Fujifilm X-Pro2: Autofocus and performance
The X-Pro2’s autofocus system comprises 169 phase-detect autofocus points arranged as a 13 x 13 grid that covers a large area of the frame. Additional 3 x 14 blocks of contrast-detect points appear either side to extend coverage into the corners of the frame. It was noticeable how much faster the phase-detect points were than with the X-Pro1, particularly when capturing multiple shots of a subject in quick succession.
It typically took 0.2 seconds to focus and shoot, which is up there with the best. A time of 0.4 seconds between shots in normal use and 8.3fps in burst mode are excellent results, too.
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It even managed 8.3fps with continuous autofocus enabled, but the camera was slow to update its focus settings for moving subjects. Its ability to track subjects around the frame wasn’t up to much either.
This is one of the X-Pro2’s weakest areas, and rules the camera out for sports and wildlife photography. Its other big weakness is the 250-frame battery life. Additional batteries cost a hefty £49 a pop.
Fujifilm X-Pro2: Viewfinder
The Fujifilm X-Pro2’s most unusual feature is the hybrid viewfinder. At the flick of a lever on the front, the view through the window shows an optical or an electronic viewfinder. The optical viewfinder isn’t an SLR-style through-the-lens type, so it doesn’t preview focus and depth-of-field effects. There’s also some parallax error due to the differing positions of the viewfinder window and the lens. On the upside, the view is uninterrupted when taking a photo, so it doesn’t black out momentarily when you hit the shutter button.
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I’ve seen this hybrid viewfinder technology before on the Fujifilm X100S, and I can’t help feeling that it makes more sense on a fixed-lens camera. With a 18-55mm lens fitted to the X-Pro2, the viewfinder image is partially obscured by the lens at wide angles. There’s an overlaid white box to denote the edges of the captured frame, but the box changes size rather than the image being magnified.
In truth, there is an optical magnify function in the viewfinder, but it’s only used per lens rather than for zooming lenses. And it only offers two magnifications: one for focal lengths below 35mm and the other for 35mm and up. Significantly longer focal lengths result in a small white box in the centre of the viewfinder image denoting the edges of the frame.
Fujifilm gets around the lack of focus feedback, and makes up for lenses that obscure the bottom-right corner, by offering a an optical viewfinder mode with a small electronic viewfinder overlaid in the corner. This overlay can show either the whole scene, which is useful for checking exposure settings, or a close-up of the autofocus area for focus checking.
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In manual focus mode there are also options to show a highlight around sharply focused parts of the frame, or to use a Split Image mode where the image is split into horizontal bars that appear aligned when the subject is in focus. These focusing aids are also available in full electronic viewfinder mode and on the 3in rear LCD screen, which is unusually sharp at 1.62 million dots.
It’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive set of features for people who like to focus manually but don’t want the bulk of an SLR. Then again, the X-Pro2’s electronic viewfinder with its 0.59x (equivalent) magnification is dwarfed by the Fujifilm X-T1 0.77x electronic viewfinder, and the X-T1 also has a tilting LCD screen, which the X-Pro2 lacks. Perhaps this is a case of horses for courses, but I’d have liked for the X-Pro2 to deliver the best Fujifilm has to offer.
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