Fujifilm X30 and Fujifilm XQ2 Officially Discontinued… is this the Definitive Death of Fuji’s 2/3 sensor X-cameras?

[Patrick FR]

Fujifilm X30 and Fujifilm XQ2 Officially Discontinued… is this the Definitive Death of Fuji’s 2/3 sensor X-cameras?

 

More here: http://www.fujirumors.com/fujifilm-x30-and-fujifilm-xq2-officially-discontinued-is-this-the-definitive-death-of-fujis-23-sensor-x-cameras/

[bradsarno]

I think the X30 is hands down the best kept secret in the high-end compact world. Smaller sensor, yes, but image quality and shooting experience are arguably better than the 1" offerings out there. It's a stunning camera. 

 

B

[Tikcus]

With the look that Fuji wants the X-series as a premium line, I am not surprised.

 

I also wouldn't be surprised if the X-A line does not get updated, (and no new XC lenses)

 

Whether this is good or bad I'm not sure.......

 

As Fuji does not now have any X series camera without a APS-C sensor, in the short term i can not see a 1" camera being released

 

The X100 and X70 are great, but there are now no cameras in the X series with a fixed zoom lens.

 

if you want a 24mm-100mm eqv on a fixed lens camera with an APS-C sensor it would be massive.

 

from a financial stand point it may make sense to concentrate on higher margin products than get involved in tight margin entry level products.

 

Personally, i'd rather see a focus on high quality line up on the X series MILC

 

X Pro line for range finder style (with the X-E as the entry level)

XT line for SLR shaped (with the X-T10 replacement as the entry level)

 

n/b by entry level I mean entry level to the X system not entry level cameras

 

What I'd really like to see is a instax SP1 replacement with rechargeable battery, not that i've got 1 atm, i'm using a LG zeroink printer, but it has poor battey life, and you have to transfer photos from the camera to phone then to printer and it takes around 1 min to print.

 

If a replacement to the SP1 is released I may change

Edited April 29, 2016 by Tikcus

[David Thompson]

Good evening,

 

One wonders what the market for fuji is going to be - they were popular in UK outlets like dixons but are no longer on much display, what of the 

Fujifilm FinePix HS50 & S1 which no-longer are on display, the XS1 is still obtainable at Dubai Duty Free which has a good display of older X interchangeable & instant cameras ( Duty Free is always later than camera specialists )

 

Is Fuji going to be a three line outfit?  -  small compacts, instants & x series APC

 

David

[darknj]

Has Fuji even released anything smaller than APS-C sensor for the past 3 years ? I am not sure I remember anything of that sort after their start making the first X100 camera.

[milandro]

Well, the X-30 was released less than 3 years ago.

 

I had a X10 and it was the perfect small camera for me to keep by my desk and take various pictures , especially when it came to very  close up images.

 

But I can see how these would be nor fish nor fowl for many because when I sold the camera ( which came from a student who sold it to me as new because he didn’t use it ) it went to a student.

 

He sent his mother, who was very fussy about things that she couldn’t understand, and in the end commented that she didn’t understand why her son had opted to buy an “ expensive" camera while he had a phone.

 

The problem is that unless your budget is tight and the small size of the camera is paramount once one is into serious photography most will probably one will go for a camera with a larger sensor and perhaps interchangeable lenses and one which receives regular firmware updates too.

 

Frankly speaking most people might very well take the pictures of kids and girlfriends which they take with expensive cameras with a camera like the X-30 and get pretty much the same results but that isn’t something that goes well with their ego.

 

The majority of people in the world, even when they own a camera, never print their pictures any lager than a format than would be very well printable from a smaller sensor and yet some will feel diminished in their photo-virility if the size of their... sensor, wouldn’t be as big as possible.

 

We’ve seen that the Fuji sales come mostly from the more expensive segment within the camera division ( leaving their best seller Instax on the side a phenomenon which really is also very much more localized in Asia and among the youth than anywhere else in the world).

 

Even the cheap XA and XM aren’t selling much or at all ( at least they are not selling in the NL, so I am told by the shops some of which don’t even carry them considering them camera for a different target than theirs)  and I am sure that they aren’t serving the purpose of being the introductory camera to enter the Fuji X system which originally was the idea behind their introduction.

 

Their new attempt to try something new is the X-70 which at the moment is selling, rather well, but isn’t a mass phenomenon and certainly not the cult camera which the series X100 was at the beginning of its history.

 

We shall see when the novelty wears off a bit.

 

 

I wonder what they are planning because they must be aware that their customer’s base is rapidly changing.

 

I have asked Patrick here to make a reasoned survey but from the picture and comments we see from the membership here, over half of the users are over 45 years old with a very solid base in their 60ties.

 

in 20 years time there will be a new and different public and steps have to be taken to accommodate them.

[flysurfer]

Has Fuji even released anything smaller than APS-C sensor for the past 3 years ?

 

 

This thread is about the XQ2, which was announced in January 2015.

[Tikcus]

 

 

I wonder what they are planning because they must be aware that their customer’s base is rapidly changing.

 

I have asked Patrick here to make a reasoned survey but from the picture and comments we see from the membership here, over half of the users are over 45 years old with a very solid base in their 60ties.

 

in 20 years time there will be a new and different public and steps have to be taken to accommodate them.

 

This is the question, not just for Fuji but for all companies that make cameras.

 

I would hazard a guess that the majority of under 30's that are casual photographers do not own a stand alone camera, as their mobile phone is good enough for them.

For this reason the market for cameras may just come down to those who want/need something better than a mobile phone can provide.

 

A photographer I know got an X70 on release for street photography, he has already sold it.

Not for the quality, but he found he was happy carrying his X-pro with 18mm lens, and it did not fill one function his iPhone did, the ability to instantly take an iPhone picture, and upload it to social media.

 

I think in camera apps have to be in the future (I know Sony have already started), there also needs to be improved connectivity (include a modem, and sim card slot )removing the need to transfer photos to a computer, tablet or mobile phone before sending them to a social media site. (I know how annoying it is, not being able to connect the LG zero ink printer straight to the camera, and first having to transfer to mobile phone)

 

I'm sure there will be new tax applied to the devices (almost certain in the EU) the same as extra tax is applied if a camera can record more than x minutes of video, or if a computer monitor has digital inputs, so I imagine if a camera can act as a communications device it will get another level of tax.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Tikcus

[frod]

It would be interesting to see what a fixed zoom aps-c camera from Fuji would look like. 

[milandro]

It would be interesting but probably it would never happen.

 

If they would have done a bigger version of the X-30 with a equally great lens they would have been competing directly with the X100 series and one thing they teach you in marketing courses is not to become your own competitor.

[Tom H.]

X100 premium, X70 budget

 

X-T2 premium, X-T20 budget

 

X-Pro 2 premium, X-E2s budget

 

Seems like a good platform to build on. As said, the compact market is shrinking rapidly, would make sense for Fuji to stay in the upper segment and clear out the lower end. Less models in the line-up could also allow a bit quicker refresh of the models, to avoid another 5 year wait for an X-Pro update. A step every 2,5-3 years would make sense for the top models.

[johant]

 

 

A step every 2,5-3 years would make sense for the top models.

Maybe. OTOH it would be great when companies innovate more via (paid) software, than bringing out new hardware each time.

 

I'd prefer a camera that I could keep for ten years, with the option to expand or update via software modules. Personally I do not want to sell, or trade in, my camera every three years.

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[milandro]

Radical and revolutionary thinking Johan, let’s keep things upgradeable instead of throwing them out all the time?

 

Ecology and marketing don’t go together.

 

The majority of telephones and tablets even when they are perfectly suitable to be used for years and years are physically prevented to be upgraded even though they are still capable of performance way past their sell by date.

 

I have bought for a pittance an older tablet (3 years old) and have been trying to root and upgrade it.

 

A nightmare! I gave up.

 

The latest Mac Pro generation is not consumer upgradeable, aside from adding RAM, everything else come via Thunderbolt and cost you a lot more that it could if you were working like you were with all the versions until the last.

 

They keep changing things so that at some point, machines that are still perfectly working cannot be used anymore.

 

Fuji puts out o new model on the market. Often the improvements will be minor but the press and the bloggers will tell you that the newest sibling is the best thing after sliced bread and hot cakes and will sell, mostly among people who will keep doing the same kind of snapshots for which nothing like these newest camera would be strictly necessary.

 

Most people have more money than sense.

 

Fact is that digital technology is great but puts all the levers in the hand of the makers.

 

If all of a sudden your perfectly working but no longer upgraded program no longer can open the files of your newest camera then you need a new camera... and so on.

 

Until a few years ago, you could have bought one camera and kept on using it until you died, those cameras are still here.

 

You know why no-one ever carried out the original idea op a digital insert which you could put in any camera? Because you would have been able to use the old cameras which are now piles and piles of still working but useless objects!

 

[milandro]

one of the latest even won an award 15 years ago, never went anywhere.

 

I wonder who bought this product to KILL IT

 

 

[Larry Bolch]

one of the latest even won an award 15 years ago, never went anywhere.

 

I wonder who bought this product to KILL IT

 

Actually, no one bought it, which was enough to kill it. As I recall, they kept showing up at trade shows with prototypes but were never able to actually bring the product to market. It had a number of dramatic flaws.

• A tiny sensor that cropped the widest lenses into telephoto fields of view. 
• No EVF so you had to guess what is in the image area.
• A resolution of 1280×1024—about one megapixel—when three to five megapixels were mainstream.
• No menus.
• No controls.
• No memory card.
• No monitor.
• Highly vulnerable to dust.
• An asking price of $1,000 which would buy a nice 5MP bridge camera.

Above all, no ability to complete the product and bring it to market. Too little for too much and too late to be viable.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Larry Bolch

[milandro]

there were, in times, several brands and as you rightly said it was an undeveloped prototype in 16 years they could have made some progress.

 

Beside it would be working completely differently if they simply put on touchscreen menus on a replaceable back ( most good cameras had one or could be modified to have one), like the inventor of the Frankencamera did ( another prototype)

 

https://frankencamera.wordpress.com

 

https://vimeo.com/104858527

Edited May 6, 2016 by milandro

[Tom H.]

 

Maybe. OTOH it would be great when companies innovate more via (paid) software, than bringing out new hardware each time.

 

I'd prefer a camera that I could keep for ten years, with the option to expand or update via software modules. Personally I do not want to sell, or trade in, my camera every three years.

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Nobody says you have to buy the new model when it comes. I shot with a Canon 500D very happily for 7 years. I used it till it's last breath.

 

Software upgrading sounds nice, but that would mean all cameras need to be fitted with extra capacity on cpu, memory,...

 

That would cost extra for features you may or may not get in the future... And some things can only be done via hardware anyway... For electronics, a 2,5-3 year product cycle is a good average. Less is just plain silly, and more tends to make the company lose customers to other brands.

 

If you want to save the environment, there is much else you can already do today. Eat meat only once a week perhaps? Use less water. Drive less. Buy sustainable clothes. Buy locally produced and seasonal food. Don't buy stuff you don't need. Start there.

[johant]

 

 

If you want to save the environment, there is much else you can already do today. Eat meat only once a week perhaps? Use less water. Drive less. Buy sustainable clothes. Buy locally produced and seasonal food. Don't buy stuff you don't need. Start there.

Doing most of that already (apart from the driving less due to my job).

 

I am sure that cameras could be designed so that software could keep them current for let's say five years. It just requires a different mindset from manufacturers and consumers.

 

At this moment they are in a rat race to deliver new models every two years, even if hardly anything changed internally. That's a waste in many ways.

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[milandro]

Don’t buy stuff that you don’t need is a very good one. I keep telling myself that, although I am guilty to chose convenience over reason many times but that’s an entirely different forum... .

 

Talking about cameras and digital photography.

 

I have decided that I have pretty much reached a satisfactory level of quality for my needs and that from now on, at least until something radical happens, I no longer need to upgrade any computer ( hardware and software) or camera ( hardware).

 

The system is pretty much self contained as it is and everything works.

 

If Fuji will give away some more firmware updating I will also carefully consider what that means for me before taking it on board because maybe, if I upgrade to get something that I don’t want or need that might make necessary for me to use a different program ( Aperture, before, opened without any hitch loads of RAF files at the same time but since a few upgrades it will open them only one by one) while I don’t want to since I am happy with the Aperture-NIK combination that I have.

 

Remember that before of upgrading for something that would be of no importance for your pictures , the greed of having something that you haven’t got might cost you or dimply create a fuss.

 

When I upgraded the system of my computer not only I lost the free acrobat reader but even acrobat pro ( which gave me some interesting features) simply because the new version was incompatible with the system ( and that kind of thing happens all the time so a friend of mine upgraded to El Capitan and lost all he had stored within Aperture).

[Tom H.]

At this moment they are in a rat race to deliver new models every two years, even if hardly anything changed internally. That's a waste in many ways.

 

Agreed, I'm looking at you Canon/Apple, but then again, if you don't buy it, that's the best incentive you can give those manufacturers.

 

Fuji is already doing a fine job on bringing a second life to older cameras, I don't see why such a service should be paid for. I pay for that service by investing in their system to begin with.

 

Let's be honest, in electronics, things move so fast that most significant upgrades require new hardware. I was just ripping my cd's and dvd's to hard drive a few years ago to "store them indefinitely"... In the meantime, Netflix and Google Play Music have made sure I haven't touched a cd or dvd or even my stored content in more than 2 years. Now I focus on the pricinple of "as little as possible", and it is liberating to be free from GAS. I've never been as creative as in my last 2 years...

[drushka]

I think the vigorous market in old lenses shows that a certain level of reuse is possible with modern technology.

Instead of a digital back for an existing body, you swap out the whole body, ok.
Of course you get a whole new user interface with it. I think this isn't terrible, and many low-cost photographers with X-E1 or X-Pro1 bodies using exclusively legacy lenses agree.

 

We have to remember there is a large difference between an enthusiast who has and regularly uses 10 or more lenses and a hobbyist who thinks a camera is nice to have, with one or two lenses. Hobbyists represent the vast majority of photographers and are very price/performance conscious.

 

To get back to the topic, I already owned 3 exchangeable lens X-Trans II cameras and the X100T with WCL and TCL but I still picked up the X30 because its zoom extends past the 50 mm equivalent of the TCL. It's a steal if you can get it used for under $200, so it was a total no-brainer.

[milandro]

The large majority of people here and elsewhere don’t use adapted lenses, recycling , if that how we want to call it, is really very very minimal.

 

I own 3 adapted lenses an 5 non adapted ones but I consider myself a geek, I know many who won’t even contemplate using non autofocus lenses.

[drushka]

On a bright, sunny day, it is a lot of fun to go for a walk with just the X30 with how versatile it is.

• Flip screen for those low shots.
• Zoom lens sharp from super macro to infinity (unlike X100 series which has to be stopped down for macro).
• Leaf shutter to kill the ambient wide open with only a $50 flash and $20 transmitter.
• Zoom range up to 112 mm equiv for portraits.
• Mechanical zoom is the camera OFF switch. This is huge for me, as I have had a lot of cameras try to extend their lens in a pocket or bag, breaking the lens motor. Besides the zoom accuracy, this makes compacts with motor driven zoom a deal breaker for me.

All in all, the X30 is a great camera, right now and for the next couple of years.

That said, low light performance and subject separation are lacking due to the sensor, so it is a niche camera.

 

It is also too large, other companies can make flip & touch screen cameras much smaller by miniaturizing the electronics (I know about battery size and lens size inside the body but I stand by my statement that it could be made smaller).

Any improvement around the existing sensor would just be a gimmick and would not trigger many purchases.

 

That means I'm ok with the X30 being the end of the line if I can keep getting it used if it breaks over the next couple of years.

 

If three years from now Fuji releases a fixed lens zoom with mechanical zoom, leaf shutter, and great macro, built around a current APS-C sensor, I'll be all ears.

[drushka]

The large majority of people here and elsewhere don’t use adapted lenses, recycling , if that how we want to call it, is really very very minimal.

 

I own 3 adapted lenses an 5 non adapted ones but I consider myself a geek, I know many who won’t even contemplate using non autofocus lenses.

 

I don't know what the statistics look like. I quickly googled "adapted lenses mirrorless market share" and didn't find anything useful.

If you have any links about this subject, I'd be thankful if you could post them.

 

My statement about the popularity of adapting lenses came from the following:

1. Youtube videos I have seen with people using and recommending adapted lenses, some of who don't even own any autofocus lenses from the manufacturer. Most prominently, Sony users adapt modern Canon lenses but also older lenses because Sony lenses are super expensive and not the great. I have seen at least one Fuji user who does not own any Fuji lenses (sacrilege, I know).
2. Videographers. People who get into video (not Fuji before the X-Pro2, obviously) love their adapted old lenses with no aperture click.
3. This is where it goes from many anecdotes (that don't make data) to real data: the way prices for old lenses have changed on eBay. There has always been camera equipment from estate sales on there but the recent advent of usable mirrorless cameras has produced a noticeable uptick in prices.

I know this isn't solid evidence but if it can move market prices, it means something. Some old lenses with specific qualities go for $200 or more. Any more than that and they'd be priced out of the market compared to modern autofocus lenses.

[milandro]

There aren’t any statistics exactly because this is such a minority market ( who would pay for something that hardly generates any new money?) but you can simply look around here or ask your local shop for that matter,  to find that the majority doesn’t have any adapted lenses although some might try one along the way. Even if you ask with a poll here the results will be tainted bcause

 

1) the typical forum dweller is hardly the typical camera customer, most of whom haven’t even ever heard of a fuji forum

2) most people who would actually care to respond are actually those who own and use adapted lenes.

 

The great majority of Fuji camera users use Fuji autofocus lenses, though yes there is a small base among ( the yes dedicated) camera aficionados who would have a large number of adapted lenses.

 

 

Johant above uses classic shave with soap brush and safety razor , this is exactly the type of person whom would also use a classic adapted lens.

 

 

 

However one may argue that number of these aficionados is much less among the Fuji crowd that it might be among the full frame crowd because FF cameras make a better use of the lenses .

 

A 24mm is a wideangle on a FF and only a normal focal for us. Which makes the majority of the cheap lenses which were ever produced not all that useful for us because of the smaller sensor.

 

On the other hand, the least popolar lens of the past, the one everybody got with his camera and used little, the 45 to 58mm, has assumed a completely different role since it became a focal length for portraits.

 

I’ve never ever seen so many 50mm for sale!

 

In my part of the world there are a few who buy and sell “ heritage” lenses secondhand but prices are generally and for the most ordinary lenses, very low.

 

Yes Leica are still relatively expensive and ultra-luminous lenses, ultra-wide ( which were always expensive) are sought after by a very few specific crowd of dedicated users.

 

Minolta autofocus lenses are popular because they can be used without too many problems directly on Sony camera.

 

 

 

On the whole, despite all manners of adapters being there, there are only so few people (not too many) who make any regular use outside of a geek community.

 

I have 3 different adapter , one dumb, one tilt and one focal reducer. Use them only in portrait photography and that’s that. Life is already complicated as it is.

 

 

 

In my part of the world one can still buy an Helios 58mm f2 ( sought after for its quirks) at €5 in a thrift shop and €25 from a “ dealer”. I did more than once by the way.

 

 

Yes there is a category of expensive lenses, but these are very few and mostly concern a very limited range of “ cult” lenses . There are tons of undedevalued-non ( Cosinon, Chinon, Tomioka, ....) which change hands for pennies.

 

 

 

The secondhand ads are, yes, there but sales are slow to say the least ( I look and find the same things over and over again).

 

 

 

We have a huge street market once a year in the NL when the King has its birthday.

 

In years past ( until 15 years ago) there were always camera specialists at this markets ( year on year).

 

This year ( and the two before) I was looking for analog lenses, true the weather was bad so fewer people were actually on the street but of the 3 towns that I visited there were NO camera and lenses specialist ( and there weren’t any the yoear before and the one before of that either). In 3 locations where I went, especially in Alkmaar which was open two days, also the evening before, there were one of two people offering cameras at all 

 

 

 

And let’s not mention the fact that generally, any attention is limited only to “ primes,  zooms are  normally not bought because focussing a “ pump” zoom is a serious pain in the back side.

 

The omnipresent 35-70 or 70-210 sold in their millions in the ’80 where are they now?

 

The majority camera bodies have seriously ended up in landfills. Yes a few mostly young people have returned to analog photography but the great majority don’t.

 

I have in on good authority anyway, from a shop in my country , who was for at least 20 years one of the most important shops not only in the NL but also abroad dealing in analog photographic, told  me that they had to reconvert to microscopy and that they only occasionally do any sales of prime photographic lenses.

 

You can say that these are unsubstantiated opinions, that might be, but so are yours.

 

Have fun with you adapted lens, thrift is goo, but most people are not thrifty.