Chris and Jordan from PetaPixel have now published their Fujifilm X-S20 review.
A full comparison with the Sony A6700 and the Canon R7 will follow, but they did drop a few little spoilers that seem to indicate that the Fujifilm X-S20 is the best pick out of the three.
I won’t make a summary of the full review, because this review comes a little bit late and pretty much everything they say is kind of expected and well known at this point. But I will highlight mostly those parts that mention the X-S20 in comparison to competitors.
incredibly competitive price compared to other cameras that offer IBIS
there are lots of improvements on the photography side (better buffer, much longer battery, better autofocus, more film simulations, etc)
substantially better video capabilities compared to X-S10
competitors are Canon R7 and Sony A6700
Compared to Canon R7, Chris prefers the handling of the Fujifilm X-S20. He also likes tha Sigma and Tamron now support X mount, which Canon has not
vs Sony A6700, the Fujifilm X-S20 looks infinitely sexier and has better handling. The A6700 has better AF, but the X-S20 has definitely improved over the X-S10
X-S20 is more affordable than Sony A6700 and Canon R7
And suddenly I started reading headlines about the Sony A6700 like this:
“Sony didn’t hold back”
“It’s the best APS-C camera you can buy”
“The best hybrid camera for the money”
And since a firm believer of the fact that competition is great for customers, I started looking into the Sony A6700 hoping that it would indeed outperform Fujifilm.
Because if the A6700 would really be better than anything Fujifilm offers, then Fujifilm would be forced to catch up for example by releasing tons of Kaizen firmware updates to close the gap, or by speeding up the release of other cameras they have in the pipeline.
But the more I looked into the details (that many influencers – not all – somehow missed out to mention) the more disillusionment kicked in and I came to the preliminary conclusion that the Sony A6700 just shows us even more how amazing the Fujifilm X-S20 actually is.
A6700 LCD screen has about half of the resolution of the X-S20
A6700 has about half the fps bursts of the X-S20 (11 fps vs 20 fps)
A6700 has not the fully automatic subject detection mode
X-S20 detects all sort of subjects automatically
A6700 has no option for external cooling
X-S20 is compatible with the cooling fan
A6700 has few native APS-C lenses, you must buy the more expensive and bigger Full Frame lenses if you want more options
A6700 has no 4K DCI, no Open Gate, no 6K
X-S20 has all of that
A6700 has no RAW video output
X-S20 has it
A6700 is more expensive than the X-S20
Of course, these are just comparisons made on paper.
And on paper, there are areas in which the Sony A6700 wins, for example with its 4K/120p (although with a huge crop that reads out a sensor size smaller than Micro Four Thirds).
So before making any final conclusion, we certainly have to wait for real life comparisons.
Let’s just hope that those comparisons will be as objective as possible, even those that come from huge influencers that are not supported at all by Fujifilm (Fuji doesn’t send pre-production gear nor loaners to quite some of the big YouTubers that Sony instead wisely treats very well).
But what I can say for now is that for me the A6700 does not fully match the Fujifilm X-S20 in quite some areas that for many might be important. For example, a dealbreaker for me are the lack of joystick, no lovely film simulations, no internal RAW converter, lack of dedicated APS-C lens selection and so forth.
As opposed to what quite some YouTuber said, I feel that Sony did hold back with the Sony A6700 in order not to compete too strongly with their Full Frame lineup. A problem that Fujifilm luckily does not have, so they can pack it all into their APS-C cameras.
So I am personally disappointed. I was hoping for a stronger APS-C competitor that would put Fujifilm under huge pressure. Sadly the A6700, although a nice camera, is not that.
That’s my very personal opinion that has no pretension to be the truth. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
From the reports I got so far, the Fujifilm X-S20 is now shipping all over the globe and some retailers have it marked as in stock as some third party Amazon sellers (at the time of this post it’s official Fujifilm retailer K&M Camera).
And as usual at launch day, there was a lot of buzz.
But in all that buzz, some stuff tends to go under that should actually get way more attention, and some stuff for some reason Fujifilm did not mention at all.
So, in order to celebrate this little wonderful camera, let me tell you the 5 things you might have missed about it.
Top 5 Things
Double the internal memory of X-S10
This allows for longer bursts over the X-S10
Smoother EVF than X-H2 and X-T5 The Fujifilm X-S20 can shoot up to 30fps (faster than X-H2 and X-T5). And, so I have been told, as opposed to the X-T5 and X-H2, at the respective highest fps the EVF runs even smoother than its higher end siblings showing no signs of jerkiness at all , and of course also no blackout (with full 100fps live-view). One of the advantages of coupling the new X Processor 5 with the fast to read out 26MP X-Trans IV sensor and a decent, but lower resolution viewfinder than the X-T5 and X-H2
LCD Boost
Compared the the X-S10, the X-S20 sports an almost twice as high resolution on the LCD (1,04 vs 1,84 million dots)
6K 3:2 Open gate
The X-S20 can shoot 6K 3:2 Open Gate, which is not possible on the Fujifilm X-T5 and X-H2 for example
Optional Fan
Extends filming duration at more than twice the time. note that CineD and other reviews got great heat management performance also without the fan (at CineD the battery died before the camera even was able to overheat). But under tough conditions, the fan will help and extend recording time for more than twice, as we can see from the media slides I will share below.
So, down below (or at my dropbox) are the media slides. These are screenshots I took during the Fujifilm USA Tech Talk. There might be some data in there you might find interesting. Enjoy :).
I was with my Fujifilm X-T5 and the XF18-135mm because I wanted to take landscape images, but also images of the marmots who just came out from their hibernation (as you can also see in this video).
The X-S20 Would Have Done Better (than X-T5)
So I set my X-T5 to animal tracking because of the marmots.
But then I notice an alpine chough on a rock nearby ready to jump into flight.
I wanted to track the “take-off”, but first I had to press an FN button, then scroll down to bird detection, press to confirm, go back in live view and then… the bird had already taken off.
My first thought?
“If only I’d have had the smartness of the (more affordable) Fujifilm X-S20, I would not have missed this shot“
Why?
Because the Fujifilm X-S20 recognizes and tracks all sorts of subjects automatically, without any need to press a single button and go into the menu and tell the camera what it has to track.
That’s a level of smartness my X-T5, but not even the X-H2 or X-H2S has.
I can hear some say: “but it’s just a few presses on the buttons to change subject“. And that’s true. In most cases, you will have enough time to change the settings. But in my case, it all happened quickly, faster than I could react.
It Works So Great, but with One Big Missed Opportunity
If you couldn’t care less about this feature, that’s great.
We are all different, and you are probably just seeing and reacting to things faster than I do.
But the point is that Fujifilm has this technology available. It’s there on the X-S20 and it works very well according to those who tested it such as Gordon from Cameralabs, who says:
Auto Subject Detection does a great job to automatically recognize subjects. You don’t need to manually select the type of subject anymore.
Although there is a limitation, which would be completely avoidable if Fujifilm would provide a firmware update for it. In fact, Gordon rightfully remarks*: *the full review of Gordon can be found down below
Sadly Auto subject detect does not work, unless you are in the full AUTO mode, which is a missed opportunity. Workaround: switch quickly to AUTO if you want the camera to track automatically (but then you’ll also get Auto Dynamic Range, which can work well but sometimes give a too HDR like look.
This is a limitation that Fujifilm could fix with a quick firmware update by not linking auto detection to the full Auto mode.
Also, I do hope that Fujifilm will bring this feature (not the full AUTO feature, but the automatic subject tracking feature) also to the more expensive 5th generation Fujifilm X-T5, X-H2 and X-H2s.
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