X20 Photo Gallery. Any Thoughts On Image Quality?

This is my first post in a while, but sometimes I can't resist joining in on all the fun.

The ONLY camera? Are you sure?

Sensor Blooming (or orbs as you like to call them) is not unique to the original X10 2/3" CMOS sensor. There are any number of cameras that exhibit this issue to varying degrees. The Canon S100 and Sigma DP2 Merrill (both excellent cameras capable of superb IQ) exhibit harsh rendering of light sources under similar conditions (see images below).

Click on the images to enlarge.

Canon S100

Click to expand and notice the bike headlights

How about the subway car headlight? That's not an orb from sensor blooming?

How about the blue light under the New Yorker sign? Some of these are not orbs and blooming.  Of course they are.

How about the lights on the left side? Pretty nasty stuff, IMO.

So the highly rated S100 with orbs. Still want to say the "X10 is the ONLY camera with orbs"?

How about the acclaimed DP Merrill cameras, which have astonishingly good IQ?

Sigma DP2 Merrill (see below)

The next example is worse than anything I've seen from the X10, yet the Flickr pool for the Merrill is filled with hundreds of superb images. How can that be?

And have a look at the Sigma Forums here on DPR. DP2 shooters aren't overwhelmingly negative and aren't going on, and on, and on about orbs and sensor blooming. They're not throwing the DP2 Merrill under the bus day on a daily basis.

How about the four lights in a row from the center to the right? Not orbs? These are even WORSE than the X10, yet you don't hear Sigma shooters mention orbs, orbs, orbs, every single day like a mantra.

More examples from DP2 Merrill (no able to embed these, but they are just as bad).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/guen_k/8255394148/sizes/k/in/pool-1926006@N21/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ikytrkr/8333414440/sizes/k/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noisyparadise/8147200220/sizes/l/in/photostream/

As far as my purchasing the X20, I'm quite certain nobody cares what I do, but since you mentioned it, the last thing I need is validation or approval of a camera purchase from anybody. I enjoy shooting with the X10 and have tons of images from it, most of which I'm extremely satisfied with, and some I'm even proud of.

My X10 Gallery

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/5543808958/albums/fuji-x10

But it's just not fun to have to constantly defend a camera I use against people whose singular purpose seems to be trashing it at every opportunity. Some seem more interested in pixel peeping and finding X10/X20 flaws than they are in making high quality images that the two cameras are more than capable of. The negative talk re: the X10/X20 far outbalance the positive, which is odd to me considering the huge amount of truly superb X10 images around the web.

But life's too short and I simply don't want to experience the "anti-Fuji" agendas and daily X camera beat downs on these forums.

There are a lot of great cameras from lots of manufacturers and tons of happy, even proud users who want to share their positive (and sometimes negative) experiences with other like minded users. But when it's all negative, all the time, there is something else going on. And no offense, but I'd rather use a lesser camera with enthusiastic forum members than a better camera that people are constantly hating on. It may be irrational, but that's how I feel. The X10 got more than it's share of 4 1/2 to 5 star reviews around the web, but reading here you'd never know it. And long after sensor replacements, and few remaining problems, the negativity towards it continues and even spills over to the as of yet shipped X20. And I simply don't want to go through all this drama again with the X20, even though it will likely be a better camera that the X10 in every way.

All the best, Markus