The Best of CES: Fujifilm's X-Pro 1
One of our Best of CES 2012 awards goes to Fujifilm's X-Pro 1.
We see bucket loads of products at CES; some products are old, some are new, and some are shameless rehashes of old products dressed up as new products. However, each year there are a special few that really wow us. Among them is the Fujifilm X-Pro 1, Fujifilm's new interchangable lens camera, which has won one of our prestigious 'Best of CES' awards.
The X-Pro 1 goes beyond the compact system trend started by Olympus and Sony and into a legitimate new camera category. We’ve decided to give the X-Pro 1 one of our first Best of CES awards for its style, intuitive design, and its ability to fulfill a need expressed by photography enthusiasts and pro-sumers who just don’t want to carry an entire DSLR camera bag.
The X-Pro 1 looks like a serious 35mm camera from yesteryear. It has a magnesium alloy chassis, die-cast aluminum at the top and bottom, and a distressed leather look around the body. Most controls—like shutter speed, exposure compensation, and aperture and manual focus rings-- are physical knobs and gizmos on the camera and lens itself. This certainly adds to the retro charm but it's actually quite functional and preferred by most serious photographers.
We especially like the inclusion of the hybrid optical viewfinder—it changes the field of view depending on which lens is attached to the camera (three lenses have been announced by Fujifilm so far: an 18mm f/2.0, a 35mm f/1.4, and a 60mm f/2.4). It switches between electronic and optical, though there is also an LCD screen on the back of the camera with 1.4 million pixels.
Fujifilm built a new 16 megapixel sensor for this camera that arranges color filters in a less inaccurate and compromised fashion, and this makes the images from this camera especially sharp, according to the company. And, like any camera designed for users that take themselves halfway seriously, this one shoots RAW and offers 1080p video recording.
An official price has not been set by Fujifilm but most estimates put it at under $2,000 without lenses.
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Nice camera. I use a EOS-1DS for my work and bought three different lens for it. Cost about 13grand total. Then again each shoot I do I make around 1,500-3,000 depending. If you are interested in photography this wouldn't be a bad camera to start with.
Sweet camera. I wouldn't mind lugging this around with my 5D MKII
Damnit. Just bought the X-100.
I don't know if I'd want to start photography with a camera that starts around 2k, roughly the price of a 5DII. Their X10 and X100 cameras are great entry level ones however. I haven't checked the specs on this camera yet, but how large is the sensor? Is it a 35mm sensor? If so, it would be great competition to the M-series camera from Leica.
Hmmm....looks interesting. Wonder how it would compare to the high end professional cameras.
Hmmm....looks interesting. Wonder how it would compare to the high end professional cameras.
in the hands of professional, it's less about the camera for both their skill. In the hands of the consumer, this is probably a far better camera than any kind of professional grade camera.
Keep in mind that the lenses offered by Fuji are fixed prime lenses. They are fast, but if you like zooming to frame your shots instead of moving around, then this is not for you. Have the X100 and it takes great photos and is good to get back to basics.
Hopefully this will also retain the built in ND filter to stop it down a little. The artificial horizon and frame guides are also nice when composing a photo.
One failing on the X100 was the menu interface takes some getting used to and some options are buried several layers deep and not intuitive. Hopefully fixed on the new one.
Still keeping my X100 though, the brushed aluminium top makes it look better imho.
Nice retro look. Hope we will get to see an in-depth review soon; and a price reduction :-)
This can be a nice allround camera, but I'm afraid it will fail on two points. One is the image quality. They chose an APS-C sensor with more megapixels then the one in the X100, so noise can become a problem. Two is AF and write speed. Man, the X100 is slow! I hope they managed to speed up the AF and write times considerably. Another small point is it's price. Are they crazy charging us so much for a camera with those specs? The image quality must be really spectaculair to justify that price.