Recent launches and future of the X-Pro series

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

Threaded wrote:

It’s not ridiculous, I see uniball’s point. 40mp is enough that you can crop in aggressively and still end up with a high resolution image that would be acceptable for most uses. Fuji are likely to promote the in camera “digital teleconverter” in the next 40mp X100 quite heavily as an alternative to using an ILC at all.

Perhaps they’ll even fit a wider lens and crop in slightly for 23mm? There are some interesting possibilities..

There are two blind spots to this approach, of course: wide angle and shallow depth of field. (Also long tele, but I suspect the X-Pro circle of the Venn diagram doesn’t intersect much with that.)

You could peg the optics at 16-18mm, but that’s a whole redesign of the camera and compromises the reach of a viable crop.

Now, I’ll be honest: I think if there was an X100 style (or smaller) camera with a 16mm lens and a sensor that could be cropped to even just over half its original dimensions (to cover equivalents of 24, 28, 35, 40 and 50mm) then I’d be very happy with it. I’d even be tempted by one based around the 18/2.8 lens from the X70/XF10. But I don’t know that demand for that would be sufficient to migrate the majority of X-Pro users.

That said, the Q2M is the one camera that realistically could tempt me away from Fuji, and I suspect I’m not the only amateur Fuji user in that boat.

I agree there would obviously be compromises involved in this, but then that’s the case with any camera design. What you’d get in return, obviously, is a smaller camera than the X-Pro line, with some similar abilities in terms of focal lengths, and the advantage that all your “lenses” are built into the same small package and available any time. I can imagine them adding some physical control (or perhaps just a new twist on the viewfinder selector) to enable fast switching of the focal length.

I’m absolutely not saying this is going to happen or that it would be the end of the X-Pro line… but it’s a theory. A possibility. I think it would probably sell to enough devotees of the X100 line (of which there are now many thanks to TikTok) and curious X-Pro converts to make it worth Fuji’s while, at least as a stop gap product until they release whatever they deem the true X-Pro successor.