Fuji X-Pro1 Review

The new Fuji X-Pro1 is a carefully crafted, retro styled camera delivering exceptionally sharp, low noise images and incorporating an analogue control philosophy.

I have to admit that having used the Fuji X100 for a year put me in a somewhat advantageous position in that the layout and many of the controls are either identical or similar.

The X-Pro1 has excellent intuitive logic in its design. I had the camera working beautifully within five or six minutes with no reference to the instruction manual. After a week of shooting and using all the controls I had still not opened the manual. No matter how good or bad the camera, the intuitive logic built into the camera is by far one of the basics for assessment.

    Aperture priority; 1/210sec, f1.4 2500 ISO, 35mm lens. Hand held, straight out of camera

 X-Pro1 is a mirrorless, high-end compact. Fuji offers three lenses with the camera body:

• 18mm f2 wide angle
• 35mm f1.4 normal
• 60mm f2.4 telephoto

Make no mistake – these Fuji lenses are beautifully made and are as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. I felt more at home with the 18mm lens as it gives that travel/reportage feel in handling and knowing I will never ‘crowd’ myself for the shot.

Fuji has always produced excellent sensors and the sensor in the X-Pro1 is no exception. The 16MP APS-C Trans CMOS sensor produces sharp images with negligible noise at ISO 1000 and above. The cameras low light, high ISO performance is exemplary. In this area it is a clear leader in its field.

    Auto-stitch panorama mode. Approx 10 shots, 1/900 sec, f5.6 640 ISO 60mm, hand-held, straight from camera.

The bracketing system in the X-Pro1 allows the user to bracket:

• Shutter speeds
• Apertures
• ISO
• Film type

In high speed continuous mode you can shot up to 10 frames a second and there is an auto-stitching setting that allows panoramas to be seamlessly stitched together even without a tripod.

There are still one or two features that need attention, which are quite annoying. On one of the lenses the lens cap cannot be removed without first removing the lens hood. The auto-focus continues to ‘hunt’ for focus even though the camera is not in active mode and the time taken for a bracket of RAW images to be saved to memory is far too long. I believe the ‘hunting’ issue has been rectified with a firmware upgrade.

Fuji has just released an M mount adapter to allow Leica lenses to be fitted to the X-Pro1 with full functionality. I would be surprised if additional mounts for other lens brands were not available shortly.

In recent years there is a growing shift for travel photographers to move from bulky DSLRs to high performance compacts. Cameras like the X-Pro1 are now producing images of as good or better quality than many mid-range DSLRs. It     now becomes more a question of philosophy than technical comparison. Will high-end compacts replace my DSLR system? And will the advantage of multiple lens choice outweigh the pure simplicity of a high-end, fixed lens camera?

Photographers these days are blessed with so many choices. Camera manufacturers have the added responsibility of being competitive and adequately testing their cameras before release. In the field of high-end compacts, the X-Pro1 is a clear leader despite a couple of gremlins.

Pic right: Aperture priority, 1/460 sec, f2, 1600 ISO, 35mm lens, hand-held.


Thanks to Camera Electronic and Fuji for supplying the camera.