Fujifilm X-Pro2 vs X-Pro1 – What’s New?

In March 2011, Fujifilm presented the ground-breaking X100 camera to the world. Five years on, and the imaging company is celebrating the fifth anniversary of the X-series cameras by throwing a massive party, but more importantly, released a handful of new X cameras (X-Pro2, X-70, X-E2s) .

Despite being launched in 2013, the X-Pro1 seems to have been around for what seems likes an enternity (well, three years is an eternity in Sony terms), so it’s just as well that they have updated it with the X-Pro2. So what has changed?

Design

The appearance of the Fujifilm X-series cameras has always been one of the reasons why they are so appealing. That’s probably why Fuji didn’t feel the need to mess with the design of the camera.

Look at both cameras from the front and there isn’t much to pick them apart, apart from the shape of the AF-assist light, which is now rectangle – instead of the circular design on the X-Pro1 – for no other purpose than to look more like a rangefinder patch window. That’s a nice subtle touch. Shame that it still looks like the left side of the camera looks like it should belong to a different camera than the right side.

Body Features

However, as ugly people with low self-esteem would say: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, Fuji has improved a number of features of the camera to at least endow the X-Pro2 with a lovable personality.

The electronic viewfinder has been improved from the now long-in-the-tooth 1.44M dot LCD one seen in the X-Pro1 to a 2.4M dot OLED one. You’ll also get a split prism focus guide that has been used in recent Fuji cameras like the X-T1, although the X-Pro2 does it not only in mono but in colour too. There’s also a brightline display, which is nice.

They are apparently keen to highlight their film heritage also by introducing 1 more (compared to the X-T1, 2 more than the X-Pro1) film simulation mode – Acros – that produces “smooth tones, deep blacks and rich textures that are far superior to conventional monochrome modes.”

Couple that with the new grain simulation feature and Fujfilm are sure to gain a number of new hipster followers.

The big improvements in body features are the faster maximum shutter speed (1/8000s vs 1/4000s), flash sync speed (1/250s vs 1/180s), dual SD card slots and lossless Raw image compression. Other improvements just bring in it line with the current generation of cameras.

Photos

Resolution is nice. We like resolution. The X-Pro2 has now been blessed with eight more megapixels to allow us even more room to crop our badly-framed images.

It can now go to a higher ISO, but that’s boring news when we consider what they’ve done to the autofocusing system. I mean, the autofocus might actually work now, offering 273-points where 77 of them are phase detection, whereas the X-Pro1 made do with 49-points and most of them were rubbish. Oh, and they were contrast detect too.

Video

There haven’t been surprises with the movie mode, with the movie mode having been tweaked every so slightly, now offering 1080 60p compared to just 1080 24p. It has a mic input but no headphone jack. But to be honest, I imagine the video mode won’t be one of the strong features of the X-Pro2.