Fujifilm X-T1 Camera Review

Posted by Jaime Dormer on

Fujifilm X-T1 Camera Review

I will start of by telling you the reason I bought this camera, I needed a small reliable quality camera to take with me when I travel, I have tried many different brands & models, and none have fully suited my needs to date, I looked at the previous versions of the small Fujifilm series some time ago when they first came out, and I thought that they were just that too big and cumbersome, so by-passed them on several occasions and ended up purchasing something else instead.

I am a landscape photographer, I am always out and about at sunrises & sunsets, in the best and worst weather conditions, wind, rain, snow, hail, darkness & shine, and I get sick of carrying my heavy large DLSR & MF gear around, I need something light and easy to use when I don’t want to be a packhorse.

So prior to a long trip that I had planned in Europe, I decided to revisit this again, so I contacted my camera equipment supplier L&P Digital Photographics in Sydney, and they kindly lent me a system to test for a week to help me make my decision.What I was after was a light weight all weather camera, that could shoot wide and medium, deliver a quality image under very limited light handheld, with what I call a high ISO up to 6400, and be sharp as a tack with little to no noise, as well as having interchangeable lenses, good battery life, iPhone camera remote, GPS Tagging, WiFi connection, be easy to use and give me all of the flexibility of my bigger heavier DLSR’s and MF cameras systems, I did not want much I hear you think. So after a weeks testing in the field in very low light prior to dawn and after sunset, I tested different lenses at different ISO’s and apertures, processed the images and printed them to various sizes up to a meter, so the decision was made to purchase the camera with the XF10-24mm f/4 R IOS wide lens (@15-35mm fullframe equivalent)and a XF60mm f/2.4 R Macro lens (@91mm fullframe equivalent).

I have used this camera in all sorts of conditions and it has stood up well to the hiding that I have given it so far, I am very happy with it, and would buy it again, there are a few issues that I hope will be fixed over time, I have listed them below, please remember that these are my views on this camera, they are not scientific lab tests, merely in the field shoot as you go observations and experiences, and they are based on my factual experience and are not an in depth review of all the functions & abilities of the camera.I was shooting with the camera using the free Fujifilm iPhone WiFi remote control App that they supply, I found that the App was easy to use, and allowed you to control the various settings to get the shot, furthermore it also allowed me to set up the shot, then shoot the image each time by adjusting the focal point, meaning that I could later do a focus stack, great feature. How when I returned back to my computer and downloaded the images that were all jpegs and not RAW files despite have set up the camera to shoot RAW, I checked the settings in the camera, to see if for some reason it had been changed to jpeg format, no it had not.

I searched the internet to see if there was any answers to this, and there were several blogs on the issue, but none of which seemed to be able to be definitive about wether the camera could shoot RAW files when using the iPhone App remotely.  Further investigations revealed that as soon as you set the camera up to shoot at ISO100 which is “L1” on the ISO dial (it also happens at “H1” & “H2”), the camera immediately goes into jpeg file format. To me this is an issue, so I hope that Fuji make some changes in the future as I would like it to be fixed!!

So you CAN’T shoot RAW at least not at that ISO 100 setting, the native ISO of the sensor is ISO 200, if this is selected/chosen then you can shoot remotely in RAW, it also will create a .jpeg as well at the same time.

POSITIVES

  • I have found that it is very water resistant, I was shooting ice on the beach in Iceland from a very low angle about 3” (8cm) above the ground, and a bigger than normal wave came in and swamped the camera fully, I immediately grabbed the camera, and washed it extensively using a full bottle of fresh water, another drowning, dried it off and switched it on, no problems at all, had to use a toothbrush later on to properly clean filter threads etc as the fine sand from the beach was everywhere.
  • Battery life stands up to image numbers as promoted (suggested 350 in brochures), I have been getting between 310 to 520 images per charge.
  • Found that the IOS on the 10-24mm lens is very good, could hold images sharp as a tack at ISO3200, 1/3 second.

NEGATIVES

  • Unable to shoot RAW files at ISO100
  • Unable to shoot RAW files when using the shutter timer function
  • Would like to see bigger locations dots on the lens/camera to pair them up, as very small red dots are hard to see in low light.
  • EV dial hard to turn with single finger, perhaps the dial wheel could be more grippy so that your finger grips it better to turn it.
  • Image display after the shoot has been taken is either continuous, 1.5sec, 0.5sec or off, what about 5sec or 10sec, something useful!! I cannot review an image in 0.5 or 1.5sec and continuous works against battery life in the field.

POINT SCORE (0=Bad, 10=Good)

  • 10/10 Battery Life
  • 10/10 Weather Resistance
  • 08/10 Lens Changing
  • 07/10 EV Control Dial/knob
  • 9/10 Noise control up to ISO 3200
  • 10/10 Image Stabilisation on the 10-24mm lens
  • 10/10 Weight
  • 7/10 Auto Image Display post shot.

QUICK SUMMARY

All in all, a very nice small camera with a lot of ability, Yes I would recommend it to others, on the understanding that they take on board the issues that I have pointed out above, they are not game changes, but can be annoying, and YES I would purchase it again.


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