Fuji Fuji X10 question

[wt21]

How's the AF on the X10 (if anyone has one or has read the reviews)? My wife is looking for a camera that takes better pictures than a pocket cam, but she sometimes gets frustrated with my m43 gear. I'm getting her an EPM1 to try, but I just watched Kai's review on the X10, and the camera looks neat, and is a nice all-in-one (for her purposes), but having read the X100 focus issues (and read out issues) was wondering about the same for the X10?

While I'm at it -- how's the jpg quality?

 

[BBW]

Seems fast and good to me, but I've had only a brief experience. Ray has described it very well...in other threads and I'm sure he, flysurfer and Andy and Armando will respond soon in a more helpful manner. I just haven't had tons of time with it. I will say that the face recognition worked very nicely on my dog in low light.

 

[wt21]

Next qeustion -- who has them in stock, lol. I am getting an EPM1, and would love to have both to compare.

 

[BBW]

Well, you can keep checking B&H and then use our handy dandy link or you can do what I did and subscribe to NowInStock NowInStock.net Product Availability Tracker and In Stock Notification System and set it for alerts...then react very quickly. I had gone back and forth for a long time and then once I got that alert that B&H had it, my Pavlovian response kicked in fast. NowInStock works very well - I used text messaging.

 

[Ray Sachs]

Yeah, I've been pretty happy with it. Its faster than the X100, not near as fast as the new m43 cams, but plenty fast (then again, I'm pretty satisfied with the X100 AF, so I may not be your best witness on this). The face recognition is very good, but it can fool you into thinking the AF is faster than it is. I was checking it out street shooting from the hip and I'd bring the camera up after the shot and the face detection box was still nailed on someone's face, but when I'd zoom in on the actual shot, that face wasn't nearly in focus - so it FOUND the face very quickly but still needed more time to focus on it than I was giving it. Which isn't unreasonable - on most cameras I wouldn't even try this trick, but when I use my epl3 like this with either the 12 or 14mm lenses, it seems to nail focus almost every time, which is a fairly astonishing trick for shooting blind from the hip. So now I use zone focus for street shooting with the X10, but the AF works fine for everything else I've tried it with. And the couple of times I tried it with burst mode, it seemed incredibly good, like it somehow worked faster and better. I actually had a few burst series on the street where I was also shooting from the hip and it seemed to nail focus on every shot - I'm not sure I can understand this, but the results were pretty clear (no pun intended).

-Ray

 

[BBW]

Speaking of zone focussing...the Fuji Guys added their 3rd video which is quite good, I think: Fuji Guys - Fujifilm X10 Part 3 - Top Features - YouTube. From there, if anyone is interested, you can access the other two videos, too.

 

[flysurfer]

How's the AF on the X10 (if anyone has one or has read the reviews)? My wife is looking for a camera that takes better pictures than a pocket cam, but she sometimes gets frustrated with my m43 gear. I'm getting her an EPM1 to try, but I just watched Kai's review on the X10, and the camera looks neat, and is a nice all-in-one (for her purposes), but having read the X100 focus issues (and read out issues) was wondering about the same for the X10?

Faster than the X100. Fast enough for me, pretty much the same as with the HS20EXR I'm also using.

 

[wt21]

Does the shutter release button have an old-school screw mount shutter release hole?

 

[wt21]

My wife uses a camera to take pics at our kids school -- kids doing ropes course, on the playground, etc. In good light, but wondering about shutter lag. Sounds like it might not be the best for that, and maybe I keep with the EPM1, but still might have to try this out for me

 

[BBW]

Yes, it does have that screw mount.

 

[Ray Sachs]

Yes, old school screw mount shutter release hole, so you can use an old cable release or a soft release button with it.

And there's essentially no shutter lag. When I'm zone focussing in the manual focus mode, the shot happens immediately when I hit the shutter button. There's no "aperture dance" in bright light, which could cause some lag in the X100 - its as quick as the LX5 and GRD3 in that regard, which means basically instantaneous. I would think the burst mode might be the best bet for capturing kids in action - I'm very impressed by it. The single shot AF is fast but not the fastest out there, but the burst seems extremely good. I'm sort of philosophically not into using burst mode for street shooting, but when I was playing around with it just to check it out, I got at least one shot I'd have never gotten as good any other way. I had five or six around it where the elements were all there but didn't line up quite right and one that was just dead solid perfect... And it nailed focus on all of my burst shots somehow...

-Ray

 

[jhawker]

X10 focus

Lots of great info so far.
I can only add that the focus is quick and accurate.
I would say that shutter lag is less of a factor with the x10 than others I have used.
The face recognition works well.
A little off topic, but the EXR is growing on me too.
You may find that you devise ways to use it before your sweetie.
Keep Eager.
JH

 

[Armanius]

The AF is reasonably fast, and faster than the X100. But like others said, it does not appear to be as fast as the new Pens or the GH2/GF3.

Similar to the X100, using the C-AF appears to be a tad bit faster and more sure of itself than S-AF. However, unlike the X100, the C-AF is quieter and you don't hear the auto focus mechanism noises moving back and forth.

I've had a coupe of occasions in which the X10 thought it had locked focus, but it did not. Typically occurs when closer to the subject. Or when I don't pre-focus (half shutter button press) before the full shutter button press.

No shutter lag that I could see.

And I've got one of the soft release thingies on the shutter button.

JPG qualities are very good. I've been shooting 100% JPG's (and on the X100 too), even though I'm typically a RAW shooter in all my other cameras. I'll give RAW a try when Adobe updates Lightroom. The EXR mode is nice to increase dynamic range and lower noise (by a little bit), and so is the "advanced" mode containing the sweep panorama, pro low light, and pro focus modes.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the X10 so far.

 

[Otto]

Yes, old school screw mount shutter release hole, so you can use an old cable release or a soft release button with it.

And there's essentially no shutter lag. When I'm zone focussing in the manual focus mode, the shot happens immediately when I hit the shutter button. There's no "aperture dance" in bright light, which could cause some lag in the X100 - its as quick as the LX5 and GRD3 in that regard, which means basically instantaneous. I would think the burst mode might be the best bet for capturing kids in action - I'm very impressed by it. The single shot AF is fast but not the fastest out there, but the burst seems extremely good. I'm sort of philosophically not into using burst mode for street shooting, but when I was playing around with it just to check it out, I got at least one shot I'd have never gotten as good any other way. I had five or six around it where the elements were all there but didn't line up quite right and one that was just dead solid perfect... And it nailed focus on all of my burst shots somehow...

-Ray

I have a tapered thread shutter release that I've had since the early '70's that I would like to use. Is the screw thread tapered like "old school", or straight? I ask because that was one thing that turned me off about the X10, no method of remote shutter release. I went through that with the EPL-1 and, although it worked, I wasn't too happy with using a "bolt-on" shutter release like the one in this photo.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences with this camera. I'm interested.

 

[Burkey]

Yes on the screw mount shutter release, as BB said. Works great with a soft release. Good luck.
. . . David

 

[Ray Sachs]

I have a tapered thread shutter release that I've had since the early '70's that I would like to use. Is the screw thread tapered like "old school", or straight?

Its definitely tapered and will work with the same old cable releases that your old film SLRs used to work with. Same as the X100. Nothing at ALL required like that contraption you rigged up for your epl1!

-Ray

 

[Otto]

Its definitely tapered and will work with the same old cable releases that your old film SLRs used to work with. Same as the X100. Nothing at ALL required like that contraption you rigged up for your epl1!

-Ray

Cool. I'll definitely keep this on my radar. Anxious to continue following the various threads about the X10. I really like my XZ-1, and Canon G10, but am always open to something new. I guess everyone calls it "GAS", and I have been infected since going digital in '93 with the Fotoman Plus, that I still have. Things have changed dramatically since then.

Thanks again,