My question to you is why do you think the Fujifilm X-A7 was discontinued so early in
its life cycle? On paper it looks pretty interesting. You've got the really large
back screen, high resolution. You have the phase detection autofocus, which
looked pretty good on paper. Relatively low cost at least in the Fujifilm stuff.
I think Fujifilm was trying to hit that market
of people that are interested in photo and video mixture. It has some
limitations on the software firmware side compared to their more advanced cameras.
I think one of the biggest features of course is this large fully articulating screen. High
resolution, it looks really nice. I have no complaints about this screen. It's just
unique to cameras because it is a wide aspect ratio,
which I think works well for this style of camera. Here's one option for a camera like
this. It's actually a decent size. Very similar to the M50 in size, but actually I think this
is a little bit lighter in weight with this kit lens compared to the m50 plus kit lens.
One thing I've already noticed it's around one degree Fahrenheit. I'm touching the
touchscreen but it's not not very responsive. So I don't know if there's a setting for that.
Also there's the little joystick nub on the back, which is actually very nice in this situation.
It seems the screen is not handling the cold well. I think it's the wind more than anything.
I don't think I turned on the stabilization, but uh I'm gonna skip that.
On the battery side of things you've got the np-w126s. It's not the best, you will definitely
need multiple batteries for a full day of photo and video work. It does come with this kit lens
15 to 45 f/3.5 to 5.6. Does have optical stabilization.
The camera itself does not have any type of stabilization besides an electronic form of it,
digital stabilization. Build quality, it is a little plasticky. The lens that comes with it
is very plasticky. It's powered zoom. It has two rings on here one for usually focus but
for some reason the camera defaults to a lot of zooming with the front ring for some reason...
Actually that is interesting because I'm using the focus ring and it's doing zoom in.
And it also has like a jog wheel
styled zoom for the larger ring on there. Usually that's just zooming. The grip is very very thin,
but that's kind of a thing that Fujifilm is into with their retro-y look to it. But overall this
specific version with it's kind of a darker gray color I do like the look of it.
On the X100F that I had the battery door would easily open, but in this case I haven't had it
happen yet. It's a very similar design so I think it might be prone to that.
It does have a little gasket here for ac adapter which I do have, and this can do webcam stuff.
You can do through hdmi which I noticed a little quirk with hdmi. When I was trying to
record it, it was getting the face detection box like
distorted in there which was really weird. I'm not sure what's going on there.
You have two dials which is very nice for photography. On off button is a little like
covered which is nice with the dials so you won't as easily hit it as if it were just wide open and
easily accessed. Does have a flash port, built-in flash, which makes sense on this level of camera.
Does have a mic port but the negative here is that it's 2.5 millimeters,
which Fujifilm was big on that for quite a while. It comes with an adapter new
and I did get an adapter from the person that sold it to me which was good.
I have tried it with the video which we can go to a clip of that.
One thing I've learned already with this camera and lens,
the focus ring on the lens is extremely irritating because I keep hitting that
stupid thing with gloves on it's right next to the adjustment for focal length.
So I thought this would be a good spot to try out and see how the camera does with
vlogging situations. I do have it set up to do
digital stabilization with the optical it should be as good as it gets...
I don't know if it was my setup,
the settings, but it was very robotic sounding with the Boya BY-MM1 microphone. Which I've
used that microphone a lot on my Canon cameras and it sounds good, in my opinion.
Maybe settings could fix that and adjust things. Maybe you should use a powered microphone
with this so you can really crank down the preamp. One thing I did notice with this
camera is that the audio levels there's not much adjustability to it. So I think it's one to five.
Which if it works it works. I think I have it set on one at the moment. I haven't seen any way to
show audio levels on the screen which is kind of irritating. Same issue with the M50 that I have.
Other buttons here, we've got a drive button and this one. There's.. they're
in a weird position but they work okay. This little jog dial control thing is very nice
on the Fujifilm cameras. You can press it. You can navigate the menus with it.
You have two little buttons under there. They're very small buttons. They're not the easiest things
to press when you're holding the camera with one hand especially. But it works it's okay.
And besides that you've got an extra little function button
on one of the dials that you can use and adjust as you want which is nice.
On the main mode dial has a lot of basic modes, which you can select from.
Manual, aperture, shutter speed, and program mode are on there as well which is nice.
It does not have custom modes on the mode dial which is a negative for me.
Usually beginner cameras don't have that stuff like the M50 doesn't have that as well.
The menu system on this camera is a little quirky. I'm kind of used to it from the X100F
because they're very similar, but they do hide some things. They do have a few weird defaults
to the camera like performance mode. It's not set to high performance mode which really lags
Fujifilm cameras from the get-go. I don't get it and that was the same thing as my X100F.
There are some like dialog boxes that pop up and ask you okay
which don't appear to work with the touchscreen which is really strange.
A weird physical quirk that I notice is with the tripod socket. One, it's offset from the lens
which I don't like because when you're used doing panoramas or similar things where you want that
perfectly in line with the lens. Also I noticed this specific tripod socket it might be mine is
messed up or something but you can't fit some tripod screws in there they're too long.
So you can see the previous owner or whoever had it used some type of little circular thing
and they they probably needed a spacer to get their tripod, uh whatever, working on the camera.
After looking at some of the photos from the M50 and X-A7 together I think if they're very
similar in quality. This is probably better in high iso, but I also noticed
maybe is what I was doing at the time but with the two cameras, in aperture priority for example... I
let them decide what the shutter speed and iso were. I was getting different values between
the two cameras which was really strange. When I set the two cameras to exact settings they
have the same aperture, shutter speed, iso... The look of the photos was very different. So
image quality wise it's comparable to everything out there you know to the level that if you're
gonna go extreme about it I don't know why you'd be even considering this camera.
One big benefit of this camera is the 4k video modes, it looks nice. I was out there just doing
the stuff. It was daylight but, in general, it looks nice the autofocus seemed pretty decent.
Here the two cameras in 4k I'm actually doing 24p in this case because the M50 doesn't do 30p.
Just so that they're the same I won't get any weird frame issues when I'm editing.
At least between the two clips...
So you can get an idea of what it looks like with the 4k on each.
Obviously the.. obviously the M50 has a very large crop to it.
But the one big negative with the video modes on here is that 4k has a 15 minute cap per clip. So
if you want to do any extended stuff 15 minutes is usable, but it's not great. And 30 minutes on
the 1080p, which is pretty standard, although these days I feel like camera companies should
do away with these limits as much as possible. But they're still.. they're still holding on..
they're still sticking to those limits for some reason it just doesn't make sense to me.
Overall, it's a very interesting camera. I do really question why they canceled it. I think
it's most likely that Fujifilm felt this style of camera at least that in this revision of it was
not their type of photographer.. their type of videographer.
Because it's very basic but no viewfinder, which doesn't
make a ton of sense with Fujifilm. Because they're very focused on photographer stuff.
Although they have been getting more into video, which here it is. You know,
this camera.. definitely gives you some decent video stuff.
Except for the preamp.. is.. it is.. at least on mine it seems a little low quality.
But I'm still questioning why they canceled it because I do like the camera. Decent handling..
Has good photos, good video for the most part, and I don't know it's it's weird. Because
I could see this camera working really well especially compared to the M50 and those similar
cameras where the size is very similar. And you have good like generally decent stuff to it.
I hope you enjoyed this first look at the X-A7. I will be using it quite
a bit more. Making other videos. Going out taking photos with it and all that.
Anyways, I'm Scott of Photography Banzai.
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