A Star's Turn

- Miriam Leuchter

A single criterion guides Pop Photo’s choice of Camera of the Year: It must be the model that best refined or redefined photography in the past 12 months. In a year that brought a host of wonderful cameras to pros and enthusiasts alike, applying this criterion kept us focused on the bigger picture.

Sure, we saw incremental gains in resolution, low-light performance, and speed in many new cameras—and that’s great. But ultimately we chose the model that rekindled our own excitement about taking pictures, the one that redefined the whole experience of photographing: Fujifilm’s X-Pro2.

Of course, the X-Pro2, with its 24.3MP APS-C-format X-Trans CMOS III sensor, delivered terrific results in the Popular Photography Test Lab. Resolution at ISO 100 was the highest we’ve seen from an APS-C-sized sensor, and the camera held noise to moderately low up to ISO 800. Factoring in its highly accurate color rendition, we rated overall image quality Excellent up to ISO 400. Capture is pretty fast, too, with a burst speed of 8 frames per second for up to 83 JPEGs, 33 losslessly compressed Raw files, or 27 uncompressed Raw images.

But what truly boosted the X-Pro2 onto the winner’s podium was its brilliant body design. Its most obvious features are the well-placed dials for shutter speed, ISO, and exposure compensation. Combined with the marked aperture control rings on many of Fujifilm’s X-system lenses, they give you full control of all exposure settings before you even turn the camera on—a boon to street shooters, photojournalists, and any photographer who likes to pre-set exposure to react swiftly to the scene.