Review: FujiFilm X-Pro2: King of Compacts

It’s been barely five years since FujiFilm plunged into the consumer camera market with the fixed-lens X100, and a mere four years since the company’s flagship X-Pro1 hit the market. Both of those cameras are excellent and earned top marks, but FujiFilm’s achievement is even more notable when you look at the company’s newest release, the X-Pro2 (\$1,699). In five short years, FujiFilm has been able to produce one of the most fully realized visions of what a camera should be.

FujiFilm X-Pro2 ———————- ### 9/10

Wired A photographer’s camera, and the most fully realized camera in Fuji’s X series. Phase-detection autofocus system has improved speed and AF-point resolution. New 24-megapixel sensor is on par with many full-frame chips. Customizable controls are in a smarter layout; the new joystick makes for faster focus changes (Or whatever! Customize it). Hybrid viewfinder adds a tiny EVF to the optical viewfinder, a nice touch. New Acros film simulation mode is gorgeous. ##### Tired

The weakest point is battery life. It sucks. Extra batteries are mandatory. The EVF is OK, but not not as vibrant as the XT-1. ### Physical Evidence

From the front, the X-Pro2 is nearly identical to its predecessor. There’s a slightly larger grip, but otherwise most of the changes are on the back, specifically the button layout. The functions of the buttons themselves are largely unchanged, but new layout means you can access nearly everything with your right thumb without ever taking your eye off the viewfinder. The one new button is the focus joystick, a little nib that allows you to move the area of focus around. The autofocus system itself has been improved, and it now has a total of 273 AF points (up from 49 on the X-Pro1) across the frame. To navigate between points, you can use the nib joystick. As someone who’s used to doing a half-press of the shutter to lock focus and then recompose, the genius of the nib was not immediately apparent. Once you learn to use the nib, though, you start to realize that the half-press and recompose method is really a hack around a shortcoming of most cameras—the AF lock button is never where you want it. This is true with even the X-Pro2, though you can swap the AE and AF lock buttons, which will put focus lock right under your thumb. However, by the time I figured this out I’d already become fluent with the nib. And now, having sent my review unit of the X-Pro2 back to FujiFilm, I am ruined. I’m now constantly feeling for a nib on my camera that’s not there. Suffice to say, the nib is brilliant—except for fast moving subjects, in which case I revert to half-pressing the shutter release. And, as an added bonus, it frees up the arrow keys to handle other shortcuts. And those shortcuts abound. FujiFilm’s customization options allow you to more or less create whatever button layout you want. Just head into the menu and re-program each button to perform a new function. In the X-Pro2, this customization has been extended to the onscreen menus as well. When you press the Menu key, the first menu that comes up is a user customizable screen. Given the number of hardware controls on the X-Pro 2, I could never find more than two things to put on the custom menu (I chose my custom film simulation presets and the timer function) but there’s room for 16 items if you need it. ### Seeing Visions

Any camera system is only as good as its lenses, and FujiFilm’s lens are every bit as good as the hype in forums and professional reviews would indicate. The all-metal construction makes even some of my nicest Nikon lenses feel like the cheap plastic they are. Fuji sent the new Fujinon 35mm f/2 (\$400, 50mm full frame equivalent), which in addition to being an ideal for the optical viewfinder, can take advantage of the X-Pro2’s much improved autofocus speed. Autofocus has been a weak spot in the Fuji X system as a whole, but particularly with the X-Pro1. The X-Pro2 is much faster. Autofocus in single-shot mode is DSLR-fast. Continuous mode, not so much. It’s getting there, but if you shoot sports this is still not going to cut it. Again, this camera is designed for specific types of photographers, and sports photographers are not one of them.

The hybrid viewfinder in the X-Pro2 gets a welcome update. Alongside the optical and electronic viewfinder (EVF) modes is a new “hybrid” mode that uses the optical viewfinder, but adds a tiny thumbnail EVF view in the lower right quarter of the screen. Personally, I used the optical viewfinder almost exclusively, though the hybrid mode is useful in manual focus mode since it becomes a zoomed-in view of details. The X-Pro2’s EVF remains thoroughly OK. It’s nowhere near the gorgeously bright EVF of the XT-1, but it works, and it’s useful when you’re shooting with lenses that don’t work well with the optical viewfinder. That said, the whole reason to buy the X-Pro2 over a DSLR-style camera is for the rangefinder feel, of which the optical viewfinder is a big part. ### Pick a Card

Another nice enhancement on the X-Pro2 is the inclusion of dual memory card slots. That’s welcome news for anyone shooting a high-stakes gig like a wedding, but there’s also an option to use one card for JPG and one for RAW. That means you can take advantage of Fuji’s many film simulation modes on your JPGs, but also record an unadulterated RAW file if you change your mind later.

RAW aficionados will be glad to hear that Fuji has introduced an option to use losslessly compressed RAW files. The compression drops the file size of uncompressed images from approximately 50MB to approximately 20MB. However, be sure that your favorite RAW software editor supports the new compression. At the time of writing only Silkypix and the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom support it.

For image work that you’re doing on a mobile device, you can download the Fujifilm Camera Remote app, which will let you scoot photos (via Wi-Fi) off the camera and onto your phone.

The X-Pro2’s weakest point is battery life. The battery performance here is poor, especially if pre-focusing is turned on (which it is by default). The battery life is bad enough that you should get at least one spare battery, and probably two or three if you’re a pro shooting multi-hour events. Picking up a second battery for any camera more capable than a point-and-shoot is always good practice, and it’s essential here. I typically got about 150-180 shots out of a battery depending on the settings. Pre-focus in particular kills battery life, so turn that off if you want to improve your time between swaps.

The X-Pro2 is not a perfect camera. There really is no perfect camera. But the X-Pro2 does come damn close to perfection. It’s not well suited to sports photography, but for portraits, street photography, and any other application calling for a small, unassuming camera, it excels. It has a certain je ne sais quoi that will make it perfect for the photographer who prefers cameras with some soul. As I said at the beginning, the X-Pro2 demands to be used. It will make you take more pictures, and that fact alone will do more for your photography skills than faster autofocus or larger sensors.