Start with the cons:
- the viewfinder is pretty useless, which is very disappointing. A) there's no sensor so the screen doesn't turn off when you look through the viewfinder, like in DSLRs. B) you can turn off the back screen, but if you do that, you can't see any of the settings because it's an optical viewfinder and no has information at all. C) this is not an issue on the auto modes but completely useless in the manual mode, which is what I prefer.
- manual focusing mode only works through the screen, because the viewfinder doesn't let you know what's in focus.
- the top ISO is 12800, which is impressive, but you can only take 3MP pictures at that ISO. The highest ISO that utilises the full 12MP is 3200.
Now with the pros:
- the camera feels hefty. It doesn't feel loose or plastic-y at all. It's solid from end to end and the slight extra weight over other compacts is very welcome. You know where the money in this camera went. Everything is either glass or very solid plastic.
- the panorama mode. This is the one feature I miss the most from the Sony TX1 I used to have, and I've missed it a lot. With the X10, you have the choice of 120, 180 and 360 degrees, which will hopefully prove useful.
- the super macro mode. The camera says it can shoot things at as close as 1cm away. I will definitely test out this claim.
- the ISO performance. I've taken a few shots with this at ISO3200 and they look pretty nice.
- the manual zoom. The battery is a tiny battery for the size of the camera (as far as I know, Fuji only uses one battery model (NP-50) for their cameras released in the past few years (that is, of course, except for their cameras using AA batteries, and the X100). With manual zoom, there's no need for zoom motors, which eat up a lot of power. The screen will use up most of the power, with only the buttons and processing handling the power use after that.
Things to figure out:
- the autofocusing speed. I've heard opposing things from different people.
- battery life. If I can only take 150 pictures before the battery burns out, it's going to be a bit of a challenge to use this camera. Most batteries generally last about 200 pictures, or maybe more on bigger cameras (because they have bigger batteries. I'm not expecting the 800-1000 I get on my 7D, but I'll be happy with 200-250 per charge.
- actual picture quality on this sensor. I've had Sony and Canon before so I know how they perform. Anybody can tell me anything about this camera but I still have to figure out if I like the pictures out of this Fuji camera.
All in all, apart from the viewfinder, I'm really happy right now, even as a first impression. I'll put the camera through its paces over the next few days!
Here are our pictures.
Frank
His note: Something I have not used yet and the way it's going I may not have to!
Shannon
Her note: Another sunrise.
My picture
My frumpy shoes and I waiting for a friend finishing talking to a customer she was helping. This is me also just goofing off with the camera and figuring out what it can do. I'm liking this camera. Even at ISO800, the noise is still pretty manageable and looks pretty film-like (though it seems the noise is a bit smaller than actual film grain).
We'll see how the x10 handles thing tomorrow. I need to buy a faster card, because the class 4 that seemed to be find on my S95 is a bit sluggish on the x10.
PS. How perfect is this. I open up Lightroom, wondering how I'm ever going to edit the RAW files from the x10, and Lightroom is asking me if I want to download an update, which adds support for the x10!
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