Good try, no cigar.
Having flipped my Fuji X100 for a quick profit, sight unseen, box unopened a while back, predicated on the realization that its software made even Microsoft Windows ’95 look good, I was excited to read about their latest offering, the X10.
Everything about it at first glance looks right. A fast f/2-2.8, 28-112 zoom lens, a real optical zooming finder (you know, like the Olympus C5050 had a century ago), and an ergonomic design that just screams ‘hold me’. Then you get to the sensor.
The Fuji X10.
APS-C? Nope.
OK then, MFT? Nope.
How about (get the barf bag) a 6.8mm x 8.8mm (euphemistically called a 2/3″ in the trade to fool buyers – last I checked 2/3″ was around 17mm) piece of doo-doo? That’s all of 58 sq. mm., compared with 225 for MFT, 329 for APS-C and 864 for full frame. So the area of the crappy little sensor in this largish body is but one quarter of that in the G1, and the latter struggles with noise above ISO 400 or in poor light. No need to say more.
There is a fortune waiting for the manufacturer who can make a body just like this and implant a proper sensor for, goodness knows, there’s enough room in there. Price it as a premium compact, sell it for $750 (15 of these gets you an obsolete Leica M9), and you clean up. How hard can that be?
Meanwhile, I continue to wait on Amazon to ship my G1 upgrade, the G3, an event I now expect to occur when the US balances its budget.
Here’s the X10 superimposed on the outline of the Panasonic G3 – think there’s room for a proper sensor in the X10?
X10 with G3 profile in red.
The extra height of the G3 results from the flash in the ‘prism’ hump, easily moved to the side, as the X10 does.
I agree. They are so on the mark with design, yet so off the mark with the sensor that I want to scream. Throw a big(ish) sensor (aps-c) into a compact body with some basic glass, manual controls, and a solid viewfinder and you will not be able to keep it on the shelf. We all want the tactile usability of the ubiquitous camera’s like the canonet, or the fuji’s of the 60’s, but with the benefits of digital. Why is this so hard? They got close with the X100, really close, but this camera is a step farther away. From purely a design standpoint, I love it, and it looks like it would be more premium, and not an LX3 sensor in a Leica body.
I’m going to keep shooting with my current cameras until they die, by then maybe someone will simply manufacture a new camera according to a very specific list of desires in evidence all over the web.
I think the vast majority of buyers of this camera will be owners of DSLR’s of some vintage who remember the days of film rangefinders with some longing. I also think that Fuji has the larger sensor coming out in the future in an X10 like body. I will most likely buy an X10 as it will be a great snapshot and street photography camera, and the perfect camera for those times when you’re too smartly dressed to carry a tripod and proper dslr. I want my Fuji X10!