I’ve been using the Fuji XT-3 camera for 6 months now and I’ve always found a real life long term review very helpful.
I’ve been fighting the Fuji camera corner for nearly five years and I am a big fan of the small form factor and art-of-photography ethos, My old X-E2 is still in use with a vintage lens permanently bolted on for family photos.
What I like about the Fuji XT-3
The camera is an obvious jump in technology and the first thing to stand out for me was the incredible autofocus. This camera is fast, really fast. Coupling with a the 35mm f2 or the 50-140mm makes it a dream to shoot fast moving subjects with. The processing power matches the AF and realistically the only archilles heal would be the card being used. The eye tracking is just unbelievable.
It has two card slots! Mad that this isn’t a given.
The build quality is good which means it should continue to stand up to the rigours of outdoor photography no problem. The weather sealing has been tested a few times.
The viewfinder is bright, sharp and easy to use – even with my dicky eyesight (keratoconus if you’re interest.)
The ability to shoot by touching the LCD is nice for when I forget a trigger or my phone is low on battery.
The things I don’t like about the Fuji XT-3
Ergonomically speaking it’s good, but not perfect. I still found Nikon DSLRs to be ‘better’ in this respect, although I do like having physical dials to adjust.
At really high ISO (10,000 – 12,800) the grain gets a bit crunchy on RAW files, one person picked this up and questioned why it looked like the image had worms. I’ve since adjusted my Lightroom sharpening preset and things have improved but honestly, the JPEGs that the camera produces are flawless. When I’m shooting races, I just stick to JPEG now to save data and let the in-built noise reduction do its thing.
The elephant in the room.
The only real bug bear I have is that it is draining batteries, even when turned off. This article suggests that I’m not the only person experiencing it and I’m keen to work out why it’s doing it. It doesn’t affect me too much as 3 batteries (using the grip) still lasts me a race day but it’s unnerving for longer trips away from charging facilities. Ultimately I could just pull the battery out to conserve it but that’s silly. I’m hoping a firmware update will fix it in due time.
Overall
This camera is my professional workhorse and it’s proving to be invaluable for paid work. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. At the end of the day, it still produces the goods in a reliable manner – overall I still prefer it to DSLRs entirely down to it’s size, weight and price. It is simply too good value to dismiss.
