As I always do at the beginning of any camera review, I'm obliged to point out I know nothing about photography. I do know quite a bit about phones though and these days some cameras on some phones are pretty impressive.

 

So a camera that doesn't have a phone attached to it has got to be good to get my attention.

 

 

The Fujifilm XF10 looks really cool. Or at least, I thought so. Turns out, I don't know what I'm talking about - or at least that's what my 14 year-old in-house photography expert advises me.

 

While I thought the champagne gold body with matching brown hand-grip gave the XF10 a hipster-ish, retro style, Miss 14 assures me I should have gone with good old black on black. Always a classic. Just as well the XF10 offers both choices.

 

Charger, lens cap and matching leather wrist-strap are included in the box, but it's not what's included but what's left out that immediately gave me cause for concern.

 

Most notably, the lens. It's hard to avoid comparing the XF10 with the next model up the line, the X-T100. The most obvious difference between the two is the X-T100 is compatible with Fujifilm's entire range of X-Mount lenses - giving you the option to upgrade and customise as required. The XF10 has just one permanent 24.2MP Fujinon lens. This means extremely limited zoom options - just three jerky steps on still image mode, with no zoom ability for burst shots or movies whatsoever. On the plus side, the lens has a much wider sensor than you'll find on a phone camera, which is supposed to provide greater detail and more light, especially for indoor shots. We'll talk about this more later.

 

Another obvious omission on the XF10 is the viewfinder - there isn't one so you're limited to what you see on the 3-inch LCD screen - this means holding the camera away from your face which makes you feel a little bit disconnected from what you're shooting.

 

The screen is a touch screen and while the Fujifilm website claims this means you can, "operate the camera just like a smartphone," you can't. Yes you can pinch and zoom pictures you've already taken, but in terms of accessing options and controls with my fat fingers on such a small display, it's pretty hit and miss. And don't get me started on focus controls... because I'm going to talk about that in it's own paragraph shortly. Also, unlike the tilt and hinge function of the screen on the X-T100, the screen here is fixed so taking selfies is complete guesswork.

 

Then there are the physical controls themselves. Instead of an up/down/left/right four button configuration, the XF10 has a single little joystick. That sounds like an elegant idea in theory, but in practice it's so very tiny I struggled to operate it, often making the opposite menu choice to the one I wanted because I just couldn't make it work in the right direction. It also took me ages to figure out how to change from still mode to burst shot or movie mode. That's because the same button is the delete button when you're reviewing your shots. Pushing "DELETE" to shoot a video doesn't make much sense to me.

 

Not that I would choose the XF10 to shoot video. While the images are clear and the colours are good. the frame rate produces a stuttering, stilted result and as I've already mentioned, there's no zoom function.

 

The other problem is getting the XF10 to focus on the right thing. As I've mentioned, even when pointing to the preferred subject on the touch screen, often the camera would forget it by the time I actually took the shot. I tried a lot of different settings, with various degrees of manual control, but could only nail the focus issue about fifty percent of the time - and the problem is much worse when videoing. The camera doesn't seem to track moving subjects at all, often changing focus to something far less interesting in the foreground.

 

This all sounds very negative which is a bit misleading because the good shots are really good. The most consistently successful pictures were close-ups. This is where the wide APS-C sized sensor goes to work providing nice blurred background effects for portraits and food shots. I also found Advanced SR Auto mode did a great job of recognising what kind of shot I was taking - night, portrait, macro, moving object - quite clever, but not fast enough. I found I had to anticipate my shots by a second or so in order to capture the image I really wanted - a bit tricky.

 

I was very satisfied with the detail, sharpness and colour though - colours especially seem very true-to-life, not over saturated or crazy bright. The built-in flash is adequate, but obviously struggles over longer distances and unsurprisingly, there's no capacity to attach an external flash of any kind. Luckily, the lens really is wide enough to let in enough light for reasonable indoor shooting - however, I have used high-end smartphones that do a better job of this.

 

Here are some examples to illustrate some of the points I've mentioned...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, one thing the XF10 does have in common with some of its higher spec relations is terrible connectivity. Take my advice, don't even bother downloading the app because trying to navigate the camera via bluetooth on your phone is painful and I often found everything simply dropped out altogether. Save yourself the trouble and just stick the memory card straight into your computer.

 

As I said before, I've certainly used phone cameras that take better photos than the XF10, although probably only at the higher end of the price range. What those phones can never offer is Fujifilm's fantastic range of simulated film settings. These really do set all their cameras apart from the rest.

 

However, at $800+, the XF10 doesn't come close to delivering what the X-T100 offers at just a few hundred dollars more. What's more, these days there are several smartphones around this price with pretty damn good cameras... and you get a phone.

 

Save yourself some frustration and pay a bit more for the X-T100. Now that's a great camera.

 

 

Click here for more information on the Fujifilm XF10