X-E3 or X-E4 in 2022?

maltmoose wrote:

Fuji seem to be going backwards in ergo and controls.

Xe4, they even put the joystick in a worse position.

As a glasses-wearing left-eye shooter, it’s better for me as it means it’s easier to keep my thumb from smearing the right lens of my glasses. I kind of wish my X100V had the E4’s rear control layout. I’d also happily lose the front dial as I have no use for it (unless Fuji allowed it to be used for more useful things such as flicking through the custom settings—it always frustrates me that they only allow you to use the dials for things that are already controlled by other dials).

I also don’t buy the whole “dumbing down” argument. As if a Leica or any old film camera is dumbed down because it has fewer controls. Even though I don’t own an E4 (yet) I’ve come to like the reduced physical controls of recent models, though it does mean a slight mind shift, especially if you frequently flip between MF and AF, and I do like to have a physical ISO control.

The E4 is the first E that doesn’t have an easily-knocked button. Whenever I carried my E2 on a shoulder strap I’d always find that the flash had popped up. And on my E3 I knock the AF-L button so frequently that I had to reassign it to something else, because I was ending up with blurred shots when I hadn’t noticed that the AF had locked some time previously.

That said, when I did handle the E4, the buttons were the worst-feeling buttons I’ve used on a camera—I had no tactile response as to whether I’d pressed them or not. And while I like the minimalist body shape, the grip tape isn’t grippy enough for sweaty hands. (I hate bulky add-on grips, and hot shoe thumb grips are always in the wrong place, so neither of those solve the issue).

As an E3 user there are definitely a couple of things I’d need to adapt to in migrating to the E4, but for a newcomer they probably wouldn’t be a big deal.