the “sexy-one” at night in Vancouver: X-E1 review
image courtesy: mikemander.blogspot.fr
The X-E1 just hit the market, and now the number of reviews is increasing. Not everything can be posted, but I decided to dedicate to this interesting and accurate review an own post. Of course, this is just a short summary. Click here to go directly to the review. You can take a look at a lot of images. Here is the gallery to the night shots, taken on a tripod, except the last two, taken handheld with ISO3200 [take a look for example at this nightshoot: 35mm lens, handheld, 3200 ISO, 1/50 sec at f / 2.5! Now, what do you think? Leave a comment!]. Each image has EXIF data attached. Every image was shot in RAW and processed in Lightroom 4.3.
mikemander wrote a long review about the X-E1 here. He misses the hybrid-VF! But he likes “the accuracy of the exposure preview in the new EVF”. The dynamic range of the X-E1 is “indeed even better than most DSLRs I have tested.” The sharpness is “outstanding, especially with the 35mm and 60mm lenses, but the sensor helps a lot here too.” He also talks about the RAW conversion with Adobe. You already know about the native X-Trans RAW-files support problem “… Amazingly, out-of-camera JPEGs actually look far better in some ways than Adobe’s conversions.” A great camera, but not a perfect one. He makes a list of bugs he noticed. I’ll report here just a some of them:
1) When you lock either exposure, focus or both (depending on your settings) with the rear AE-L/AF-L button, the exposure dials are totally locked out. In other words, say you are f/4 and you press the rear-button to lock focus. Then you realize you want to be at f/8 so you turn the f-stop ring to f/8… well the camera frustratingly stays at f/4!.. Not only should locking focus have absolutely no effect on your exposure of course, but even if you were in, for example, aperture priority mode at f/4 and locked your exposure, the camera should still honour your settings changes. Let’s say you’re at f/4 and the camera has chosen a 1/125 shutter speed and you’ve locked focus or exposure. If you then set the aperture ring to f/5.6, the camera should then simply change the metered shutter speed to 1/60, keeping the same exposure value….. “You want to lock the exposure-value and not lock yourself out of making f-stop or shutter speed changes!”
2) When you are in manual focus mode, playing back an image causes the attached lens to be retracted to its off-state position. Then, when you resume shooting it immediately extends back to its manually focused position. On the 18mm, 35mm and 18-55mm zoom, this seems to work perfectly, but on the 60mm macro I tested, the focus position is shifted slightly.
3) He also has some suggestions, and one of them is to “implement a changeable minimum shutter speed for auto-ISO.”
But none of the niggles, quirks, and bugs he noticed is a deal-breaker, and he really enjoys the X-E1. Also the the 35mm and 60mm lenses “are about as perfect optically as one could possibly expect, especially at their extremely reasonable price points!”
He concludes saying that “naturally I’ll keep shooting with my big, heavy and wonderful Nikon D800 (click here) kit when I want the utmost in image quality, but the little X-E1 comes surprisingly close in many ways and as a compact, lightweight walk-around camera it is very nearly perfect for my still photography needs…”
Read much more in the whole article here, and look at the sample images here. There are some macro shots with the 60mm lens here.