New addition to the camera family

My precious D90 was just turned in yesterday for repairs at the Nikon store in Ginza, and it will be out of commission for the next 3 weeks. 🙁

However, I can't be without a camera that long – not after initiating the 366 project which starts on January 1st! So, knowing that I would have to be without my D90 for a while, I splurged a bit on myself and ordered a Fuji X10 on the 23rd and it arrived on Christmas day 🙂

I haven't actually taken many photos with it yet, though when I stepped out yesterday to drop by the office and the Nikon service center, I snapped a few shots along the way. The X10 is remarkably full-featured, and certainly gives more control that your typical point-and-shoot. From my (very) brief use of it, what I like are:

Pros
– Fast F2.0 lens
– Great selection of manual options, from ISO, shutter speed, specific focus point, and more
– Easily accessible menu options
– Small form factor (too big for pants pocket, but will slip in a jacket)
– Super quiet – the shutter "click" is whisper silent

Cons
– Manual focus is quite crappy
– Battery life is not great (main reason I didn't take more photos yesterday)
– Even though menu items are easily accessible, they're not always necessarily intuitive

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted a camera with NO interchangeable lenses – don't need it, since I already have a great DSLR. I also wanted something relatively small, that I could carry with me every day, to make it easier for me to stick to my 366 project. Finally I wanted something with decent macro capabilities since I don't have a macro lens for my D90. The X10 fulfilled all those requirements nicely.

My only main gripe so far is how quickly the battery drained – I'm used to my D90 being able to last a whole day (without video) or at least take a thousand shots or so, but the X10 barely got 200+ photos before the battery died.

As a result, I've bought a spare battery, and that should cover all my needs. I definitely need to familiarize myself a lot more with the menu layout and the camera features (my manual was in Japanese, so I've had to resort to reading the English PDF version online).

Below are a few shots, straight out of camera (aside from the shot of the X10 itself, which I cropped and brightened a bit).

In album X10 miscellaneous snapshots (10 photos)

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

18 Comments

Comments are closed.