And they are both afraid of Best...
Or, to put it in another way, how does a shop sell the latest model of a camera to a person who owns the
last model of the same thing - and how do they do it if the manufacturer has utilised the same shape and many of the same features of the previous model?
Well, they take careful note of the professional literature that the wholesalers provide - and find out exactly where improvements have been made. They've got to be a little bit skeptical, too - because the retail customer is gonna be a
lot skeptical and the customer is the one who knows the pin number for the credit card. You have to actually deliver improvement if you want those four numbers punched into the EFTPOS machine...
Sorry for the plain talk, folks. Money is money and cameras is cameras.
All this is preparation for my investigations in to just such a circumstance - the current models of the Fujifilm X- T series cameras ranged against the previous models. It has now been a little time since the X- T2 and
X-T20 have come out to supplant the X-T1 and X- T10, and I am wondering whether it is time to upgrade. Fortunately I have had access to three of the cameras in question under controlled conditions* and can form my own opinion. I'm perfectly happy to read the writings of other internet reviewers and to learn from their experiences, but in the end I need access to a pot of tea and an electric fence myself.
Note that this investigation does not take into account current sales prices, specials, promotions, cash-backs or anything else. It also does not address Fujifilm's excellent policy of firmware updates for their equipment. I now take it as a matter of course that there will be some firmware updating for any Fujifilm camera and that it will be easy to do and worthwhile. I follow the prompts from Fuji Rumours and From Fujifilm Australia and have not gone wrong yet. My older X-E2 was bootstrapped up to the same performance as my X-T10 and they are both a delight. Even the venerable X-Pro 1 is running at the peak of its performance with the various updates. I highly recommend them.
But back to the new vs the slightly older. Fujifilm jumped their megapixel count from 16 to 24 with the new cameras and put a new processor chip in it. They put in 4K video recording. They added new AF points to the finder system and speeded up the focusing and firing. Even the turn-on time has been reduced in the new cameras. But is it all enough to make the new stuff worth buying?
The two divisions of the Fujifilm central-viewfinder mirror-less cameras are similar. The X-T1 and the X-T10 bear the same relationship to each other that the X-T2 and the X-T20 do, The T1 and T2's are the heftier, weather-sealed bodies with more features - they have separate PC sockets, side-opening card doors with multiple slots, and dedicated ISO dials. Their ISO and shutter speed dials lock. They generally crank through multiple exposures faster than the T10 or T20. They have more options in their menus.
But their basic performance is echoed in the smaller T10 and T20...and the smaller bodies are lighter, cheaper, and aimed at more of an entry-level market. You can still squeeze out great performance from them, as this X- T10 Cadillac custom car image from Sydney 2017 shows...
So how about a shootout between them? It's possible to use the exact same lens with all the bodies - just unclip it and shift it over. If you use a studio setup you eliminate variables in the lighting. If you pass all the files through the same computer and programs...and do not yield to the temptation to alter the settings...you get an accurate gauge of the improvement - or lack of it - with the new bodies.
A final note. Warrewyk Williams mentioned the lens optimiser circuits in the newer Fujifilm cameras at his talk a few weeks ago. He cautioned us not to put other makers' filters over the front of the lenses in case it skewed the operation of the feature. Thus I have taken to removing the older Nikon clear filters from my Fujifilm lenses in the studio. The lens hoods are deep enough to prevent stray fingerpoken and there is little dust in the air. Whatever the lenses do is about as good as the company designs will permit.
