Studio Comparison

Our latest test scene is designed to simulate both daylight and low-light shooting. Pressing the 'lighting' buttons at the top of the widget allows you to switch between the two. The daylight scene is shot with manually set white balance aimed at achieving neutral grays, but the camera is left in its Auto setting for the low-light tests (except Raw, which is manually corrected during conversion). We also offer three different viewing sizes: 'Full', 'Print', and 'Web', with the latter two offering 'normalized' comparisons to more fairly compare cameras of differing resolutions by ensuring equivalent viewing sizes.

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JPEG

Fujifilm's 'Film Simulation' color modes are amongst our favourites. The test scene was shot using the default Provia/Standard mode. The skin tones are rather punchy, like a slightly more vibrant version of Nikon's. They are broadly similar to those we've seen in recent Sonys and have none of the earthy/yellow tinge seen in Canon's well-respected color rendition (as can be confirmed by checking a variety of skin tones in our scene).

Venture around the scene and you'll see the effects of the X-Trans system (something we hope to cover in more depth in a separate article). There's a lot of detail capture if you compare to a 24MP camera with a Bayer color filter and no AA filter. There's no moiré visible in the monochrome targets and you can see a very different interference pattern in the color resolution targets, with certain colors showing less predictable interference patterns. It's hard to find any cost in terms of fine, low-contrast detail, as you look around the scene.

Noise reduction seems well judged at high ISO settings with good color and detail retention, compared to 24MP Nikon, or Sony's older JPEG engine in the a6000 for instance. Note that the X-Pro2 requires 2/3EV more light than the Nikon at this point and 1/3EV more than the Sony, and so starts off with a noise advantage. We'll compare on a more fair, common basis in Raw mode.

Raw

There's not a big difference between JPEG and Adobe Camera Raw in terms of detail, in spite of what you may have read, and the moiré advantages over the likes of the 24MP Nikon are maintained.

There appears to be a little less noise than the Nikon D7200 or Canon EOS 7D Mark II at ISO 3200. This story continues, even at very high ISOs, regardless of which brand's sensors, you compare it to. The very slight softening of noise, compared to the likes of the Nikon D7200 hints that the X-Pro2's Raw files may still have some degree of noise reduction applied but that it's pretty subtle. Either way, the results are amongst the best we've seen from an APS-C camera.

There's an extremely slight sharpness benefit to be had from shooting in electronic shutter mode and little, if any, appreciable noise cost. There is, however, a very small cost in shadow noise with electronic shutter, which we investigate more thoroughly on our Raw dynamic range page.

Occasional 'textured' flare

In specific circumstances, light catching the sensor at the wrong angle can induce purple flare in the X-Pro2's images. When this occurs, a textured pattern (possibly a reflection of the sensor's own microlenses) will appear in the flare regions. Mirrorlessons.com has an in-depth write up. Although we didn't notice it during our initial testing, we have subsequently encountered it but infrequently enough that we don't consider it to be a major issue.