Fujifilm XT1 review - official thread!

[Gordon Laing]

Hi everyone, this is the official thread to discuss the Fujifilm XT1.

Please check out my Fujifilm XT1 review for more details!

[Photofan]

Hello Gordon,
thank you very much for your review of this camera (i was looking forward to it) and all the effort you put into it. For me your reviews are second to none, always special, very informative and serious without that comical nonsense other reviewers think people wanna see. Your work for me is always the most useful (i.e. the noise-comparison section) and helps a lot to make a decision for or against a new camera.
I myelf had not the chance yet to get the X-T1 in my own hands to test. I am amazed how good image-quality even the kit-zoom seems to deliver, the primes must bee even sharper (i.e. XF-23mm F1.4). In your final score i would have expected one point more for build as well as for image quality, but you are the expert and can judge much better.
Thank you for all your work, much appreciated here, and greetings to wonderful New Zealand from Germany,

Pascal

[martino]

Thanks for the review Gordon. Good read, as always.

Very pleased with the X-T1 'upgrade'. Coming from an X-E1, the improvements are pretty obvious. It is a better camera in every way.
The EVF is gorgeous, really. AF is very good, though not as fast as Fuji claims (world fastest...blabla). You have to enable power mode to get the most out of the AF performance, which in turn decreases battery life faster. Battery life is still frustratingly poor. It seems to be a problem for mirrorless in general. Fujifilm should at least add a more informative display of the power level. Also, the locking mechanism on the ISO dial is unfriendly in use. For those who are interested: http://isounlocker.com/

Annoyances aside, it is a very solid camera and, what the X-E1 wasn't quite able to do: finally make me forget the DSLR days. It is much more mature than the previous interchangeable lens camera's from Fujifilm. Highly recommended to pair it up with the XF 23mm or XF 14mm. The kit-zoom is pretty nice and sharp, but the primes really make the X-system shine!

[mdh]

It's an ok review. However, I think you are giving awfully short shrift to the lens selection that Fuji has and how the XT1 uses them. For me personally, I have spent years shooting full frame Nikon DSLRs; d800 most recently. During that time I have watched as Fuji has taken their phenomenal lens knowledge and scaled them down to the X mounts. The bodies did not attract me until the XT1.

The combination of that body and those lens has been incredible. I firmly believe that its easily the best quality lens lineup among any mirrorless cameras and it easily rivals lenses from Nikon and Canon on fullframe bodies. I think with the lenses truly taken into consideration the camera best the Olympus and Sony models.

Keep up the good work on the site. Please do more Fuji lens reviews.

[Mr.Bell]

I just bought an XT-1 & 35 f1.4, I have only toyed around with it so far so good. Images where pretty impressive, and the size and build quality seems impressive. The design & aesthetics alone are bang on. I sold my D700, and 14-24 & 24-70 lenses in September last year. This XT-1 is a sea change, and one I am glad I made I think I will be very inconspicuous.

[easycass]

Hi there,

Thanks for the great review. I have the Fuji X-T1 and X-E1. I love the system, but after a recent trip to Vietnam and many missed shots, I did some testing. I have tried to get this confirmed by a number of sources, but no one seems willing to spend the few minutes to check. Up for the challenge?...

What I have found is this, depending on lens, the time it takes to 'grab' a shot is quite variable. We all know that focussing speed is not the fastest on the X-series cameras, I generally shoot in manual focus, and what I am talking about is when raising the camera to my eye, in manual focus, and pressing the shutter button, you know, to grab that once in a life time shot of a child's expression for example, I sometimes miss that moment.

What I see is that depending on the lens and aperture selected, the time for the camera to complete the shot can really vary. The worst I have found is with the 56mm 1.2. If the aperture is set wide open, shutter response is almost instantaneous. But, if I set an aperture stopped down, the time for the blades to close and the camera to fire gets progressively longer, maybe more than 0.5 seconds at F16. This can actually be perceived audibly, if you listen to the lens on half-pressing the shutter button, you can actually hear the aperture blades closing and opening, whereas wide-open, of course no movement sound. It can be perceived visually by looking through the EVF, and when at say F16, as the shutter button is half-pressed, when the aperture is being stopped down, the EVF image freezes momentarily. It is this delay that is causing me to miss shots.

So, do I have a lemon, or is this inherent in the design.

I did two tests, both with ISO set to 800, manual shutter speed at 1/60th, lens cap on, and manual focus. I then set two different apertures, wide open and F16, and tried to fully depress and release the shutter as many times as I could in 15 seconds, and the results: -

Test 1 - F1.2 Wide Open - 30 complete shutter button press/release cycles
Test 2 - F16 - 15 complete shutter button press/release cycles

Okay, not scientific by any means, but backs up what I am seeing and hearing in terms of aperture blade movement, whereby the time it takes to close down the aperture to anything other than wide-open is quite a substantial delay. I am an experienced SLR shooter, and I experience nothing of this delay with my Nikons, which by way of example in the same tests, show no difference between wide open and stopped down shooting. A cheap Nikon 5200 can do 60 presses in 15 seconds, and my D700, even more... Even my mechanical FE2 fires instantaneously in comparison...

If there is any chance at all you can or have already done this sort of test, just to confirm I am not going mad, that would be great to know. I realise doing one of tests like this is not really your mainstay, but might be an interesting test to include in your performance criteria, i.e. the time delay needed to firing a shot in manual focus, both wide open versus stopped-down.

If there is any chance you have the time to repeat my tests shown above, that would help me greatly, helping me to establish whether I have a bad lens, or if the Fuji system of aperture closing just plain slow?

Many thanks,
Cass.