Fujifilm X-T3 - - Hands on Review

**The Fujifilm X-T3: A Powerful Camera System with Minor Complaints**

The Fujifilm X-T3 is an exceptional camera system that offers a range of features and capabilities that make it a top choice for photographers and videographers alike. One of the standout features of this camera is its impressive autofocus system, which provides fast and accurate focusing in a variety of situations. This is particularly useful when shooting video or sports, where fast autofocus can be crucial in capturing sharp images.

In addition to its autofocus capabilities, the X-T3 also boasts an excellent optical image stabilization system, which helps to reduce camera shake and blur, especially in low-light conditions. However, it's worth noting that this feature may not be as effective with certain lenses, such as the 16-55mm XF lens, which is a popular choice among photographers but does not have built-in image stabilization.

When it comes to video production, the X-T3 is also an excellent option. It features a flip screen, which can be useful for self-recording or framing shots in a variety of situations. However, this feature can make it difficult to use the camera without an external monitor or recorder, as many videographers find that using a separate device provides more accurate color representation and better overall video quality.

One area where the X-T3 falls short is in its power management capabilities. Because the camera has a constant data readout from the sensor, batteries can drain quickly when extended shooting with burst mode or 4K video. This means that users who plan to use the camera extensively for these types of applications may need to invest in additional batteries or consider using an external power source.

Despite this limitation, the X-T3 is still a highly capable and versatile camera system. The fact that it uses the same batteries as other Fujifilm cameras provides a level of consistency and convenience that can be beneficial for users who already have a collection of Fuji gear. Additionally, the camera's build quality and ergonomic design make it comfortable to use for extended periods.

For those considering upgrading to the X-T3 from an older model or switching from another brand, the benefits of this camera system are well worth exploring. The Fujifilm X-T3 offers a range of features and capabilities that may not be available in other cameras, including advanced autofocus systems, excellent optical image stabilization, and robust video production capabilities.

Overall, I would highly recommend considering the Fujifilm X-T3 for photographers and videographers who want a powerful and versatile camera system. While there are some minor complaints to consider, such as power management limitations and the need for external monitors or recorders in certain situations, these issues do not detract from the overall value and quality of this exceptional camera system.

**Additional Considerations**

One final point worth noting is that Fujifilm has done an outstanding job with power management in the X-T3. The fact that you don't necessarily need a battery grip to get full functionality out of the camera makes it more versatile and convenient for users who want to travel light or use the camera for a variety of applications.

If you're planning to shoot extensively with burst mode, 4K video, or other high-demand features, I would recommend considering an additional battery or external power source. However, for most users, the X-T3's built-in power management capabilities should be sufficient.

In terms of value, Fujifilm is generally reasonable with their pricing for this camera system. The X-T3 offers a range of benefits and capabilities that make it a top choice for photographers and videographers, and its price point reflects those advantages.

Overall, I'm excited to put the Fujifilm X-T3 through its paces and explore its many features and capabilities in more depth. If you have any questions or comments about this camera system, please don't hesitate to reach out – I'd love to hear from you!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this video we are going to take a look at the Fujifilm xt3 which I've been using for a little over a month now Fujifilm were nice enough to send that over and loan it to me for review for you guys and it's like they took the xt2 and all the wonderful things about it and just made it ten times better and I'm really impressed with this camera so I want to dig down into that and share what I really love about it with you guys real quick I wanna give a shout-out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com if you need a websites where space have you covered Squarespace is an all-in-one solution for building beautiful websites portfolios or even an online store head over to their website you start with a template everything is completely customizable as a drag-and-drop interface and building websites could not be easier so head over to Squarespace com do the free trial and if you think this is right for you I can save you an additional 10% off your subscription fee use offer code AOP on checkout once again that offer code is AOP and when you have a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring another episode of the art of photography so the xt3 is a really interesting upgrade in the Fuji ecosystem and is the successor to the popular XT 2 which I did the video on prob about a year ago and the XT 2 was an incredible camera did have a few shortcomings that mainly had to deal with the way that power was distributed within the camera so for instance if you're using the body only without the optional grip you're using one battery and there were some limitations mainly the burst rate when you're doing high-speed continuous shooting and then also video lengths and I think there were a couple other things I think they had to do with like blackout speed and things like that so when you use the grip you were using three batteries and enabled a boost mode so you were able to get a little more performance out of that camera and it really you kind of needed the grip to get the most out of the XD too and so what's interesting is Fuji seemed to have taken the XT 2 and now we have a brand new sensor the Fujifilm x-trans CMOS 4 as well as a new processor which really beefed the camera up and a lot of rewriting in the algorithms and the firmware and it is an amazing camera it's open an enormous amount of possibilities of what you're able to do just without the grip you can use one single battery and get a lot out of this Cameron I want to go through some of these points one of the cool things that we have now with this camera is edge to edge phase detection autofocus points that cover the entire frame so autofocus is much improved we have face detection and eye detection and it works absolutely fabulously now there is a trade-off with this and if you look online at some of the reviews you've seen some negative aspects about low-light performance and they have a couple things to say about this first of all most of those testing scenarios at the top ISO I mean that's really not a practical situation that you're going to be shooting in and it's it's a really actually a fair trade-off because with the new sensor and the new processor the base ISO of the camera is now 160 instead of 200 so obviously you're shooting near the base ISO and you have enough light to work with you're actually getting better dynamic range than you got before but that is the trade-off as I guess if you're going to go shoot in a cave and pitch-black darkness and use the top ISO in the camera it may be a little bit noisier but the trade-off is the face detection autofocus points and as well as the dynamic range but I think the X d3 is an enormous upgrade in terms of image quality now to get this out of the way you probably know that this camera still doesn't have a flip screen and it still does not have in body image stabilization so it'll be interesting to see whether that's an evolution that we see on to the XT for when that comes out eventually or even the XH 2 if that comes out this year next year and I really don't think those are that limiting I think that the goal of the xt 3 was to use the same body as the xt 2 and what's also interesting is the price point is actually lower on this camera than the xt 2 was when it came out so really for me the xt 3 efficiency is the name of the game here and fuji have done a great job with that video has also gotten a major upgrade now video with fuji film cameras if you like the film simulations and you don't want to color grade they've worked ok there really wasn't enough data in the file to do any kind of color grading with so you it was kind of what you see is what you get even with log profiles and now with the xt 3 we have internal recording at 10 bit 4 to 0 and if you use an external recorder like the Atomos ninja 5 you can get 4 to 2 and there is an enormous amount of flexibility that you can get with that if you don't want to shoot with the film simulations and you want to do your own grading you can't shoot an F log another interesting thing is the aterna profile is available on Fuji films website for download and I'll show you some clips for that in a second but it's really pretty impressive and you have more control over your contrast do the whole point of shooting in a log file is to take advantage of high contrast situations so for instance if you're shooting at sunset and you've got really long dark shadows and bright highlights you can retain some of that shadow detail and you can consider that when you're doing your final grade and you get a really much better picture in the end it's not over contrasted and now the with the XD 3 we have a legitimate video camera from Fuji that really starts getting into Panasonic gh4 II in some ways for still shooting the big new feature in the XT 3 is burst rate shooting and it is fast you can get up to 30 frames a second RAW files off this camera is really impressive and this is one of the things about mirrorless technology that we're starting to see come to fruition it's really interesting to see how Fuji have handled this in the XT 3 now with a mirrorless camera you're getting a full sensor readout of data in real time and so what this does is opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of how fast you can autofocus and how fast you can capture images now with the DSLR you have a design flaw in that at the moment of capture the mirror has to flip up and you get a brief moment of blackout now as a photographer you can learn how to work around this but it does put a pretty serious cap on how fast the camera can shoot in burst mode and so with a DSLR you're lucky to get 11 frames a second maybe 14 on some cameras it's really pushing it but that's about it and the Fujifilm xt 3 now will deliver 30 frames a second if you're using electronic shutter and it's really impressive how they've done this now first of all you are using the electronic shutter at this point one of the downfalls of a CMOS sensor is that it scans line by line and so while your shutter speed may be one one hundred and twentieth of a second it's actually taking a little bit longer for it to scan now the way Sony handled this was to build an integral memory layer onto the sensor and we call that a stack to CMOS sensor and you see that in the a nine the a nine is an incredible camera and it also costs over three times as much as xD three and the way that Fuji have worked around this is one we have the new processor that's handling it and then two there's also a slight crop that is applied when you're shooting that fast at 30 frames a second and it's a 1.25 I believe and I actually think that this is a good solution because when you think of like you're probably shooting sports or action that's moving pretty fast and so I think in most situations the crop probably works to your advantage it's a really interesting way that Fuji have created a workaround for this and this is an incredible camera and considering it's like a $1500 camera that's something you're not going to find anywhere else and this is one of the exciting things about Mayer let's move forward that I think we're gonna be able to see now I don't think the autofocus is quite on par with what Sony delivers but I will say this if you are really interested in this feature and it is really important to you to get a high burst rate you're going to be happy with it but you need to use the most modern Fuji lenses you can find they've redesigned their autofocus system on like the red label XF soon lenses for instance and you're going to get a lot better performance out of those than some of the older Prime's which were just not built the same way the system's gonna catch up as this all evolved and it's really exciting to see Fuji film right here moving forward because I think they've got a really interesting affordable solution to burst rate shooting now as I mentioned earlier video got a tremendous upgrade as well and I went and shot some test clips and these are all done at 60 P I used the Atomos ninja 5 for these and so I was using the HDMI output and so we're getting 4 - 2 video at 10 bit and the image quality is incredible autofocus works extremely well in video as well as you can see I did some shots where I kind of stepped in and out of frame and the video is just absolutely fabulous on this camera and as I mentioned earlier Fuji is a camera that I really didn't shoot a lot of video with before and mainly because I found that while I liked the film simulations you're kind of locked into a certain contrast and if you didn't want that look or if you're trying to match it to another camera it became problematic but now that we have not only a flogged well F flogged existed on the XT - but more importantly we have 10-bit four to two or even four to zero internal there's a lot that we can do with this image that opens up an enormous amount of creative possibilities in terms of grading if that what you want to do it also covers you in more lighting situations and I found this very versatile these were all graded with the aterna film profile and you may be saying well Ted if you're just going to download the aterna profile and apply that to your footage why would you use it well if you're going to use a lot and you're going to use that in post-production it opens up more possibilities in terms of how you control that contrast behind that now you can do some of those in-camera but this puts it into post-production where you get a more finite amount of control over your final workflow and I think the image quality on this is absolutely outstanding and Fuji clearly came out of the gate with guns blazing on this because this puts this camera into the territory of what you're gonna find with Panasonic even some of the Sony cameras it's a legitimate video camera right now and what I really like about Fuji film is I mentioned the film simulations earlier too and I think these provide a lot of possibilities especially when you can shoot at ten bit there is some argument as to whether or not you can visually see the difference between 8 bit and 10 bit and if you're just comparing two pictures and saying one's eight ones 10 you tell me which is which you're probably not going to see a difference where you are going to see a difference is when you need to pull more detail out of shadow areas or maybe your highlights are a little bit blown you need to bring them back you have much more leeway with a camera that's shooting at 10 bit than you do with 8 and there's a lot of versatility that can come with this and the other thing that I love is with the film simulations and the ability to pull more detail out of them you end up with a camera that you're able to use that gets a really good picture without having to do a lot of grading so if color grading isn't your thing or maybe you're working with YouTube where you have to generate a lot of videos in a short amount of time this is really an excellent camera to consider and I've been really happy with the picture quality that I'm seeing on the X T 3 the X T 3 is an impressive camera and I think between the new sensor and the new processor and all the new functionality that you get out of it it makes upgrading to this camera from the XT to pretty much a no-brainer so if you're already in the Fujifilm system you own those lenses this is the way to go it is an incredible camera is it perfect well there's a few things that are still missing that I think Fujifilm are going to have to address either in the XT four when we get to that or maybe in the X H 2 and the X h1 has in body image stabilization and that is probably the biggest thing that's missing from the XT 3 and the only times I found this to be a deal is if I'm doing still shooting and I'm in really low light and maybe I don't want to be wide open on the lens and you really have to have steady hands if you're using slower shutter speeds just because there is no stabilization now many of the Fujifilm lenses have optical image stabilization which works just fine but some of the key lenses don't like the 16 to 55 millimeter the red label XF is one of them that comes to mind it's an excellent lens but if you don't have in body image stabilization it makes it really difficult in low-light at slow shutter speeds now for video it's not as big a deal because I tend to lock things off on tripods or at least use some kind of gimbal or stabilization but the fact that there is no in body image stabilization that's probably the weakest link on this camera and so if that's really important to you that's why you would probably want to consider the X h1 instead there's a couple other things too I think having a flip screen and I don't know it's it's funny there's so many cameras that are made now that that's kind of one of the missing features on and that Fuji have addressed this at least a little bit you get an articulating screen and you can kind of flip it out to the other side which doesn't really do you much good but if you're doing video particularly when you consider like I do a lot of video and I'm filming myself for YouTube and I use not only the flip screen for the ability to frame up my shot and compose but it also gives me all the information that I need in terms of how much battery level is left what my aperture set out where my shutter speed is where's my ISO and it's really difficult to use if you don't use an external monitor having said that though adding an external monitor / recorder to the Fujifilm xt3 makes this a very powerful video setup for an interviewer studio type situation a little bit cumbersome to vlog on although I don't know I shot all these images out in the field and I was using the external monitor with this and it was handling all the recording and it's probably worth it just to get a little bit better video quality with that for - - but adding a flip screen would just make this so much more functional anyway one last thing that I want to mention on this that Helen preface this by saying that Fuji film has done an amazing job just an absolutely outstanding job with power management in the xt3 the fact that you don't necessarily need the grip anymore makes this more versatile you can travel light or so and so forth and when you consider and this is a common problem with mirrorless cameras not just for Fuji film Sony went through it with their W battery as well but when you consider the our that this camera is actually drawing because you have that constant data readout in real time from the sensor you go through batteries a lot faster and you need something that's going to be able to power that camera so because of that I actually would recommend you do get the grip if you're going to be extended shooting using sports with birth trade or if you're using a lot of 4k video the autofocus is on these things will all draw on the battery and I think Fujifilm were just at the point right now where the new battery is gonna be kind of needed and I know why they do it this way and it's really nice that you know you have multiple cameras that use the same batteries so you have that uniformity across the system but I think we're at a point right now where just power management is becoming an issue so if you're not going to use the battery grip I least recommend if you're going to get the XD three is get a couple extra batteries to carry around it's really not a big deal to swap them in and out just would be nicer to get a little more life out of the berry that we've got but considering its age it does a great job but anyway that's really my only complaints about this camera and they're really minor as I said before I think that if you were if you're already in the Fujifilm system upgrading to the XD 3 is a no-brainer I think it's a good price point I think that the features that you get out and the value you get for that price are really pretty amazing if you're thinking about a fuji film camera it's another reason to get into it because all of a sudden this opens the system up to things that you don't have in other camera systems and again fuji film are very reasonable I think very fair with their pricing so I'd love to know what you guys think I'm looking forward to using this camera a little more and if you got any questions or things you want to see me we can talk about them so drop me a comment below until the next video I'll see you guys then later\n"