Champagne Eye

Well, you cannot fault the makers of cameras for being dull bodies - they let their design departments run with the colours and in the cameras we've seen this week we've had a different shade each day. The Fujifilm XF10 today is Champagne Gold. How the Fujifilm people got away with using the word " Champagne " when it is debarred from local winemakers is a mystery. Perhaps they have better lawyers. Whatever, they do have an attractive pocket product here. It's the newest of the quartet and probably contains the newest circuits - but it also has one design decision that the others did not make - no zoom lens. This camera has a fixed 18mm lens feeding onto an APS-C Bayer-pattern sensor. Due to the nature of prime lenses over zooms, and fixed construction over erecting lenses, as well as that large sensor...it might be argued to have the best image quality. In any case it can certainly be said to have most style - brown leather covering on the champagne gold body. You'll see the slick body shape and the effective thumb and finger grips. You'll also note the lack of D-ring controller - most of the functions of this have been transferred to a thumb joystick and the rest given to the touch screen. It is reminiscent of a mobile phone as you can pinch and swipe to zoom and move around the replay screen. It is most addictive... The controls are reminiscent of the Fujifilm X-A5 and X-T100 with PASM and the SR scene selector. They also aim at the starting market with symbol markings on the mode dial. Note the control wheels for both forefinger and thumb as well as a multi-purpose control ring around the lens. You can get a true manual focus with red peaking highlights. The battery is the good old NP 95 - a reasonable competitor for the Panasonic one, I should think. But in this case it is still in-camera charging. Fortunately, I do know that Fujifilm make a dedicated NP 95 charger block as well - extra purchase. You'll love the style and the image quality. You'll be sad that there is no tilting LCD screen or viewfinder...nor any way to clip one on...you'll just have to bend down and peer into the LCD at arm's length when you do your low shots. Bend from the knees. Note - you'll also puzzle at the extremely cheap appearance of the black plastic lens cap on such a stylish camera. I can only imagine that Fujifilm will come out with a metallic one as an aftermarket accessory and if they don't the Chinese factories probably will. And the morning's shots. No cheatin' - all jpeg.: