Still Pond, Fuji X-H1 and XF 35mm ƒ/2
The culture of objects seems obsessed with excess these days. On one of the auto channels I watch, More Doug DeMuro, Doug answered the viewer question "what is the best car?" by proposing the "Bugatti" Chiron (I use the scare quotes because I know what real Bugattis were, and they weren't hypercars for oil sheiks built by Volkswagen). The Chiron is a two-door, two-seat mid-engined "sports" coupé with a 1,479-horsepower V-16 engine.
Really? Is it fun on on-ramps? Whatever.
Compare a "Bugatti" Chiron to the car in this video. I get that things move on, but doesn't it seem like maybe the world's gone a little nuts? I bet the Chiron'll be made "irrelevant" by a car with a 2,022-HP V-24 engine any day now. Then, mere Chirons will be for the weak. Like those poor passed-by girly-men driving Veyrons now.
Well, Doug likes supercars, so that's his business. They bore me stiff. Give me Scotty and his beaters any day.
(Fun fact—Scotty's grandfather's real name was Elmer Kilmer. Made me laugh.)
Or, take exhibit two. As the numbers of homeless climbs, both worldwide and in the once-democratic USA—we don't bother to count them here, nationally, because of course they do not matter, but officials in Los Angeles estimate that there are approximately 70,000 people living without roofs over their heads on any given night in Los Angeles County—New Yorkers are complaining that the new "needle-thin" super-skyscrapers south of Central Park are robbing the park of daytime sunlight. One such skyscraper has only 50 palatial residences in it that cost up to $100,000,000 each.
Which doesn't seem so bad until you consider that most of the people who buy them won't live there. They will just be New York City pieds-à-terre for people who have multiple other residences around the globe. So people who use the park are being deprived of their sunlight by massively expensive buildings that will remain, on any given day, mostly empty.
Enter the X-cessive Fuji
The "H" in X-H1 stands for "hyper," according to Fuji, and the X-H1 is the "hyper X camera." Though X-cessive, I don't actually think it's a bad name. This is hearsay, so take it for what it's worth: years ago, when Fuji's involvement in camera marketing could be described by the word "dabbling," an industry insider who had warm 'n' friendly ties with Canon told me that a high-up official at Canon had confided to him that there was only one company that Canon was afraid of, and that it wasn't Nikon—nor was it Leica or or Sony or any of the other usual suspects. It was Fuji. Fuji is a formidable technology company with impressive competencies and capabilities, and the X-H1 reads to me like an attempt by Fuji to engineer and manufacture an X-mount camera that represents some semblance of the best it can do. Hyper X indeed.
I tried the Fuji X-H1 for seven days courtesy of Lensrentals. Lensrentals very smoothly and efficiently rents a full range of cameras and lenses so that you too can do exactly what I did and try out any camera or lens for yourself. If you've never tried it, you ought to. It's potentially useful, and usually fun. I certainly enjoyed my time with the X-H1, even though it rained for five days out of the seven.
I used the 35mm ƒ/2, 23mm ƒ/1.4, and 14mm ƒ/2.8 lenses with the X-H1, all of which belong to me (I have an X-T1). Seven days is not long enough to get to know a camera. So these are my impressions and my opinions of its various quirks and features (as Doug DeMuro would say).
Bias
But first, my prejudices, because a reviewer ought to always be honest with his prejudices: I kinda fell in love with this camera. I liked it much better when it went out the door than when it came in. It was tough to part with it, and I miss it. So read this review with that rosy glow, and whatever level of caution it triggers in your skeptical self, in mind.
Size
I'm a bit weird in that I like small cameras but I have big hands so I prefer a big grip. Years ago, Canon made a film camera with a pellicle mirror that had several exchangeable handgrips, one of which was oversized and extended below the base of the camera (you can see it here). I loved that. It also had a soft leather padded hand strap that went over your knuckles. That's one of the downsides of reviewing cameras for decades, something the late Burt Keppler, revered guru of Popular Photography magazine, once wrote a column about: sooner or later you see every single facet of a camera done perfectly, so you always remember the one camera that really got that one thing right according to your own taste—and no camera gets everything right. (The X-H1 does get one thing perfect according to my taste, and I'll mention that.)
The X-H1 is a wee bit on the large side. With a bigger X lens like the 23mm ƒ/1.4 it's what you'd call a full-sized camera—not huge, but not compact or light by any stretch. It's helped by mating it with a Fujicron, even if it then looks a little odd and unbalanced.
I ended up liking it, though, because it handles so well. The large grip is perfect for my largish hands, and I didn't find it too heavy. I like cameras that allow you to let the camera hang by inserting your fingers between the grip and the lens with your hand open, like this...
(Here demonstrated with a GX8 and Panaleica
45mm Macro. I sent the Fuji back already.)
...while you change a card, and the X-H1 does this nicely.
If you go to camerasize.com and call up the Panasonic G9 (Micro 4/3), this camera (APS-C), and the Sony A7 III (FF), you might be surprised by how close in size they all are. So you might argue that this camera's size basically just embodies the contemporary Japanese idea of how big a camera ought to be.
At any rate, with the camera in hand, actively shooting, everything falls into place. Feels great, handles great. Very comfortable camera to shoot with, at least for me.
Controls and configuration
Excellent. I love the way this camera is laid out. Absolutely nothing has that feel of "this is here because it's the only place we could fit it in" as you'll find on so many smaller digital cameras (or digital cameras crudded up with too many buttons and wheels and so forth). The layout of this camera is nice and clean. Everything is thoughtfully placed. You have all the controls and flexibility you need, but it's not overdone. If you need to customize any of them, you can do that, but I think you'll find this camera both easy to get to know and then easy and intuitive to operate once you get the "feel of the wheel" and start doing things by muscle memory. I realize I might feel this way partly because I'm already familiar with Fuji cameras and controls. While that's true, I really liked the control layout and the camera's handling, and I believe most people will like it too once they learn it.
Controversial features (EC)
There are only two controversial aspects of the controls and configuration, so I'll mention those in detail: the top-plate LCD and the missing exposure compensation dial.
Top plate LCD: One is the presence of the top-plate LCD or "sub-monitor" as it's sometimes being called. I had a little trouble getting used to this, because it's always on. I'd glance at the camera, see the readout on the top-plate, and reflexively assume I'd left the camera switched on. After years of finding out at the wrong time that digital camera batteries are depleted, I'm a tad sensitized to that, so it would give me a start for half a second before I remembered. But that's the kind of thing you'd get used to after a while. Personally, I liked the top-plate readout. I like to know in my head exactly how the camera is set while I'm looking at the world, and I'm in the habit of checking this by looking down at the camera and taking note of the settings—which is no doubt why I tend to like Fuji's knobs 'n' dials layouts. The top plate readout helps with this, and I found it handy. I liked it.
No exposure compensation dial: The other aspect of the camera that has given Fujistas pause is the flip side of the above, namely, the absence of the exposure-compensation (EC) dial, that being one of the things that most of us have liked about our Fujis since the X-100. It had to be done away with to make room for the top-plate readout LCD. To activate EC, you either press a little button and turn the rear wheel while holding the button in, or you can set the button to lock on with one press and lock off with another. So set it how you want it. The top-plate readout when the camera is off tells you by default how many exposures you have left at your current camera settings and the state of your exposure compensation. Being able to see where you have the exposure compensation set is one of the main advantages of a dial for me, because I can check it at a glance even when the camera's off. I can do the same thing with the top plate LCD on the X-H1 as well, so the absence of the EC dial is moot for me.
On balance: the top-plate readout LCD is a win, even though the EC dial had to go. There's a nice upside and no appreciable downside.
Viewing screen
This is the thing that the X-H1 just gets absolutely right. I know this depends on personal preference, but I find flip-up viewing screens preferable to the flip-out articulated type that for some reason are preferred in the video world (I don't know why but I assume there's a reason). I suspect it largely depends on what each of us got used to, although my own first digicam had the flip-out style. The Fuji's viewing screen can be flipped up fully in landscape orientation, angled downward helpfully for above-the-head shots, and flipped up partially but quite adequately in vertical/portrait orientation. It's very easy to use and really works a treat. No idea how it will last over a decade of hard use. The only thing it won't do is turn the viewing screen all the way around to face the body for people who don't like to use, or see, the viewing screen at all. While I get the argument for that, I've never needed it, so that's not an issue for me.
My opinion? YMMV, but for me, this is perfect, and dare I say...un-improvable? All cameramakers could adopt exactly this mechanism, and Fuji could use it for the rest of its history, and I'd be all for it. A+++. But just my opinion.
Eye-level viewfinder
The VF is really good. Big, clean, smooth, and easy to see. It has none of the harshness of early EVFs, which could look like old TV screens. It looks like a FF-camera EVF for the most part, and you can of course customize it in various ways to show different information.
The only negative thing I noted was that sometimes it doesn't give a very accurate report to the eye of the subtleties of colors in the scene, or of the subtleties of the light—something we take for granted with an OVF. Of course, I didn't mess with the EVF custom settings, so it's quite possible that that could be improved over the default. This is a strength of Fujis: the EVF of the X-T1 was a revelation when it came out, and the X-H1's is a whole 'nuther level better. It's so good you don't really notice it.
Battery life
The Internet says it's not the greatest, but of course I didn't get a feel for it in seven days. Might be something for you to consider, though.
(As you do so, a tiny mini-Mike will be sitting on your left shoulder whispering in your ear, "no camera's perfect.")
Video
I do stills, yo.
Menus
I'm comfortable here, no doubt because I'm already pretty accustomed to Fuji menu choices. There was only one time I got flummoxed, and that was when I tried to reset the bracketing intervals. I was way out in the country and it was raining, and I couldn't find the right menu item anywhere. In one of those surreal moments we all find ourselves in once in a while, I soon found myself sheltering in my car, on a wet road deep in the country, Mennonite farm silos over the crest of the hill, listening, on my phone, to a YouTube video of a guy from England giving a tutorial explaining how to set the bracketing on the camera I held in my hands. Weird.
I guess the experience just struck me as being a world away from using an old manual Leica or Pentax and finding it natural to be alone when I'm alone. Back then I would have found it incredible that there could be a control on a camera I was holding in my hands that I didn't know about. Times have changed. Anyway, the item is in a focusing submenu [Correction: the Drive menu], not an exposure submenu, which is why I couldn't find it.
But of course you get this sort of stuff settled relatively quickly—it's no big deal. For the most part, I found the menus logical and comprehensible.
IBIS (in-body image stabilization)
This is a big deal to me, as I'm sure regular readers are tired of hearing. I already told you about my initial impressions of the IBIS, here, and that didn't waver for the short time the camera was here chez TOP—using normal/wide lenses, I found it relatively easy and remarkably reliable to handhold the camera down to shutter speeds of 1/6 sec. with no problem, and often as slow as 1/3 sec. Given that my own comfort/ability level with the unstabilized X-T1 is 1/30th with the same lenses, that's...great.
Keeping in mind the context of my general comments about the controls above—love 'em, but maybe because they feel familiar to me—here are three highlights: the joystick, the AF-ON button, and the shutter button.
Joystick
I've become agnostic about joysticks. I used to like them, no doubt because I got used to one on a long-ago camera I owned. But I know a lot of people strongly prefer them. It was a nice addition to the X-T2, and it's the same here—the feel is good and it's ideally positioned. I just didn't use this camera long enough to really know whether I would become attached to the joystick again. It's entirely possible. If you have an X-T2 or X-T3 you already know what you think of it (but in that case you're probably not thinking of getting an X-H1).
AF-ON
A change from the X-T[1/2/3] is the addition of an AF-start button next to the AE hold/lock. It might be tied to the shutter button's unusual feel and operation, I don't know. This is another thing people who get used to it tend to like, and on the X-H1 it falls so easily to hand that I found myself using it. I don't know, but I think if I owned this camera I'd turn off the shutter focusing (I assume you can do that, though I don't actually know) and go with the AF-ON button for a while, just to see how I felt about it set up that way. Nice addition, IMO.
Shutter button
The feel of the shutter button is very unusual. I've tried a lot of cameras in my time, but I'm not sure I've owned a digital camera with a shutter release this light, responsive, and fluttery-feeling. It's very responsive, and probably works a treat when shooting video, but it lacks the distinct half press / full press stages that most stills camera shutter buttons have. The two stages are there, they're just very light and not very distinct.
I don't know though...I ended up really liking the shutter button on the X-H1 quite a lot. Rumor has it that you can send your body to Fuji to get them to reset the shutter feel to more a more conventional level, but I'm pretty sure I'd leave mine the way it came out of the box. I liked it. It helps give the camera its character, like steering feel does on a car.
The shutter mechanism (see picture at right), which Fuji calls "feather touch," is very purposeful—it's part of a holistic design solution that includes the large handgrip for a firm grip, the high-precision IBIS system, and isolation bushings for the shutter assembly, all of which are intended to contribute to steadiness and the elimination of mechanical shock and movement.
But the stock shutter-button feel is certainly different and quirky, so it's something you're going to need to try in person before deciding on this camera for good, however you manage that.
Personal impressions
And talking about character is a nice lead-in to discuss my impressions of the X-H1.
Usually, it takes me a long time to get used to a new digital camera. The early stages are almost embarrassing—I particularly dislike three things: one, needing to change a setting and not knowing how to do it; two, screwing up the setup by accident and not knowing how to get back to the way I had it set before; and three, finding a control or feature to be placed somewhere I don't expect it to be and/or finding it awkward to use. An example of this last includes the card slot in my Panasonic GX8—it's in the battery compartment, and I can almost not grip the card with my clumsy fingers.
Anyway, I was surprised by how quickly the X-H1 became a friend. I got used to it, and started to trust it, within days. With three cameras in the rotation, it was the one I would grab in preference to the others just to take a quick shot of something interesting.
Coming soon at some point in the future*: Mike's verdict of the X-H1. At that point I'll explain why I opened this post talking about Bugattis and New York skyscrapers.
Mike
(Thanks to Nico Maijer)
*"Don't hold your breath or you'll turn blue and die." <—as my friend used to say on the playground in 4th grade
Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Ramón Acosta: "If you would shoot any kind of event on video you would understand why the flip-out screen is more useful for video. With video there is no stitching images or switching to portrait orientation, so sometimes you have to place the camera against the back wall and stand next to it, making sure your subject remains in the frame. Sometimes you are directly underneath your camera and those extra degrees vs. a screen that can only tilt can save your shot. Sometimes you need to show the person in front what the framing is so they know how much they can move around, and of course, they are a lot more useful for selfies and for one man band vloggers."
Miserere: "'Volkswagen are now into speed and luxury and all that nonsense.' Scotty made me laugh outright with that statement. :-D The video put a big smile on my face. Thanks for linking to it, Mike; I think I agree with Scotty and I've started the day with some chuckles."
Mike replies: He's a hoot.
Michael: "Thank you very much for that, Mike. I use both X-T3 and X-H1, but often find myself grabbing the X-H1, especially late in the day. If I only could have one, then...umm...probably the X-H1, just for the IBIS."
Curt Gerston: "There are four things about the X-H1 that make me keep picking it up in preference to the X-T3, and it's all about feel (much like your review): the grip, which is so comfortable; the top screen + rear dial, which I prefer to the EC dial; the IBIS, which helps with my favorite primes; and that lovely shutter.... Oh how I love that shutter. The X-T3 is a very good camera; the X-H1 is a very delightful camera."
Michael Bulbenko: "Actually, on the X-H1, if you do want EC on the rear command wheel and have it toggle, simply reassign the Rear Command press action to be 'Exposure Compensation' and that will do what the top EC button does by default: activate EC. Then without moving your thumb you can dial in plus or minus comp, press it again to take it out of EC to prevent accidental bumps. Then, you can re-assign that top EC to something else, like Focus Check."
Mike replies: Excellent idea.
