as a lot more dust inside the front element. That really did it for me. I just gave up on the whole thing, and didn’t bother waiting around to get the sensor replaced – I returned it and looked elsewhere for the perfect compact. Thank goodness Sony decided to release the absolutely brilliant RX100 just at this moment in time

It’s really a shame, because there’s a lot to love about the X10…it just had a few flaws that really annoyed me, and well…if you don’t get the camera you like after buying it twice, it’s not going to work out! And it really seems like Fuji is having quality control issues: even the more expensive Fuji X100 camera has a ‘sticky aperture’ issue that many people complained about, and had to get it fixed at the service center. Some had issues with the X-Pro1 too. Knowing these issues, I’m going to be very careful before buying anything made by Fuji at the moment

Fuji X10: What I liked/didn’t like

Plus points

• The looks – gorgeous design
• Large image sensor, giving superb image quality, even at higher ISO speeds
• Fast, high quality lens
• The absolutely fantastic manual zoom ring
• Fast, accurate AF performance
• Generally zippy performance overall
• Superb array of manual controls, dials, and more dials
• 7fps continuous shooting
• Great dynamic range
• Hot-shoe for external flash etc.
• High quality, solidly constructed body
• Did I mention the manual zoom ring?

Negatives

• The fact that they released this camera with a faulty sensor! Giving out your new camera for a couple of weeks to get something fixed when it’s brand new? Ridiculous
• Dust in the lens of a brand new camera? Fairly normal. This much dust? Not normal. A smear or smudge on the lens of a brand new camera? Ridiculous
• Size – this is a very minor problem for me, but I wish the size was a bit smaller, more pocketable…even though the design looks so cool
• Optical viewfinder, which is useful but not very…and takes too much space. Again a minor issue, and I’m sure some love this viewfinder…however, they’re not writing this review!
• Filter size – the X10 uses a filter size which isn’t standard. You might get lucky with a 40mm filter that will fit on the X10, but some might not. The idea is so that you’re forced to spend extra to buy the X10 lens hood, which comes with an adapter ring allowing you to use 52mm filters. The official Fuji one costs a pretty hefty USD75 or so, but there are now plenty of solid third-party options for under $25

Conclusion

Look at the number of times I said ‘…is better than any compact camera I’ve used’ and you get the idea that I love(d) this camera. I wish it didn’t have the flaws it did…but it does, so I moved on…to the Cybershot RX100. I’m not saying the X10 is a bad camera. In fact, I really liked it while I had it. It works great, looks great, takes super pictures…but seriously, after spending so much money on a ‘premium’ compact, I do not need these issues. Fuji should’ve got it right, after doing all the hard work with the X10, but instead, they almost got it right, but not quite. I’d recommend this camera to anyone who’s buying it now, if they can get one from the store with the new sensor inside…and hopefully with a clean lens…if you do, it’s one of the best (the best after the RX100) compact cameras out there. Just didn’t work out for me. If you’re looking for other options in the compact market right now, you can check out the Panasonic Lumix LX7, which is cheaper, but comes with a  smaller sensor, although the lens is a faster Leica piece of glass (and has got great reviews overall so far)…or you could check out the new King of the Compacts, the Sony RX100 – that’s what I replaced my X10 with, and it’s been a great decision so far…that review is up next. Hope I helped make up some one’s mind about this camera! If you feel like getting this camera, please…buy it from Amazon or from B&H Photo and help me out!

Oh, and please – if you enjoyed this post, and you have any questions or thoughts, please take a few seconds to leave a comment below – you just need to enter your name! And if you’ve ever used or own(ed) the Fuji X10 camera, what are your thoughts on it? Did you find any of the issues I mentioned a problem? Did you love the bits about it that I did? Or do you completely disagree with this review?! Let me know! Until next time!

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By Heshan Jayakody
All content in this review is my own, except for images, which are from Fujifilm

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