Handling

The X-T10 has a compact body, being just slightly taller and chunkier than the Olympus E-M10. For the first few months, I used it with a leather case (thanks Aliexpress) and LensMate thumb grip. The leather case substantially increases the size and thickness of the grip and adds style points, while the thumb grip helps you get a better purchase on the rear of the camera.

Towards the end of my tenure with the X-T10, I started to miss how the X-E2 (with a thumbrest) melted into my hand. I never found myself having to pinch the X-E2 to hold it securely. It’s important to try each camera for yourself to see which you like holding more — the shape is, in my opinion, the most important difference between the X-E2 and X-T10.

Due to the small size of the camera, it matches and handles well with small primes like the 35mm f2. It feels a tad imbalanced with the 18–55mm kit lens, but it’s more than manageable.

Dials are our primary means of controlling our cameras, and they’re an important aspect of a camera’s handling and user experience. As we all know, Fujifilm is pretty unique in this regard, opting to include dedicated shutter speed dials on their cameras, and dedicated aperture rings on most of their lenses. Even so, the X-T10 includes two traditional dials: one on the front and one on the back.

You’ll find that these dials are easily excited — even the slightest brush can knock it a couple of stops off, unlike the stiffer dials on my Canon 7D or past M43 cameras. The front dial allows you to control your shutter speed in ⅓ stop increments from the setting on the shutter speed dial. As a result, I very rarely find my shutter speed actually set to what’s shown on the shutter speed dial. Most of the time, I’m ⅓ or ⅔ stop away from that setting because I accidentally bumped the front dial.

On the other hand, the top shutter speed dial has a perfect resistance for me. It’s not as stiff as the dial on the X-E2 so it’s possible to turn with my thumb alone. I still prefer to use both fingers, but at least I have the option to do it one-handed.

The EVF on the X-T10 is enjoyable to use. It’s sharp and reproduces colours well. The refresh rate is solid too; I’ve never found myself noticing any lag. The EVF and LCD don’t seem to match colours perfectly though, and the in-camera settings for colour on both panels aren’t able to rectify this issue. My only other complaint would be that it’s a bit small — it feels like I’m looking through a tunnel sometimes. It’s well sized compared to its competition at the time, but I’m a bit disappointed that the newer X-T20 and X-E3 don’t have improved, larger EVFs.

The tilt screen is another significant difference between the X-E2 and X-T10. I’ve found myself using it sometimes, especially on a tripod that’s too high (it’s tough being 5’6) or too low.

Fuji cameras have one of my favourite implementations of auto-ISO. You have access to 3 separate auto ISO presets per custom profile, each with its own minimum and maximum ISO, and a minimum shutter speed (with the option to have it tied to focal length). With 7 available custom settings, that makes for a total of 21 different auto ISO presets. It can get confusing at first, having your auto ISO presets change between custom profiles. But once you remember to set your desired auto ISO presets for each custom profile (and then save), you’re able to easily swap between minimum shutter speeds as your shooting conditions change.

Overall, handling is one of the most important traits of a camera to me. The main reason I switched to Fujifilm from M43 is the different user experience. Namely, dedicated control dials for aperture and shutter speed (also because Panasonic and Olympus didn’t implement auto ISO with minimum shutter speed until recently…). These dials, reminiscent of film cameras of old, make their cameras feel more intuitive and fun to use.

Performance

The X-T10 is generally a responsive camera. I noticed some minor delays when it comes to the eye sensor for the EVF, but it’s never been significant enough to bother me. Additionally, the EVF has a high enough refresh rate that I don’t notice a significant lag when panning or looking around.

The menus are a bit laggy though, with noticeable delays when going from one menu page to the next. This is one area where you’ll see a significant improvement going from X-Trans II to X-Trans III.

While in Japan, I had some battery issues where I had to remove and reinsert the battery multiple times to get the camera to start up. It may have been due to the low temperatures (around 5–15 °C), as I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue since then in the rather warmer temperatures of Singapore.

Autofocus of the X-T10 is not a strong point, and it’s another area where big strides were made going from X-Trans II to III.

AF speed is highly dependent on the lens used. With the 18–55mm, I would consider it good enough to point and shoot when doing street, with full faith in the AF system to nail focus.

The same can’t be said for the 35mm f2, which tends to hunt more than the 18–55mm. It was even worse with the older 35mm f1.4, where the camera often missed focus on stationary subjects. Many reviews state that the 35mm f2 is a fast focusing lens. However, my guess is that this statement is made in comparison to the 35mm f1.4 (which would make any modern lens seem quick). It’s good for a Fuji lens but not exceptional when compared to primes from other systems. While it doesn’t hunt more than once to reach focus, it can sometimes hunt really far (i.e all the way from infinity to minimum focus).

Now that I’ve had my hands on the X-E3 for 8 months or so, I can say that the newer autofocus system found in X-Trans III cameras does bring noticeable improvements in speed and confidence, especially with the 35mm f2.

When it comes to continuous shooting performance, the X-T10 manages 8fps in raw with fixed focus, for a grand total of … 7 shots. Not great, but the X-T10 isn’t really a camera for sports or moving subjects. I have used it with the 18–55mm to complement the 7D (with 70–200mm) to handle the wider range of focal lengths, and it performed well enough for contextual shots.

Lens: Fuji 18–55mm EXIF: 23mm, f/5.6, 1/500, ISO200

Lens: Fuji 18–55mm EXIF: 18mm, f/4.0, 1/150, ISO200

Image Quality

I’ll keep this section brief since I don’t have any new insights or information, charts and graphs, or brick walls to photograph.

Image quality is more than adequate for me. The 16 megapixel sensor is a tad old but it’s not significantly worse than the newer 24 megapixel sensor; I’m not great at interpreting charts and figures but the lines aren’t too far apart so…

From Photons to Photos’ PDR tool

I’ve found high ISO performance to be a significant improvement over the 16MP M43 sensor as well as the (quite ancient) 18MP Canon APS-C sensor in my 7D. I’d comfortably use ISO 6400, and I wouldn’t mind pushing to 12800 if necessary (but do take note that I don’t really print or do professional work).

Dynamic range is great as well. Raw files are quite malleable and I’m able to bring up shadows a fair amount in landscapes. In most scenes, it’s sufficient to expose to preserve highlights and then recover the shadows in post instead of having to exposure bracket.

Exported from Lightroom with no adjustments

Edited shot

With regards to the oft-mentioned issues that Fujifilm raws have in Lightroom, I’ve noticed sharpening artefacts when sharpening is pushed beyond 35–40. These infamous ‘worms’ are noticeable at 100% or even at 50% if your sharpening is too heavy-handed.

As a result, I have my default settings on import set to the following:

If more sharpening is necessary, I prefer to do that in Photoshop, where using high pass + overlay doesn’t seem to result in any worm-like patterns.

Street

I’m not much of a street photographer myself, but when you’re out and about with a camera in Singapore, there’s not much to shoot other than people and buildings. So I shoot people and buildings.