Camera test 38
Photography News Issue 22 absolutephoto.com
ISO performance
Noise reduction The X-T10’s default noise reduction setting is 0 and the range is +/-2. I shot the twilight scene at all five settings at ISO 800, 1600, 3200 and 6400 in JPEG and Raw. The ISO 3200 set is shown here together with the Rawprocessed in Lightroomwith no NR and default sharpening to give a comparison. The camera’s noise reduction isn’t overly aggressive so detail isn’t too greatly smoothed out even at the +2 setting and looks perfectly acceptable.
Full-frame image
The X-T10’s sensor is the Fujifilm X-Trans II CMOS sensor so it is a known quantity and proven on several cameras already. ISO performance and fine detail rendition are first-rate so getting impressive A2 or bigger enlargements from a Raw or JPEG from this camera is no problem at all at lower ISO settings. This twilight scene was shot on a tripod-mounted X-T10 using a 16mm f/1.4 lens. The base exposure at ISO 200 was 0.6sec at f/8. Raws were processed through Lightroom CC with no noise reduction and default sharpening. The JPEGs are straight out of camera. The same scene was also shot on an X-T1 for comparison and indeed the shots taken at the same speeds did look almost identical. The JPEGs are consistently better with smoother tones than the
untreated Raws and do not appear too aggressively processed. Digital noise is generally very low until you get to ISO 1600 and then it kicks in, but not that badly – even the ISO 3200 JPEG image looks good. ISO 2500 is certainly usable for critical results if the light is poor especially if some noise reduction is applied in software but speeds of ISO 4000 and higher are best reserved for when the conditions are truly dire. The highest ISO where Raw is available is 6400 and expansion up to 51,200 is possible but with JPEGs only. Image quality at the expanded settings is poor which is what you would expect. Images are noisy, fine detail is lost and colour fidelity suffers hugely. The ISO 51,200 JPEG is almost painterly with the high noise levels and loss of definition and saturation.
Full-frame image
AF on themove
One of the big selling points of the X-T10 is its AF system which is faster and more responsive than previous X-series models – the same system is available for the X-T1 via firmware v4. AF is definitely quicker when compared with an X-T1 running v3 software. I mostly used single- point AF with the choice of 49 zones but also tried the other options including face and eye detection. The Wide/Tracking mode with its 77 zones can leap around – no surprise really as the camera does not know what you want sharp. But it is usable especially for people shots and face detection. With face detection set you can also use eye detection, where you can prioritise which eye to focus on. Personally, I would prefer to use Zone or single- point. Zone is good because you canmove the active area around and it’s like having one big single point. In continuous AF, the camera does twitch in and
out of focus all the time even when the camera and subject are totally still. However, when the subject is moving the system does react very well and in favourable conditions with a compliant subject focus tracking is very good. For example, fitted with the 55-200mm zoom, the X-T10 coped well and successfully tracked fast moving motorway traffic using continuous AF where only the 15 central phase and contrast- detecting sensors are at work. The well-defined lines and shapes of cars and trucks do make for an amenable subject, and it is true that lower contrast subjects have more variable results. Generally, though, for a CSC the continuous AF is good and worth trying for action subjects. The buffer is not that big though so you don’t get a long, sustained burst – in Fine JPEG I was getting a maximum of 12 shots before buffering.
ISO 800 JPEG
ISO 800 Raw
ISO 1600 JPEG
ISO 1600 Raw
ISO 3200 JPEG
ISO 3200 Raw
ISO 6400 JPEG
ISO 6400 Raw
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