Santa Claus was very kind to me this year (2011) - he brought me a Fuji X10!

Not always wanting to take my DSLR and a bunch of lenses out with me all the time, I've been looking for a small high-quality compact camera, something that could be put in a pocket (albeit perhaps a large one!), and have tried one or two during the last year. Wasn't overly impressed with most of these, though the last one, a Panasonic TZ10 (ZS7 in the US), was one of the better ones I tried. It had some degree of manual control, and a built-in GPS receiver (though that was very slow to lock onto satellites; my little hand-held Garmin is much better). I wasn't over-impressed with the IQ, however, as it exhibited quite a bit of posterization (in my opinion) due to its noise supression. Oh, and it didn't have a viewfinder, either!

Then along came the Fuji X10, and the initial reviews on the web appeared to indicate it was what I was looking for. So I asked Santa and he (or rather, she!) said - okay. And so far, I've been delighted with my new toy.

The weather here in southern England has been pretty poor since Christmas, so I haven't had much opportunity to get out and about with the new camera, unfortunately. A short shopping expedition with the family over the Christmas holidays to Bicester Village gave me a chance to attempt some street photography, something I've hesitated at trying in the past, due to the somewhat overt nature of DSLRs and large lenses. This little gem, though, seems ideal.

These images are jpegs straight out of the camera, with little post processing done other than a bit of cropping here and there, some very small adjustments to levels and (as the weather wasn't brilliant) converting to monochrome using SilverEfex Pro. The first three images shown here, taken at the end of the day when the sun finally came out, I've left in colour, though, to show the capabilities of this little camera, about which I'm still learning.

SECOND LOT OF TESTS...LOW LIGHT

One of my great joys in life is visiting the magnificent cathedrals and churches around Europe, and taking pictures inside. So the low-light performance of a camera is quite important to me. The next lot of images here are some taken to try out the X10 in such an environment. The church is Dorchester Abbey, close to where I live. I have included some information on the Abbey with some of the images.

To test the camera, I shot in my usual format of aperture priority, and I also tested the EXR Auto mode. On the whole, I preferred the results using aperture priority, which are shown here. I generally shoot jpeg + RAW, mostly processing only the jpegs, but always having the RAW files as a backup. In most cases, the jpegs out of the camera were very good, though one or two had blown-out highlights. Here, I processed the RAW files to recover some of the lost highlight detail.

Post processing of the jpegs included correcting converging verticals, small adjustments to levels, the Shadow/Highlight tool and a small amount of unsharp masking. I used the Shadow/Highlight tool to bring out some of the detail in the roofs, for example, and was pleased with the low levels of noise in these areas which Shadow/Highlight can sometimes reveal.

THIRD SET OF TESTS... MACRO

In this third set of images (starting with the Japanese quince - the pink flower!), I've been trying out the Macro and Super Macro settings on the X10. The Super Macro setting only works with the lens set to 28mm, i.e., its shortest focal length, but which enables the camera to focus as close as about 1 cm from the front element. Again, the only post processing done was confined to small adjustments to levels and some Shadow/Highlight, followed by a judicious amount of Unsharp Mask (generally 90%, 0.9 pixels). Some of the images have also been cropped. On the technical images (of tools and computer hardware), a fair amount of lens distortion is observed, though this is easily resolved in Photoshop CS5, as can be seen. I think the macro facility on this little camera is very good, especially for those grab shots when not prepared for this type of photography (i.e., when you haven't got the large DSLR, macro lens and tripod with you!). These images were all taken hand-held.

One more interesting fact I discovered. The speed of the memory card is important. I invested in a 16 GB Class 10 SD Card, and this made a huge difference to the speed with which images (jpeg+RAW) are saved. With my previous card, a Class 4 version I had lying around on my desk, it was very, very slow saving both image formats.

WHITE ORBS...AND A USEFUL ACCESSORY

There have been a number of complaints from the vociferous whingers on the internet about sensor blooming in this camera - the so-called "white orbs". The phenomenon appears to be caused when specular reflections or other small bright light sources cause the photo sites of the sensor to flood the immediate area with a rush of electrons, creating a disc of blown-out highlights. So far, my experience with this camera hadn't shown much evidence of this effect, so yesterday, when I went to an imaging exhibition at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre, I took the opportunity to see if I could replicate the effect. I could! Fuji recently issued a firmware update which was supposed to do something about it. It didn't! I show a couple of examples of the "white orbs", and will leave it up to you to judge whether or not this is a killer. For me, it isn't. The advantages and convenience of this little camera far outweigh the occasional problem of a little excess blooming, in situations I know I can probably avoid in most cases, by moving my position a little.

The other image added with these is of a very handy little accessory I just bought on eBay - a thumb grip (being sold for the Fuji X100, rather than the X10, by the way), which greatly adds to the comfort of holding and using the camera. I recommend this to anyone who finds they accidentally alter the settings on the little thumbwheel just where the thumb rests.

UPDATE ON WHITE ORBS - A NEW SENSOR

Earlier this year (July 2012), I sent my X10 off to Fuji to have the sensor replaced, under their warranty, and it was speedily returned. Anxious to see if the "white orb" problem had been solved, I took it off to a local parking lot, with the idea of photographing specular reflections from shiny surfaces. The two images after my "self-portrait" indicate that the problem is much reduced, not to say solved. The first, WO_1, is the full-sized image and the next, WO_2, is a crop showing more detail in the specular reflections. There are no hard edges in the reflections, so I guess you could say they are now quite well controlled. For comparison, the third image WO_3 (Nikon) is a crop of the same view taking with my DSLR, a Nikon D300, showing not dissimilar effects. Slightly better control of the reflections, but then it was a much more expensive piece of kit!

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