Fuji Fuji X70

stratokaster said:
I really don't understand all that hand-wringing about the touchscreen. It can be tremendously useful for quickly changing AF spot etc. And if you don't like it, it's easy to turn it off.

I easily understand how wi-fi, touchscreen and other such things may seem superficial and even unnecessary, but remember that dedicated cameras are a collapsing market. Camera makers need to fight the onslaught of smartphones and to expand the appeal of their wares to a new audience (people who are used to having touchscreen, immediate connectivity and what not). Otherwise they will simply die.
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Pavel I think you make a number of good points here, and I'd like to take a moment to explain why I feel the way I do.

Touchscreen - it's a fundamental for me. I am old-school. I grip my camera securely, and capture a photo by straightening my index finger. The first joint sits over the shutter release button and this action gives me the smoothest possible shutter release. It is completely counter to everything I do to take a photo by poking a finger at a point on the image that I am trying to see at that critical moment; what if the second my big, greasy fingertip is on the face of the chap I want to focus upon (not to mention the 30-odd percent of the whole frame that is occluded by the rest of my finger and my hand) he sticks his tongue out, or blinks? I am none the wiser until and unless I chimp - something else I never do. Furthermore I never - and I mean never - change focus point. Again that is completely counter-intuitive for me - I focus and recompose. Always. I have a lot of practice at it and I am good at doing it without altering the plane of focus. Focus and recompose is "camera agnostic" whereas moving the focus point changes from marque to marque and sometimes from camera to camera from the same manufacturer.

Wifi - I have used it once, because it was the only way I could find to get an image off the internal memory of my X100T. No. I don't want to stick every image into the same default folder every time. I don't want to flatten my battery when it is the work of a moment to take out my SD card and pop it in a reader.

I agree that dedicated cameras are a collapsing market, but history has shown, time and again, that differentiation is the key to driving market share, not following the herd. If the photo manufacturers want to survive and thrive they must - absolutely must - differentiate their offerings.

Finally, the argument about not liking something it's easy to turn it off; I don't want many things, and I don't want them foisted on me without a choice. I don't for instance like seafood. If I am served a mixed salad that turns out to have prawns in it, I will neither eat them nor pay for them. With cameras, I don't want to pay for the functionality and - and here tilty screens is a great example - I don't want the inbuilt complexity and fragility. Another example - a well-known retailer in the UK has seen fit to introduce "active waist" trousers across their entire menswear range. They are supposed to shift and give with you as you move. The reality is that they expand when you, for instance, bend over, and then stay down when you stand up again... When challenged, the stock answer is "many people like them" - I have yet to find one that does. Then one day I had one of the store managers confess that the reason the active waist "feature" is so "popular" with the store is that they can cover two sizes with one pair of trousers... It is a "feature" that benefits the manufacturer not me, and I am not about to pay for it.

I'm not being snappy when I write this, merely explaining that for me and for many others, less is more. I would genuinely pay a premium to not have "features" that others salivate over, predominantly because I like to control most of my picture taking myself. I would happily, for instance, pay £50 more on the price of a basic X-T1 to have one WITHOUT a tilty screen - I feel that strongly. Further - if the next X-T(2?) has one I will almost certainly not buy it for that very reason. A feature is only a feature if the end-user perceives it as such. Otherwise it is a marketing tool at best an encumbrance for sure and an introduced weakness at worst.
 
rbelyell said:
yes ray, appreciate the explanation. truth is i am pretty well acquainted with how auto iso works, esp on the x100 as ive had that cam since it came out, and i pretty much have always had auto iso on. about 75% of what i shoot is street life and i just have really never found any real life problem with fujis implementation of that feature. i just dont seem to encounter wide available light fluctuations during the day on the street. ive also found i can pretty much freeze most normal action at 1/30 when shooting at night, so im happy with 1/125 if necessary during the day, and if not, i find setting the dial to 1/250 when the prevailing light demands small effort. but then again many found issues with that cameras af speed, and for me, i can count on the fingers of one hand shots i missed due to slow af.
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I admit this feature set was a solution to a problem I'd never had before using it, but once I'd used it, I never wanted to go back. I obviously shot for years with nothing of the like, without auto-ISO, even without adjustable ISO in the film days. Always found the best way of working with what I had and never really felt anything lacking. But that's the thing with new features. Most of us find some we like, some we don't like, and some we find indispensable. I don't care for touchscreens, don't care for ultra high-res sensors, etc, etc, but once I spent some time with this particular auto-ISO implementation, that was it for me. So I fully get and respect different people finding different features that just "click" for them.

It all happened about three years ago when I was shooting loaners of both the GR and Coolpix A extensively, trying to understand and explain the differences and figure out which I wanted to buy and keep. It took me a while to really figure out how to use the auto-ISO in the Coolpix - I tried to make it much more complicated than it needed to be at first before I realized the beautiful simplicity of it and boiled my settings down to two. But I remember a particular sunny day moving in and out of deep shadows when the GR inexplicably shot the ISO up through the roof to 25,600 in TaV mode while the Coolpix just found the right balance between ISO and shutter speed every time. The Ricoh would have too if I'd been OK with a min shutter speed of 1/250, but as noted, I wasn't, so was using TaV in order to get a fast enough shutter speed, but then sometimes going higher in bright sun and not getting adjusted quickly enough as I moved in and out of shadows. After that day, it was a feature I loved and wanted in all of my cameras. And it took about two years to get to that point. Now, most manufacturers are offering it to one degree or another. I was fine with the way the XT1 and XE2 dealt with it even though it was somewhat more limited for zoom and longer telephotos. But the Nikons and Samsungs (RIP) just had it nailed and now Sony is on-board, with pretty close variations from Fuji and Canon, and it's sort of becoming an industry standard. As are touchscreens and high res sensors. So we all pick the stuff we love and put up with the stuff we don't...

pniev said:
Ray, i fail to see why yould like to see a higher minimum shutter speed than 1/125 in auto iso mode. Could you please help me out? I do understand that you sometimes need faster shutter speeds but that's when I set shutter speed manually. I admit that I prefer to set aperture and shutter speed manually anyway.
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Peter - sorry, I missed this question earlier in the thread. I trust my replies to Tony have answered it well enough, but if not, let me know...

-Ray
 
Bill, I certainly can understand where you're coming from. Just 5 or 6 years ago I could have written the same myself. However, my experience with different cameras has really changed my perspective.

Lightmancer said:
Touchscreen - it's a fundamental for me. I am old-school. I grip my camera securely, and capture a photo by straightening my index finger. The first joint sits over the shutter release button and this action gives me the smoothest possible shutter release. It is completely counter to everything I do to take a photo by poking a finger at a point on the image that I am trying to see at that critical moment; what if the second my big, greasy fingertip is on the face of the chap I want to focus upon (not to mention the 30-odd percent of the whole frame that is occluded by the rest of my finger and my hand) he sticks his tongue out, or blinks? I am none the wiser until and unless I chimp - something else I never do. Furthermore I never - and I mean never - change focus point. Again that is completely counter-intuitive for me - I focus and recompose. Always. I have a lot of practice at it and I am good at doing it without altering the plane of focus. Focus and recompose is "camera agnostic" whereas moving the focus point changes from marque to marque and sometimes from camera to camera from the same manufacturer.
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For a number of years, I was a Micro 4/3 user. My first "serious" Micro 4/3 camera was Panasonic Lumix G2 which had a touchscreen. Later I bought a GH2 which was basically the same as G2 except for a newer and better sensor. Initially I thought that I would never use the touchscreen. However, it proved to be really handy, especially when doing studio shots on a tripod with adapted lenses. Instead of engaging various menus to turn on the screen loupe for critical focusing, I could just tap the desired spot with my finger to have it magnified instantly.

The same goes for focusing when shooting macro. Focus-and-recompose is not an option for macro because of incredibly shallow depth of field. With my touchscreen-enabled cameras I could just tap the spot I wanted to focus on. And in normal day-to-day shooting I simply switched the touch screen off to avoid accidentally misplacing the AF spot.

The absence of the touchscreen is not a deal-breaker for me, but I think it's nice to have this option when it might be handy.

Lightmancer said:
Wifi - I have used it once, because it was the only way I could find to get an image off the internal memory of my X100T. No. I don't want to stick every image into the same default folder every time. I don't want to flatten my battery when it is the work of a moment to take out my SD card and pop it in a reader.
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I actually never use Wi-Fi to copy the images from the camera to my Mac. I use it to download copies of photos to my phone and/or tablet. After that, I can send the photos to my friends or (most often) my parents when I'm on vacation or in other places where I can not (or simply don't want to) immediately process the shots.

Lightmancer said:
Finally, the argument about not liking something it's easy to turn it off; I don't want many things, and I don't want them foisted on me without a choice. I don't for instance like seafood. If I am served a mixed salad that turns out to have prawns in it, I will neither eat them nor pay for them. With cameras, I don't want to pay for the functionality and - and here tilty screens is a great example - I don't want the inbuilt complexity and fragility.
Click to expand...

When I got my first camera with an articulated screen, I too was concerned about its reliability. I thought that the hinge was the obvious point of failure. It was in 2005 and the camera was Sony DSC-R1. Now, 10 years later, this camera has failed in many ways. Its battery is dying and its rubber coating is peeling off. It sometimes has difficulty focusing. However, the screen is as good and solid as 10 years ago.

Since then I have used many cameras with either tilting or swiveling screens. I have never had a screen-related failure on any of them. In fact, the only two cameras I know of which suffer from widespread reliability issues related to the swiveling screen are Olympus E-3 and Olympus E-M5 Mk II, but in my opinion it speaks more about the quality of Olympus engineering than about general reliability of articulated screens. But the added convenience is appreciated not only by me — that's why tilting/swiveling screens are now standard on many upper-class cameras, including some expensive Sonys and Nikons.

And even if tilt screens are less reliable, it simply doesn't matter anymore. In the film era, people expected their camera to last for decades. I have a Canon New F-1 (the finest manual-focus SLR ever made). It's 2 years older than me and I think it will easily outlast me: it's built like a tank and works like a charm even today. And it's not obsolete in any way: put a roll of film inside and you're good to go. With similar lenses, it will produce results similar to Canon EOS 1V, Nikon F6 or any other "modern" film SLR.

It's another story with digital. My Sony DSC-R1, which I already mentioned above, is 24 years younger than my Canon. And yet it's laughably obsolete in almost every way. It's unbelievably slow, the maximum usable sensitivity is ISO 400, and I no longer have a way to get the images off it because it uses CompactFlash memory cards and my modern laptop doesn't have a CompactFlash slot. Even if its screen had failed 4 or 5 years ago, it wouldn't matter to me. In 10 years, we all will be using Fujifilm X-Pro5 with organic sensors and blazing-fast laser AF and other amenities we don't know about today. Our X-T1s or even X-T2s will be obsolete and long forgotten.

Overall, I'm not arguing with you — I think your point of view is very valid. I just explain why many other people, myself included, think otherwise :)
 
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Well said. Vive la difference, as our French friends say, and I feel that a lot of that difference is down to what we shoot and how, which informs our choice of camera and feature-set. I just want to (continue to) have a choice.
 
I think it has some pluses compared to gr/A cameras and negative eg size, but then the price comes into the factor at 800 Euro:
Fujifilm X70 will cost around €800 :: min. Focus distance 10cm :: Size & Weight Data (compared to Ricoh GRII) | Fuji Rumors

- The Fujifilm X70 should cost around €800.

- The new 28mmF2.8 lens will have a minimum focus distance of 10cm. It will use the Fujfilm NP-95 battery. The X70 will weight 340g (with battery and SD-card).

And here is the size compared to it’s direct competitor, the Ricoh GR II
Fuji X70: 112.5 x 64.4 x 44.4 mm
Ricoh GR II: 117.0 x 62.8 x 34.7 mm
 
Mh, the price seems a bit high for me to justify it against a GR. And I'm unsure if the abilities of a X-T10 wouldn't be better (without lens the x-t10 is cheaper).
It would be good if the TCL Adapter of the X100 would fit.
On the other side a x100t is not so much more expensive now.
 
It looks gorgeous and no doubt will be a nice camera. I have no problem with the flippy screen our it being touch sensitive. I think if the original X100 had been a 40mm or 50mm EFL I would probably have bought one and never looked back. I only ever had a film GR but I always found myself using my compact RF cameras instead because they had fast 40's.
 
This comes as a surprise, but also as a bit of a disappointment. My preference would have been for a f2 lens to help differentiate it from the Ricoh GR and Coolpix A, although this would likely have made the lens thicker. My curiosity is piqued by potential shutter sound. The Ricoh GR has quite a noticeable click, whereas the original Fuji X100 has a barely audible click, especially with a UV filter attached.

I see the X70 as the Ricoh GR for Fuji fans. It possesses the imaging charateristics of the GR, including 28mm f2.8 lens and 35mm and 50mm crop. But it also adds many of the physical controls that Fuji users enjoy, like manual shutter and aperture dials, and also a touch/flip screen, which is admittedly quite useful. I use the flip screen on my Olympus E-M5 all the time.

No doubt I will play with one and figure out if it's worth paying for the Fuji handling gestalt combined with Ricoh GR imaging qualities.
 
Something that bugs me a little about this camera is the lack of OIS. Image stabilization is always welcome, and can result in a much higher keeper rate. And while Fuji video quality is nothing to write home about (it's downright awful compared with Canon compacts), IS would improve the video quality significantly. Shaky video footage with crappy video encoding is one thing; steady footage with crappy encoding would be so much better. For a camera that is obviously intended as an 'always with you' capture device, good IS would be an attractive feature. Heck, even the Fuji X10, four years old, has semi-decent IS during video.

Yet another thing I would have liked is a 24mm or 25mm lens. 28 is great, but I'm finding myself using the Panasonic LX7 more than the GR because of the 21mm equivalent field of view in 16:9 aspect ratio. I really enjoy being able to capture a wider field of view than 28mm. A 21mm equivalent lens would probably have been too large, but 24 or 25 might not.
 
Different strokes again... 28 is uncomfortably wide for me, for a daily carry. My GR defaults to 47mm even with the "penalty" of the resultant crop. I would not in a million years buy a 24mm fixed lens camera.

OIS is irrelevant to me at these focal lengths and video is a "feature" that, like tilty and touchy, I would pay a premium to have deleted.
 
Different strokes, indeed! Oh, the joy of many cameras! :dance4:

Perhaps the one differentiating feature that might entice me to the X70 is the current Fuji colour. I do love my GR and the colours I can wring out of Lightroom, but Fuji colour is a different kettle of fish. I've played with a number of raws from various X-Trans II cameras including the X100T, and I quite like what I can do with them.
 
Lightmancer said:
Different strokes again... 28 is uncomfortably wide for me, for a daily carry.
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Seconded. Last year I went on a strict 28mm diet for a month and sorely missed my beloved 35mm FOV after a little while. I'd even pick something about 40mm over 28mm as an allday-walkaround lens but these days I see prime lenses more as specialists for specific situations and demands. On my long daily walks I personally prefer the flexibility of a fast standard zoom; those lenses have saved me some unique moments that would have been lost if I had the wrong prime on the camera - I mostly shoot them at 35mm FOV anyway.
Regarding the X70 - lovely camera but no built-in viewfinder, no deal for this old fart over here.
 
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I used the Coolpix A exclusively for a month last year and I was very surprised how well it worked. OTOH, I'm an adaptable sort and just started taking shots that worked for that FL. Since I don't have to take a particular kind of shot, it's easier for me to change FL. As for the X70, it looks like a nice little camera. I can't see why I'd get wrdi of the A to get it, but if the price drops enough I've done dumber things than this.
 

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