Today, there is a great interest in mirrorless cameras for several reasons. Among enthusiasts, and pros, it is a camera that is easy to carry, small, pocketable, and almost pocketable, may have interchangeable lenses available, must most of all, produces DSLR-like images. Some of the mirrorless models like the Sony NEX line of cameras have APS-c size sensors with lots of area for beautiful high resolution images.
Now some of the mirrorless cameras have smaller sensors but their processing engines still yield amazing images for their size. I looked into a few models from Olympus, Panasonic, and Fujifilm and finally chose the X20 from Fujifilm. I almost had the Sony NEX-7 in my bag of goodies, but, I still needed something from a small mirrorless. Dare I say, I needed a camera with soul. As I fiddled with the X20 I felt like I had bonded with it within a few moments of clicking and button-pushing. Can't explain it, but even after looking at Fujifilm XE-1 and X-pro1 which almost ended in my bag too, the layout and controls made more sense to me and my style of shooting. I sacrificed the larger sensor for this little gem, KNOWING, that images would not be as pristine and sharp and clear and all the other qualities we lust for as in my Nikon D800. That being said,
"I am an artist, the camera is my brush, and you are my canvas". The D800 is almost too sharp to do some of my painterly style art images. It takes a couple of extra steps to soften things up enough to begin working the image to my liking. My old Fujifilm S5pro and Nikon D300 were excellent choices to create images that looked like oil painting after printed on canvas.
But they get heavy after awhile and I wanted something lighter with a quality build that feels "pro" yet can almost fit in a big pocket.
So, I'll be testing this little guy and posting and adding a few choice images to show the strengths and weaknesses of this camera. I love shooting with it. The jpegs are not a crisp as maybe a Sony RX100 but it looks film-like VS film-slide-like, if that makes sense.
The photo of the barometer was in Macro mode and I was about 3-4 inches from it, ISO 800, there's a little noise in under exposed areas but details are really good.
The next photo is used with a Pocket Wizard (Basic firing, not TTL). This was another criteria for me in choosing this camera. The flash is a Nikon SB-600, but any flash will do when set to Basic Fire Only.
This is the kind of texture I need to create some of my composite artwork and the image with the singer is perfect to begin a project.
While we are talking about flash, when using Pocket Wizards the transmitter/receiver must be set to Basic Trigger to take advantage of higher sync speed. In my test, I was able to achieve 1/1000sec sync, but, if the Pocket Wizards are not set to Basic Trigger Only, then the highest sync speed was 1/100th sec. on the Fujifilm X20. I set my flashes manually anyway so this is really good for my shooting techniques...
My friend Dickie Bennett, with his Fujifilm X100s which he loves . We put my transmitter on his X100s and worked quite well...
Thank you for reading and viewing this evaluation for the Fujifilm X20.
