Fujifilm X-Pro2 Performance

Excellent performance from the Fuji X-Pro2.

Power on to first shot was slightly faster than average for a mirrorless camera, but not as fast as most DSLRs. It's also difficult to accurately time, as there is a shutter pre-press penalty. Play to Record wasn't bad, but required two shutter button presses to capture an image.

The Fuji X-Pro2's full autofocus shutter lag was much faster than average for a mirrorless camera in our lab tests. The Fuji X-Pro2 produced full-autofocus shutter lag (with the subject at a fixed distance) of only 0.057 second using Single Point AF mode (center) with the 60mm f/2.4 Macro ens. That's faster than most pro DSLRs! At first we thought this is because AF-S Release/Focus Priority defaults to Release Priority (instead of Focus Priority like most other brands that have such an option), but we retested with Focus Priority, and got very similar results.

Manual focus shutter lag was oddly slower, with an average of 0.123 second, and it varied a lot. Prefocused shutter lag was quick at only 0.046 second, though that's not much faster than full AF lag.

Interestingly, full AF and prefocused lag times increased when using the electronic shutter, to 0.081 and 0.068 second respectively, though manual focus lag time decreased to 0.080 second with a lot less variation.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Single-shot cycle times were so fast that they were difficult to accurately measure as they depend on the tester's dexterity and ability to maintain an optimum rhythm, so your results may vary. (Note that we no longer test single-shot mode with just RAW files, as the results are usually somewhere in between JPEG and RAW+JPEG.)

The Fuji X-Pro2's Continuous High burst mode speed was quite good, at about 8.2 frames per second no matter the file type, slightly exceeding Fuji's 8.0 fps spec. There is also a Continuous Low mode rated at 3.0 fps, but we did not test that in the lab.

Full-resolution buffer depths were excellent when shooting best quality JPEGs, at 62 frames with our difficult to compress target. You may do even better with typical subjects. When shooting uncompressed RAW or RAW+JPEG files, the buffer depth dropped to 28 frames, which is still quite good. Buffer clearing was a fairly quick considering the buffer depths and resolution. With a fast UHS-II card, we measured 5 seconds after a max-length burst of JPEGs, 11 seconds after a maximum burst of uncompressed RAW, and 15 seconds after max-length burst of uncompressed RAW+JPEG frames.

Switching to lossless compressed RAF files had almost no effect on burst speed or buffer depth in RAW and RAW+JPEG modes, however clearing times improved to 7 and 10 seconds respectively.

Bottom line, the Fuji X-Pro2's performance was generally excellent with a decent startup time, super fast autofocus, low shutter lag and a fast 8.2 fps burst mode with good to excellent buffer depths.

Battery Life
Decent battery life for a mirrorless camera.

The Fuji X-Pro2 uses a custom NP-W126 rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and a dedicated charger. Fuji provides battery life numbers for when using the LCD monitor, electronic viewfinder and optical viewfinder, as well as for Standard, High Performance and Economy modes. CIPA-rated battery life is not bad for a mirrorless camera, particularly when using the optical viewfinder, but still no where near the typical prosumer DSLR. As is usually the case, we strongly recommend getting a second battery for your X-Pro2.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))