Bill Pierce
Well-known
A number of folks have asked me to comment on the new Fuji X Pro 2. When Geoffrey Crawley was running the British Journal he would take 6 months to review a new camera. Almost all the pop magazines would beat his release, but his report was far superior. To say anything after a week of using the camera is fairly pretentious, but here goes.
Like its predecessor, it shares the basic body form that mimics a rangefinder. The top is flat and the viewfinder eyepiece is on the left hand side of the body solving the age old problem faced by users of SLR’s, DSLR’s and mirrorless bodies that mimic an SLR - Where do I put my nose? AS APS - C mirrorless cameras go, it’s a big camera roughly the size of film M Leica.
The new camera has a 24 mg sensor and more advanced processor. Image quality is improved, and noise levels are down even at high ISO’s. But this is at a level best seen at 100%. For most folks it simply means that you can crop a frame a little and still maintain quality or you can use the new, even higher ISO’s and still produce a decent image.
My favorite improvement is the fact that the viewfinder eyepiece has adjustable diopters, no more screw in correction lenses.
Probably the most important change is the the focus points are now changed in the viewfinder by pressing a small joy stick, thus freeing up the larger control dial on the back to select 4 functions combined with two buttons to give you the ability to select 6 functions without going into the menu which now has a section you can program yourself so that your most used menu functions are together and in their own menu section. (And auto focus itself seems to have less searching and be quicker in general.)
The shutter now has the “electronic” option that gives very high shutter speeds for those that want to shoot wide in bright sunlight or shoot pictures of speeding bullets.
Some of the new features are relatively simple but very useful. For instance, the shutter release now accepts a conventional, screw-in cable release. All the control buttons are on one side of the camera making them considerably less clumsy to use. The bright frame viewfinder seems brighter and better. The camera now accepts two memory cards. They can produce duplicate files for safety, put raw on one and jpg on the other or just work sequentially to give you a larger recording power. There’s a new black & white film simulation that incorporates a curve and adjustable grain pattern to give it a more film-like appearance.
All in all, it’s not a radical new camera; after 4 or 5 years it’s an improved camera. Gosh, that’s just like the old film days.
Any thoughts?
Like its predecessor, it shares the basic body form that mimics a rangefinder. The top is flat and the viewfinder eyepiece is on the left hand side of the body solving the age old problem faced by users of SLR’s, DSLR’s and mirrorless bodies that mimic an SLR - Where do I put my nose? AS APS - C mirrorless cameras go, it’s a big camera roughly the size of film M Leica.
The new camera has a 24 mg sensor and more advanced processor. Image quality is improved, and noise levels are down even at high ISO’s. But this is at a level best seen at 100%. For most folks it simply means that you can crop a frame a little and still maintain quality or you can use the new, even higher ISO’s and still produce a decent image.
My favorite improvement is the fact that the viewfinder eyepiece has adjustable diopters, no more screw in correction lenses.
Probably the most important change is the the focus points are now changed in the viewfinder by pressing a small joy stick, thus freeing up the larger control dial on the back to select 4 functions combined with two buttons to give you the ability to select 6 functions without going into the menu which now has a section you can program yourself so that your most used menu functions are together and in their own menu section. (And auto focus itself seems to have less searching and be quicker in general.)
The shutter now has the “electronic” option that gives very high shutter speeds for those that want to shoot wide in bright sunlight or shoot pictures of speeding bullets.
Some of the new features are relatively simple but very useful. For instance, the shutter release now accepts a conventional, screw-in cable release. All the control buttons are on one side of the camera making them considerably less clumsy to use. The bright frame viewfinder seems brighter and better. The camera now accepts two memory cards. They can produce duplicate files for safety, put raw on one and jpg on the other or just work sequentially to give you a larger recording power. There’s a new black & white film simulation that incorporates a curve and adjustable grain pattern to give it a more film-like appearance.
All in all, it’s not a radical new camera; after 4 or 5 years it’s an improved camera. Gosh, that’s just like the old film days.
Any thoughts?
