FUJIFILM X-PRO 2

On looks alone the X-Pro 2 is easily our favourite. te. The retro yet minimal design plucks our nostalgic gic heartstrings. Veteran photographers will feel instantly at home with the layout – shutter speed ed at the top, aperture control on the lens. The idea a is that you can adjust your exposure on the fly, which we like, but this might leave others missing ing touchscreen controls. In a similar vein, there’s a tiny joystick to the left of the screen that lets you u manually position the camera’s focus. The whole le ethos of the camera’s design is to give control to o the photographer, and in the process teach you a thing or two about photography.

That said, there’s still a lot of helpful tech lurking inside. The viewfinder can switch between optical and electronic modes, overlaying ing information about the image across the eyepiece. ce. It can also help out when the optical viewfinder er lets you down, for example, with longer, larger lenses attached or when taking a close-up pic.

I was sceptical at first, but came to love it by the end of my time with the camera. The image quality was brilliant in every scenario. Fujifilm uses a less traditional system to create each pixel, but the end result feels lifelike and nuanced. There’s also an ARCOS monochrome mode for authentic black-and-white photos straight from the camera. The overall quality perhaps wasn’t as ‘wow’ as the Sony’s, but then the X-Pro 2 is half the price. That said, with the Fujifilm’s snappy, continuous autofocus it certainly felt a lot faster to use from the hip. The battery life is also a bit of a letdown, but again on the flipside, it offers dual SD card slots for snap-happy photographers.

£1,399, fujifilm.com Picture quality 8 Performance 10 Features and build 10 Value 9 Overall 10