Fuji X Pro 2 long term review

Labour Shadow Cabinet at the TUC headquarters in central London 13 June 2016    

1/950th f2 1600 iso

I've been shooting with the Fuji X Pro 2 for around 18 months now and thought it was probably time I gave my thoughts on the camera .

When the original Fuji X 100 came out in 2011 I immediately leapt at the chance of owning one as at that point in time it seemed that none of the camera manufacturers had come up with what I was after , a digital equivalent of my old Konica Hexar AF . Back in the nineties when professional newspaper photographers like myself were still shooting film the Hexar was a revolutionary piece of kit . Up until that point if you wanted something smaller than your regular press kit you were likely to wither end up with a Leica M6, a Contax G2 , Olympus Mju II or a Ricoh GR . I never knew anyone that was happy with the G2 build quality, Leica rangefinder focusing has always been an acquired taste which left the Olympus and Ricoh, the latter being the better of the two lens quality wise . The Hexar was something else entirely , small enough to fit in your coat pocket ( but not as small as the Ricoh and Olympus) with a fixed 35 f2 af lens covered in black metal and rubber it was the perfect backup film camera , and when I was stripped for cash and sold my M6 and lenses a few years into the digital age I opted to keep the Hexar . The X100 was a fantastic first attempt by Fuji but it was still a little slow and buggy in comparison to what most pro were now used to .
I resisted the X Pro 1 when it came out as I was convinced by what my colleagues told me about the experiences with the camera but when the X Pro 2 arrived I sold my X100 and picked up the new body and a couple of lenses, the 35mm  f2 WR and a 28mm  f2, the same combination I used to use with the M6 ttl . I still regret to this day flogging the Leica M lenses as they have doubled in price second hand over the last 20 yrs .

Iraqi's on Jadriyah Bridge in Baghdad, 12 May 2016

1/60th f2 3200 ISO

I'm still primarily a Canon shooter using a mix of the 5dmkIII, 1DX and 1DX mk2 with a large range of primes and zoom lenses, in fact too many to carry around on a daily basis . The great thing about the Fuji is that if I fancy say shooting a prime 50mm on a news story or feature but also need long and short range zooms i can hang the X Pro 2 and the 35 f2 lens around my neck and have a Canon on each shoulder saving a fair amount of weight . If I'm travelling abroad on a news feature and don't have the pressure of competing with a pack of photographers I often work with just a 5d and the X Pro 2, which means I can travel light , a great help if your on your feet for 8 hours in the 35-40 degree heat of Africa or Asia . I'm not going to talk about anti aliasing, purple fringing, chromatic aberration etc in this review , I'm really not that sort of photographer I'm afraid and don't understand most of that stuff . As for Bokeh , as handy as it is at times to through out a messy background by shooting wide open I'm not fussed about what kind of shapes it makes . I'm more interested in how the camera handles, does it get the job done and is it good enough to publish .

The X Pro 2 is beautifully built, with a really solid construction and a nice weight to it . Some of the other mirrorless cameras I've held feel more like slabs of metal in the hand but the ergonmics of the X Pro 2 fell just right, there is no need for a thumb grip or an extra side grip like I had with the M6 . I really like the hefty Shutter and Exposure compensation dials and though aesthetically the built in ISO dial looks pretty cool i find it a bit of a pain to use and now that I wear reading glasses a bit tricky to read . Which leads onto the menu system which is till a little convoluted . All in all it works but I would like to see a shortcut to change the ISO quickly whilst working with out having to take my eye from the viewfinder and also a quicker menu route to card formatting . I now occasionally use the auto iso for which you can have a shortcut button, but it isn't ideal . Much of the menu is very similar to the X100 to be honest .

A motorbike meeting under Jadriyah Bridge in Baghdad, 13 May 2016

1/40th f2 2000 ISO

The viewfinder , like the original X100 is a joy to use , with the X100 I had better luck autofocusing in EVF mode bizarrely and I kind of stuck with that on the X Pro 2. I'm now used to it and I quite like seeing exactly what I'm getting in the frame which you don't when using the glass finder . All the info I need is in the display including a nice little exposure scale, which could be bigger perhaps . What drives me nuts though is cycling through the view mode button, I'd prefer a small knob on the back of the camera to flick when I need to look at the rear screen .

In action the camera feels great , I mostly use single af then recomposing the frame and have tried out continuous af too which though feels a little disconcerting in fact does a pretty good job though I'd say it's not at Pro DSLR level yet . I love the depth of field scale in the viewfinder when on manual focus mode , if shooting re portage street style images it's great setting the camera on f8 and seeing whats going to be in focus and then just walking around shooting as you please . I think zone focusing can often really help with composition as you not trying to get the subject over that little focus icon in the finder !

The IMC Paediatric ward inside the vast UN compound on the outskirts of Juba, 27 February 2017

1/50th f2 3200 ISO

Now for batteries . The battery life is still poor, I have three batteries for mine to ensure I can get a day out of the camera and have bought a third party charger for travelling so that I can at least charge two at a time, as single chargers are a pain after a long day when you don't want to stay up waiting to switch charging batteries . Perhaps that's just life with EVF, with a Canon 5D I could confidently fill several Sandisc Extreme16gb cards over a couple of days on one battery , a big help in remote environments .

Gordes, Provence 22 August 2018

1/160th f6.4 200 ISO

I only shoot raw and so far the camera has been able to keep up with me, I use the burst mode quite often at 3 fps but rarely on 8fps, I'm not shooting sport with it but I guess one day may come in handy. The lenses I own, the 18 f2 and 35 f2 have both been great , the 35mm is the newer WR weather resistant lens and has a great feel, a little like my old Leica 50 f2 Summicron but without the retractable hood , it also focuses incredibly quickly . The 18mm isn't quite of the same quality in build , and even faintly rattles, but at 28mm ( in the 35mm camera terms)  I've never had problems focusing and it's nice and sharp wide-open too .

Low light shooting . Nowadays it's not uncommon to be able to shoot up to 25600 ISO on pro level cameras , quite frankly I've never had much joy with such high rating on any camera, though nice to have in an emergency . I've heard wonderful things about the Sony A7sII and the just released A7rIII but sadly the Fuji is not a low light monster . I'm more than happy working on 3200 but it soon begins to look ropey further up the iso ratings and really wouldn't want to use it further than 6400 . Until a way is discovered to cram so many pixels into a small APSC sized sensor like the Fuji's I can't imagine there will be a massive shift in this area . It all depends on what you're after in a camera, and I haven't as yet found the ISO lacking for my needs .

I'm still thinking about other lenses, I had a play with the 90mm f2 WR ( a 135mm equivalent ) it's a little big but would be great as a longer lens for when on holidays, foreign assignments and impromptu portraits . The 50mm f2 WR is also really nice, and considering it's 75mm equivalent focal length is not much bigger than the 23 and 35 primes in the same series . I really have no interest in the wider aperture lenses that Fuji has to offer, what I love about the system are the small f2 primes  . From handling the other lenses I find for me they just don't balance right on that size camera body, even with the XT2 and grip they feel a little over sized, much like with the Sony system.

The Balukhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, 27 November 2017

1/640th f8 500 ISO

One could pick holes when comparing , especially the focusing and high ISO , to full frame DSLRs from Nikon and Canon and mirrorless cameras from the likes of Sony but consider you could buy three Fuji bodies for the cost of a full frame camera from one of the big three . If I had to choose only one digital camera to take on a paid assignment it wouldn't be the Fuji, I'd more than likely take the 5dMkIII , this may sound a bit harsh but I'll explain why . I know that with the Canon one battery will last all day, the AF rarely misses, the files are great and it's just less fussy to use, which is what you need to know when the pressure is on . It's a great camera to act as a back up for a professional photographer and for those times when you can work at a slower pace . For the non professional I couldn't imagine you would need much else in a Camera and if the ergonomics didn't suit and you wanted a higher frame rate the XT2 would be a great option .

All in all I'm really happy with the X Pro 2 , even if it were better specced I wouldn't change over from Canon DSLR's for a mirrorless system, I still love the immediacy of glass over EVF, but for what I need and for the budget I think it's a fantastic system . Whenever I've committed to using the X Pro 2 professionally it hasn't let me down and has published, you just need to understand it's limitations .