1) X-E1 review at pocket-lint
Here is the pocket-lint.com review. In short, the PROS and CONS: PROS: Image quality is excellent, build quality is superb, retro style works a treat, high resolution electronic viewfinder, 18-55mm lens has bright aperture range and is well built. CONS: Autofocus not as swift as competition, close focus limitations, exposure comp dial can be knocked easily, 18-55mm lens positions rotational rings close together, small LCD screen, so-so battery life.
2) X-E1 + Fujinon 18-55mm
– A Fujirumors reader anticipated me and already posted the link of photoreview.com in the comments to my previous post. They tested the Fujinon 18-55mm lens. Among the others, the PROS of this lens are the good edge-to-edge sharpness, fast and quiet autofocusing and zooming, built-in image stabilisation… the CONS: don’t buy this lens if you need it for macro photography and extreme close-ups. The overall rating of this lens is 8.8, but as our reader noticed in the comments: “Their rankings are always a bit high though. Almost every single lens they review gets above 8.0.” Just read more here. (click here for the sample images)
– lightcatch.nl tried out the X-E1 in combination with the Fujinon XF18-55mm lens. Read his impressions here (translated version). He posted some images here.
– First impression of the X-E1 with 18-55 and 35 lens can be read here at the dpreview forum.
3) X-E1 impressions
mikekobal.com posted his review about the X-E1. He is really happy with this camera, saying: “I love shooting with the X-E1. It is just the right size, smaller then the X Pro1 and slightly larger then the X100. I am a big fan of manual aperture and shutter speed dials, being able to see those settings instantly, even when the camera is turned off, is a huge plus”. He also suggest to improved writing and processing speed using the SanDisk Extreme Pro.
We will stay tuned, because he’s waiting for his Sony NEX-6 to come and he will compare it with the Fuji X-E1.
At the end of my post about the open letter of Pedro Kok to Fuji (see here) I asked you to make a list of the bugs you would like to have resolved and suggestions in order of importance. Also mikekobal now made a short wish list for future improvements. Here is his list:
-focus peaking in MF mode
-allow 3x/10x magnification while camera writes data to the card
-Choice of lowest and highest ISO setting for Auto ISO
-Auto ISO in manual mode AND the option to use +- compensation.
-Manual selection of slowest shutter speed in P/A modes
X-E1 in stock status check:
ebay US / ebay Noth America / ebay Europe / Amazon US / Amazon GER / Amazon UK / Adorama /B&H / WexPhotgraphic
PS.: to our Japanese readers: you can now buy the new Fujinon 18-55mm zoom lens at ebay. Click here to see all the Fujinon available in Japan and worldwide at ebay.
10 Responses
What exactly would exp comp do in manual mode? Surely it can’t adjust aperture or shutter so the only thing it could adjust is ISO, but in doing so would completely ruin manual exp? I mean there would be no point to it, when you adjust a setting to manually set exposure, it will auto correct those changes with ISO settings.
I suspect that he would like to dial in his preferred Aperture & SS and then have the camera adjust ISO as necessary for the correct exposure. As for having this feature, in conjunction with exposure comp, it would allow him to over or under expose the image vs what the camera’s internal meter determines is correct.
Yes, I can confirm that this is exactly what he means. Once in manual with the only camera controlled variable ISO, you can no longer use the exposure compensation dial. This must be a bug as there’s no conceivable reason why this would be the case. I can also confirm that it’s also quite annoying – although certainly not a show stopper!
Of course it’s made worse by the inability to set a minimum shutter speed in aperture priority – this leads the camera to set 1/30 sec a lot of the time. While this would be fine for static subjects (given the excellent IS) it is too slow for anything liable to move!
So you set the shutter speed to 1/125 and the aperture to F2.8 and find you can’t use exposure compensation – doh!
Hopefully both things will be fixed in the not-too-distant future…
Boy I hope my camera and lens ships soon!!! Matt There are times that would work for me as in Flash and you need the speeds set at 180th and wanted to hold the F wide open or a set at one F stop to. Granted there other ways to do it but slower like setting the ISO to what’s needed!
exactly. as it is right now, in full manual and auto iso there is no way to fine tune exposure, even with ISO assigned to the Fn button it is a two step process to change ISO settings, by allowing +- would speed things up considerably.
Hi Mike, I understand what you are asking for but it to me at least seems a bit of a kludge. I don’t own the camera, but do have a X100 and maybe foolishly assume they operate largely the same.
Maybe something that would work a lot nicer rather than having exp comp on the auto ISO feature that is essentially controlling your exposure as you are ‘locking down’ the shutter and aperture, might be to have the exp comp automatically change to ISO when in manual mode? They could set it so that at the ‘0’ point would correspond to ISO 800, -1 = 400, -2 = 200, +1 = 1600 and +2 = 3200 with 1/3 stops in between. That way it would be a constant and consistent. If you want to lock down the aperture and shutter but be able to ‘ride’ the ISO wouldn’t this be far far easier than using the in camera metering and then having to compensate the ISO?
Also doesn’t the Fuji allow you to set a minimum shutter for the auto ISO range like the X100 that basically becomes the cutoff for ramping up the ISO? If so, isn’t that sort of like having a manually set aperture/shutter, but with auto ISO and exp comp?
Looking at 18-55 zoomed, makes me think FujiFilm deliberately designs lenses to suck dust in
Focus speed is not so slow after what I’ve seen in the focus test video. And soon Fuji has a good lens assortment, 3 lenses from wide angle to tele zoom, something that I miss from mFT. Thinking about selling my Oly E-M5 because of that and to buy an X-E1, also because I somehow like more the colours of Fuji then the colours of the E-M5. I like the colours of my E-PL2, but it seems that these times are over with the new sensor that Oly is using. But something that I really would miss would be the in camera pixel correction that Olympus has.
@shashinka: take a look at the Olympus mFT kit zooms, after one year full of dust. My FT kit zooms buyed with Oly E-620 have absolutely no dust inside after almost 4 years.
I think m4/3 lens choices are pretty good. However, the problem I have with it is that it’s kinda of expensive if you want to the purchase the really good glass for the system like the Olympus 75mm f1.8 or Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 .
Sorry, I’ve talke about fast zooms, I never use primes. The 2 new Panasonic are much to expensive because they need a lot of software correction, and if used with Olympus bodies there is no in-body correction of CA, some people have problems with that. And if mFT zooms are more expensive then the wonderfull 12-60 from Olympus but not so good then I have a problem with that…