Fujifilm X-T1 review

Price, specs and rating for body-only package

With the X-T1, Fujifilm’s engineers have gone all out to make the best ever compact system camera (CSC). By and large, they’ve succeeded.

The external design is a triumph of both form and function. The weather-sealed magnesium alloy body has a rubber-like texture, and the contours on the front and rear give a secure grip for what is a small but surprisingly heavy camera, at 745g with the 18-55mm lens attached.

The 3in screen tilts up and down and has a crisp 1-million dot resolution. However, it’s the electronic viewfinder (EVF) that steals the show. Its 2.36-million dot (1,024×768) resolution matches the highest we’ve seen, while its 0.77x magnification is truly enormous, dwarfing the 0.7x EVFs on rival cameras that we previously thought of as being pretty big.

The X-T1’s viewfinder is the biggest we’ve seen, including full-frame SLRs such as the Nikon D800

Fujifilm kick-started the recent trend for retro, dial-laden cameras, but the X-T1 takes this to new heights. There are dials on the top plate for shutter speed, ISO speed and exposure compensation, while aperture is available on a ring on many X-Mount lenses. The 18-55mm lens we tested doesn’t have an aperture readout – instead, it’s relayed on the screen and EVF – but there’s a switch on the lens barrel to toggle between automatic and manual aperture. The shutter and ISO speed dials also have Auto settings, which means there’s no need for a mode dial. If you want shutter priority, just turn the shutter speed dial from Auto to set its value. It’s also possible to have shutter-and-aperture priority, with automatic exposure handled by the Auto ISO speed and informed by the exposure compensation dial.

It’s a bit odd that the ISO speed dial goes up to 6400, H1 (ISO 12800) and H2 (ISO 25600), but the camera actually supports an ISO 51200 mode. It’s only available by reassigning the H1 and/or H2 settings in the Setup menu. Presumably the top ISO speed was decided on after the dial design had been finalised. On a similar note, the X-T1 continues it X-series siblings’ slightly frustrating inability to shoot RAW beyond ISO 6400 – the higher speeds are for JPEG only. Another frustration is that the Auto ISO setting uses a fixed minimum shutter speed. It can be set to anything from 1/4 to 1/500 seconds, but there’s no option to vary it dynamically according to the focal length or detected subject motion. It’s not a massive problem, but it does mean that this camera will produce the best results in the hands of someone who shoots manual exposures or who is willing to keep a close eye on the automatic settings.

There’s a three-way switch for metering mode tucked in below the shutter speed dial, and another seven-position switch for drive mode below the ISO speed dial. With so many rotary controls, the dual command dials seem rather redundant, but they’ll come in useful for lenses that lack aperture rings, and for adjusting menu-based settings.

Other photographic functions aren’t neglected. There are six buttons – one on the front, another on the top and the four-way rear pad – that can be assigned to any of 17 functions such as white balance, autofocus area, self-timer and JPEG/RAW quality. The front button is the natural home for depth-of-field preview, but we weren’t so keen on its latching on/off implementation, especially as it only responded as we released the button. Various additional controls are available on a four-by-four grid via the Q button. The main menu is neatly arranged but there’s little cause to visit it in everyday use.

We do have a few quibbles with the design. The 350-shot battery life is quite short for such as expensive camera, although a larger one would inevitably have increased the camera’s size. Spares are available for around £45. We suspect there might have been room to squeeze an integrated flash into the viewfinder hump, though. The bundled external unit diminishes the elegant design and is likely to be left at home. The four-way pad on the rear has a low profile and can be a little fiddly. These aren’t major complaints, though.

Fujifilm X-T1 Focus and Performance

The massive viewfinder plays an important role in delivering one of the best manual focus experiences we’ve seen from a digital camera. There’s an AF Lock button which invokes the autofocus even when the front dial is set to manual focus – a handy shortcut for quickly getting into the right ball park. Then there’s a Focus Assist button, which enlarges the centre of the frame to enable fine adjustments. Focus peaking is available, highlighting sharply contrasted (and thus, focused) parts of the frame. Fujifilm has also included its Digital Split Image mode that we first saw on the Fujifilm X100S. This draws on the phase-detect autofocus points that are built into the sensor to inform the camera how much different parts of the scene are out of focus by. This is represented on the screen by dividing the image into horizontal strips, and these strips only line up when the subject is in focus.

Phase detection also helps with autofocus performance. We measured times of between 0.3 and 0.7 seconds to focus and capture a shot, with 0.4 seconds being typical. Shot-to-shot performance in normal use came in at 0.7 seconds. These are solid results, but not outstanding. Continuous mode was far more impressive, delivering speeds up to 6.3fps with tracking autofocus. This lasted for 40 JPEGs or 20 RAW frames before slowing to the speed of the card. Continuous shooting with fixed focus was even faster, at 8.3fps. This level of performance compares well with the fastest SLRs at this price. However, it’s a little disappointing that the X-T1 can’t track subjects as they move around the frame – a feature that’s fairly common among compact system cameras. Face detection is available, but enabling it overrides any other autofocus settings.

Fujifilm X-T1 Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is built in, and it’s a more capable implementation than we’ve seen from previous Fujifilm cameras. The new Fujifilm Camera Remote app for iOS and Android includes a remote viewfinder mode, complete with touchscreen spot focus and control over the ISO speed, exposure compensation and a range of other functions. It supports video capture, too. The app can also receive photos sent from the camera, browse the camera’s contents and use a smartphone’s GPS function to geotag photos. Wi-Fi setup is a little clumsy, though. Rather than use encryption and a saved password, the connection must be verified on both the camera and smartphone or tablet. The connection drops when switching between remote shooting and image transfer.

Video capture is perhaps the X-T1’s weakest area. There’s nothing much wrong with colour reproduction, and the 37Mbit/s AVC encoding at 1080-30p and 60p keeps compression artefacts at bay. However, videos exhibited the same blocky details and moiré that we’ve seen from various other Fujifilm cameras – most likely due to a lack of anti-alias filtering when converting the 16-megapixel sensor output down to 2-megapixel video frames. It’s good enough for casual use, though, and there’s a microphone input.

Fujifilm X-T1 Image Quality

Photo quality is on a par with the cheaper Fujifilm X-M1 and X-E2 (review coming soon), since they share the same sensor (almost – the X-M1’s sensor doesn’t include the phase-detect points). That’s by no means a criticism, though. This is the best image quality we’ve seen from an APS-C sensor by quite some distance, with noise levels that are closer to full-frame cameras than other APS-C models. Then there’s the Fujifilm 18-55mm f/2.8-4 lens, which is available as a kit with the X-T1 for £1,400 and is significantly brighter than the usual f/3.5-5.6 kit lenses. Add this to the equation and the X-T1 really is in a different league to other APS-C cameras for noise levels.

There’s just a subtle hint of noise in JPEGs at ISO 1600

Shaded skin tones still look pretty good at ISO 5000 – a fantastic result

ISO 12800 is perfectly respectable for casual snaps

Comparing the X-T1 with the full-frame Sony A7 at ISO 12800, we’re tempted to say that the Fujifilm’s JPEGs look better

Modern full-frame cameras offer even higher resolutions, but Fujifilm’s innovative X-Trans sensor gets a huge amount of detail from its 16 megapixels. Dense textures looked precise, and the 18-55mm lens delivered superb results right into the corners of frames.

Details in this shot are pixel sharp, and the dense, dark foliage is rendered well

This is the bottom-left corner of the frame – still extremely sharp, and with no sign of chromatic aberrations

Fujifilm X-T1 Conclusion

You’ve probably figured out that we really like this camera. Almost everything about it is top tier: cosmetic design, ergonomics, viewfinder, controls, image quality, performance. We particularly like having physical dials for exposure compensation, shutter speed, aperture and ISO speed. This is exposure control in its purest, most direct form. The only notable weak points are video quality and the somewhat unsophisticated behaviour of its Auto ISO mode.

This isn’t a full-frame camera, though, and yet its price is only slightly less than the Sony A7. Add a kit zoom lens to each and there’s only £90 to separate them. However, the sensor size is only one contributing factor for image quality, and the X-T1 makes up for it in other ways. Its sensor performs incredibly well for its size, with noise levels that are only slightly higher than the A7’s larger sensor. Meanwhile, its superior noise reduction actually gives better results in JPEGs than the A7. Factor in the kit lens, which gives roughly an additional stop of brightness, and the X-T1 comes out squarely on top for image quality in low light. That’s an incredible achievement, and one that makes the premium price a lot easier to justify.

Those on a tighter budget should hold out for our X-E2 review, and the superb X-M1 is looking more tempting than ever with prices around £450. But for those who can afford it, it’s hard to imagine a better CSC than the X-T1. We certainly haven’t seen one.