A Few Initial Thoughts on the XH2S

I've been using it for a couple of days and today I used it in a low light indoor situation. Note: I only shoot stills, no video.

Ergonomics

- I like them. I came from the XH1 and I got used to these pretty quickly. The only thing I'm iffy on is the AF joystick. It's not as responsive as I was hoping and there are times where pushing it either doesn't register (i'm probably not pushing enough) or it skips an AF point (like it's too sensitive and moves quickly). The grip is nice and thicker than the XH1. There's less space between the grip and lens barrel so it feels a bit tighter, particularly with thicker lenses like the 50 f1.0, but it's not a deal breaker. I haven't missed the thumbwheels not clicking in. I used to use it to punch in focus when shooting manual focus or reviewing shots. Now you press in the joystick during playback to view 100% for sharpness.

Battery Life

- Much much much much better than the XH1. I have the EVF set to 120hz refresh and I have it set to only turn on when I put my eye up to it. I also have boost mode turned on in the settings because why not. I don't use the LCD unless I flip it out to take a shot at an awkward angle or view shots I've taken. Today I took about 200 shots over 3 hours, all single shots with IBIS set to continuous, and I used about 40% battery life. I may end up getting the battery grip because I'm used to having it on my XH1 and I appreciate the vertical shooting and more space to grip the body. I also like the balance it provides when shooting with bigger lenses. Also, charging over USB-C is very much appreciated. My MacBook Pro charger works on it with no issues. It charges fairly quickly too.

Shooting Experience

- Smooth and reassuring. The shutter has a nice sound to it and I like the feather shutter button. I liked it on the XH1 and I don't have any issues of mis-fires. Maybe I'm used to it.

- I shoot in manual mode and I set my lens aperture to A so I can control it with the command dial and the shutter speed with the other command dial. I set my ISO to Auto with the range between 160 and 1600 for the situation I was shooting in today and what I noticed is it would not go below ISO 320 no matter what I did. Even outdoors in broad daylight with the aperture wide open it would not go to 160 even though that's the low end of the range I have it set to. Maybe it's a bug that will get fixed with firmware.

- IBIS is solid and reliable. I had it set to continuous. This was a throwback to the XH1 I was using. I had it set that way because I found shot only IBIS to be less reliable in the early days with the XH1.

- The fully articulating screen doesn't bother me. I know some people said the screen design of the XH1 (flip screen) is better for stills because the screen is in line with the body and lens but I didn't feel awkward with the screen flipped out and to the side. I actually prefer the additional angles I can get with a fully articulating screen vs the older flip screen.

- The EVF is nice to use as well. It's very sharp and big.

- I tried to use exposure compensation and (perhaps it's just me) I could not tell what the exposure comp was set to. The camera display would just tell me what my current exposure is for the subject with both the scale and digit setting turned on. Maybe there's something in the settings but I would like to know on my screen what my actual exposure comp is set to when I'm not metering. Like is it -1 EV, not "the subject" or "scene" is under exposed by 1 EV. The reason I say this is because Auto ISO doesn't tell you what ISO it's at, just the highest ISO in the range. You don't know until you half press the shutter to meter or take the shot and review the photo. It was a confusing experience. So, was I beyond the range of my Auto ISO or was my exposure comp set to -1 or -2 EV when the photo was underexposed? Even changing exposure comp wouldn't tell me what I was changing it to. Again it would just tell me what the metering of my subject was. I tried to set it to 0 but I still don't know if it is. This might be user error and I'll look into it some more. I hope this makes sense.

Autofocus

- Compared to the XH1 it's excellent. I was shooting in AF-S, single focus point with face and eye detect on. Essentially it would only pick up the face that was close to the focus point you have selected. Which lets you choose a face if you have more then one subject or it lets you move away from a face it thinks is there but it's not a face. Yes, the XH2S still get's tricked by things that are not a face but it thinks it is. Eye detect is as sticky as the early reviews showed. It really is a big improvement over my previous camera. I did notice that face detect was better on the 50 f1.0 vs the 50-140 f2.8. It might just be the older glass that made it less responsive. But, I'm talking about subjects that were further away and didn't take up a lot of the field of view. Up close was no issue for either lens. I haven't tried subject detect yet.

Build Quality

- It's solid. It feels very solid when handling it. I haven't noticed any QC issues with my unit either. I did notice that the lens mount is tighter than the XH1. Putting lenses on and taking them off just feels tighter like there's more friction with a tighter fit. There's no play when the lens is mounted and locked in.

Saving Photos

- Recording to the memory cards is fast and I didn't notice any issues. I was shooting RAW Uncompressed + Large Fine JPEGs with duplicate (backup) to the second card. I was only shooting in single shot mode and no bursts. When I got home I connected it to my MacBook Pro via USB-C to offload the photos and Capture One Pro 22 wouldn't pick it up. I was getting an error. Lightroom picked it up and I was able to import the RAW files. Both programs were updated yesterday to their latest versions. For some reason there were random duplicates on my hard drive after I imported the files. The file would say DSC1234-2. There was no pattern to it. It was only some files and sometimes it was only the RAW or JPEG and sometimes both.

Overall I really enjoyed my experience so far. Other than the Auto ISO bug, duplicate files, false positives for face detect and exposure comp setting it's a solid camera and I look forward to using it more. These few bugs can easily be fixed with firmware if in fact they are bugs. I did feel more confident in my hit rate using it compared to the XH1. Happy shooting to anyone else that picked one up.