What’s going on here then? It’s a Fujifilm X-mount camera, Jim, but not as we know it. Initially, the X-S10 looks a bit like the answer to a question that’s nobody asked. Fujifilm says it essentially represents a new category of X-mount camera with a key objective, apparently, to make it more approachable for the users of Canon and Nikon APS-C format DSLRs – essentially all that’s left now – who are ready to go mirrorless. Of course, just about everybody is chasing this market – Canon and Nikon included – with an emphasis on selling them up to the bigger full-frame sensor. Nevertheless, the X-S10 is still a very curious mix of the high-end and the low-end.
In essence, it’s a lot of the X-T4 repackaged in an X-T30 size body with a new control layout that’s more conventional than Fujifilm’s usual traditional fare. So, gone are the classic dials for shutter speed, ISO and exposure compensation, replaced by a ‘PASM’ main mode dial and a smattering of function buttons. There’s still a couple of other dials – one serves as the rear input control and the other is multi-functional – but there’s nothing here to scare the horses. Dedicated X-mount camera users will no doubt consider this sacrilegious, but the reality is that the 1970s-style operation for exposure control isn’t to everybody’s taste.
The styling is still fairly classic with a magnesium alloy main casing, but like the X-T30, no weather sealing. The rear screen adopts conventional tilt/swing articulation, and the compartment for the memory card is in the base with the battery, although both are in the handgrip and so are still accessible when the X-S10 is on a tripod. The battery is the NP-W126S pack that Fujifilm’s uses extensively across its current X-mount line-up (although not in the X-T4), and there’s just the single memory card slot for UHS-I speed SD devices.
You can maybe start to see the ‘swings and roundabouts’ approach to the X-S10’s packaging becoming evident. It’s even more apparent when you know that it has the X-T4’s autofocusing, upgraded video capabilities, a new and more compact in-body image stabilisation module, and pretty
