Fujifilm X-T10 Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Fairly vibrant color with excellent hue accuracy.

Saturation. The Fuji X-T10 produces images with fairly bright, pleasing color using the standard film simulation (Provia) at default settings. The camera pushes most colors by a small amount, dark red and dark green by a moderate amount, but undersaturates aqua, cyan and yellow by just a bit. Default mean saturation at the base ISO of 200 was 111.9% (11.9% oversaturated), which is just a little higher than average these days. You can of course tweak saturation and/or select a different film simulation mode. Mean saturation fell only slightly as ISO increased as it often does, ending up at 109% at maximum ISO. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The Fuji X-T10 rendered pleasant Caucasian skin tones that were just a touch on the pinkish side when white balance was adjusted to match the light source at base ISO, because of the moderate push in reds. Results were quite pleasing, though, with a healthy look. (Here, too, the X-T10's saturation and/or film mode adjustments may come into play for some users, letting them tweak the color on skin tones, if they find the default rendering a bit too saturated for their personal tastes. Note that Fujifilm claims their Astia film simulation produces "true-to-life" skin tones.) Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Fuji X-T10 produced only a few color shifts relative to the mathematically precise translation of colors in its subjects, and has excellent hue accuracy overall. Noticeable shifts are in cyan toward blue and orange toward yellow, but most shifts are very minor or hue is dead on. (The cyan to blue shift is very common among the digital cameras we test; we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors.) Average "delta-C" color error after correction for saturation at base ISO was only 3.72, which is excellent, and hue accuracy remained better than average across the ISO range. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Auto and Incandescent white balance were quite warm, but very good results with the Manual setting. Above average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under typical incandescent lighting, color balance was quite warm using the Auto setting, with a fairly strong reddish cast. Results with the Incandescent white balance setting were also very warm, with a strong yellow/orange cast. The Manual white balance setting was quite accurate, though. The Fuji X-T10 required +0.7 EV exposure compensation here, while most cameras need about +0.3 EV for this scene. Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Very good color though slightly cool outdoors. Good exposure accuracy outdoors, just slightly overexposed.

Outdoors, the Fuji X-T10 produced good color at default settings, just slightly on the cool side. The Fuji X-T10's default exposure was a bit too bright in our "Sunlit" Portrait shot. This is better than average, though, as most cameras need +0.7 EV to keep the face bright for this shot, but it did lead to a lot of blown highlights in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. Skin tones were pleasing, with a healthy-looking pinkish cast that's not too overdone with Manual white balance, and Auto wasn't much different (just a touch cooler though not quite as bright for some unknown reason). The Fuji X-T10 did a pretty good job exposing our Far-field shot, producing relatively few clipped highlights at default exposure, though some shadows are quite deep. Very deep shadows contain good detail, but are somewhat noisy and abruptly clipped, and some contain odd color casts. Again, color was just a touch cool with the Auto white balance setting. See the Extremes: Sunlit section below to see how the X-T10's Highlight/Shadow Tone and D-Range settings deal with harsh lighting like this.

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Resolution
~2,300 lines of strong detail from JPEGs, about the same from ACR converted RAW.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 2,300 lines per picture height in the horizontal direction, and to about 2,300 lines per picture height in the vertical direction as well. Complete extinction of the pattern didn't occur before the 4,000 line limit of our chart in both directions. Adobe Camera Raw wasn't able to extract any additional resolution, however it did produce lower amounts of luma moiré near the limits of resolution. As expected, ACR produced very low amounts of chroma moiré even though it normally produces higher from Bayer-filtered cameras, because of the X-Trans sensor's irregular color filter pattern. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Very good detail and sharpness overall, with only minor edge-enhancement artifacts appearing around some high-contrast subjects. Mild noise suppression is visible in the shadows at base ISO.

Sharpness. The Fuji X-T10 captures sharp, detailed images, with only minor edge enhancement artifacts visible on high-contrast subjects such as the relatively thin sharpening "haloes" around the lines and letters of the bottle label above left. Default sharpening seems to be a touch stronger than some prior X-Trans models, but still quite conservative. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows low levels of luminance noise suppression, as the darker areas of the model's hair still show a pretty good amount of detail. Some individual strands do merge together when local contrast is low and as shadows deepen, but performance here is very good for an APS-C sensor. The Fuji X-T10 does a great job at keeping chrominance noise low as well, better than most Bayer-filtered cameras, but it can struggle to resolve fine detail or accurate color with certain subject matter because of its unique color filter arrangement. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the Fuji X-T10 produces sharp JPEG images with very good detail at default settings. Let's see if we can extract better detail from RAW files with Adobe Camera Raw without introducing additional sharpening artifacts:

In the table above, we compare an in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO using default noise reduction and sharpening (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 9.1 using default noise reduction with some strong but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop (250%, radius of 0.3 pixels, and a threshold of 0).

Adobe Camera Raw does a pretty good job here, but doesn't extract significantly more detail than the camera does, though contrast in the our red-leaf fabric is higher. There is a touch more detail in the mosaic crop and perhaps more accurate colors in the monk's garment, but nothing really to write home about. Bottom line: Fuji's in-camera processing is excellent, and there's very little advantage to shooting RAW in terms of detail reproduction, at least at low ISOs.

ISO & Noise Performance
Excellent high ISO performance for an APS-C sensor.

Like the X-T1, the Fuji X-T10's images are very clean with good detail up to ISO 400. Luminance noise "grain" is quite fine and tight at ISO 800 so there's only a small drop in image quality, and there is very little sign of chrominance noise. At ISO 1,600, noise reduction efforts are little stronger as you'd expect, but fine detail is still very good. ISO 3,200 shows a stronger increase in noise and blurring, but fine detail remains pretty good. At ISO 6,400, luminance noise becomes much more noticeable, though it's still fairly fine-grained, and chrominance noise is still well controlled. Image quality drops off more rapidly at ISO 12,800 and above, with progressively more visible grain, blurring, noise reduction artifacts, and blotchy chroma noise in the shadows. Fine detail at ISOs 25,600 and 51,200 is quite soft with heavy luminance noise accentuated by sharpening artifacts, and chrominance noise in the form of large yellow and purple blotches. Still, noise performance in high ISO JPEGs is very good, among the best we've seen from a 16-megapixel APS-C sensor, and as expected, similar to the X-T1.

We're pixel-peeping to the extreme here though, which isn't always representative of what you see in prints. As always, see the Print Quality section below for maximum recommended print sizes at each ISO.

Extremes: Sunlit, dynamic range and low light tests
Very good overall detail, but mediocre dynamic range in JPEGs at default settings. Very good low-light performance.

Sunlight. The Fuji X-T10 struggled with the harsh lighting of this test at default settings at the base ISO of 200 (which should be best case). We preferred the default exposure overall, because the exposure at +0.3 EV exposure compensation was too bright with too many clipped highlights. Even at default exposure (0 EV), quite a few highlights were blown in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. There are quite a few dark shadows as well, and very deep shadows clip to black rather abruptly, likely in an attempt to hide noise. Overall, the Fuji X-T10's JPEGs performed below average here without any highlight and shadow adjustments, nor any dynamic range enhancement (see below).

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Contrast Adjustment
The Fuji X-T10 does not offer a traditional contrast adjustment. Instead, it offers Shadow and Highlight Tone settings, which let you adjust contrast in highlights and shadows independently. There are five settings each: "Soft", "Medium Soft", "Standard" (default), "Medium Hard", and "Hard."

Shadow and Highlight Tone. Above you can see the effects of three of the five settings for Highlight and Shadow Tone control on our high contrast "Sunlit" Portrait shot. Mouse over the links to load the associated thumbnail and histogram, and click on the links to visit the full resolution image.

Note how the Highlight settings mainly affect the brighter portions of the image, while the Shadow settings impact the darker areas. Both settings can be used simultaneously, giving more flexibility to tune the tone curve at both ends compared to a single contrast setting, though we wish the range of adjustment toward lower contrast was greater as highlights and particularly shadows are still clipped with the "softest" settings.

Above, you can see the effect of the same Highlight and Shadow Tone settings on our Far-field shot.

D-Range is Fuji's name for their dynamic range enhancement technology. D-Range designed to preserve hot highlights, by exposing for highlights and then boosting mid-tones and shadows. There are three levels: DR100 100% (default), DR200 200%, DR400 400%, as well as an Auto mode which can select DR100 or DR200. DR200 is available at ISO 400 and above, while DR400 is available at ISO 800 and above, so the 200% example above was taken at ISO 400, and the 400% and Auto examples were taken at ISO 800. Mouse over the links above to load the corresponding thumbnail image and histogram. Click on the links to get to the full resolution images.

As you can see the images above, the Fuji X-T10's manual D-Range settings were very effective at retaining clipped highlights in our "Sunlit" Portrait shot. As they say, though, there's no free lunch: if you look closely at the full resolution images, you'll see that improved highlight retention comes at a cost of increased noise. This is because the camera's sensitivity needs to be raised to take advantage of the D-Range feature, though that's not much of penalty because the X-T10's high ISO performance is so good. (Note that the Fuji X-T10 does not offer a multi-shot in-camera HDR mode.)

Above, you can see how the various D-Range settings affect our Far-field shot. Here, 100% is ISO 200, 200% is ISO 400 and 400% is ISO 800.

Face Detection. The Fuji X-T10 offers face detection which optimizes both focus and exposure for faces. But as you can see above, enabling it only made a very subtle difference here.

Dynamic Range Analysis
A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work. A full discussion of all the data Imatest produces is really beyond the scope of this review: Visit the Imatest website for details of what the program measures, how it performs its computations, and how to interpret its output.

Note: Recently, we've switched to using DxOMark's dynamic range results because some cameras were exceeding what could measured with a Stouffer T4110 step chart, but DxOMark does not publish results for Fuji X-Trans sensors, probably because they don't support RAW files from those sensors which require more complex demosaicing than standard Bayer-filtered models. So, here we're showing out Imatest results at base ISO. Note that Imatest's Quality Level threshold of Low corresponds to DxOMark's dynamic range signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold of 1.0.

JPEG. The graph at right (click for a larger version) was generated using Imatest's dynamic range analysis for an in-camera Fuji X-T10 JPEG file with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer T4110). At default settings and native base ISO of 200, the results show 9.6 f-stops of total dynamic range, however the range at the "Low" quality threshold is still 9.6 stops and at the "High" threshold, it drops down to only 7.2 stops. Interestingly, that's a bit better than the X-T1 in terms of total dynamic range and also at the Low threshold (9.6 vs 8.8), but less at Medium-High and High quality thresholds. Overall, these scores are below average for an APS-C model, but keep in mind we didn't enable any of the Fuji X-T10's dynamic range enhancement features for this test. Note, that this measurement has a margin of error of about 1/3 f-stop, so differences of less than 0.33 can be ignored when comparing results to other models.

RAW. The graph at right is from the same Stouffer T4110 stepchart image captured as a raw (.RAF) file, processed with Adobe Camera Raw using the Auto setting, then tweaked from there for best results. As can be seen, the score at the highest quality level increased significantly compared to the in-camera JPEG, from 7.2 to 8.9 f-stops, and total dynamic range improved even more from 9.6 to 12.9 f-stops. At the "Low" quality level (matching DxOMark's threshold), total dynamic range is still available (12.9 f-stops). This is decent performance for an APS-C sensor, if not quite as good as the best which can approach 14 f-stops. It's worth noting here is that ACR's default noise reduction settings reduced overall noise somewhat (see the plot in the lower left-hand corner) relative to the levels in the in-camera JPEG, which would tend to boost the dynamic range numbers for the higher quality thresholds.

Low Light. The X-T10 performed well in our low light tests, able to capture bright images down to the lowest light level we test at. The darkest level equates to about 1/16 the brightness of average city street lighting at night, so the Fuji X-T10 should be able to take well-exposed photos in almost any environment in which you can see well enough to walk around in.

Using default noise reduction setting, noise is low at ISO 200 and well-controlled at ISO 3200, though as you'd expect, noise is quite high at the maximum ISO of 51,200 equivalent. We didn't notice any significant issues with hot pixels or heat blooming but some fixed pattern noise could be seen in darker areas at the highest ISO.

Automatic color balance performed well in low light, just a touch cool at one foot-candle shifting to a bit warmer at 1/16 foot-candle.

The camera's Hybrid autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to just above the 1/16 foot-candle light level unassisted, which is quite good. With the AF assist lamp enabled, the Fuji X-T10 was able to focus in complete darkness (as long as the subject was in range of the focus assist lamp).

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Thanks to its larger sensor and Hybrid AF, compact system cameras like the Fuji X-T10 tend to do better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Print Quality
Very good 24x36 inch prints at ISO 100/200, a nice 16 x 20 at ISO 3200, and a usable 5 x 7 at ISO 25,600.

A quick note before we get into the print size breakdown below: The Fujifilm X-T10's JPEG images have pretty well-controlled sharpening, using the default settings. This is a very good thing, in terms of ability to apply careful sharpening in Photoshop, post-capture, but also means that prints made without further sharpening don't have quite as much "pop" as ones from other cameras that, frankly, over-sharpen. While these print quality evaluations are based on default JPEGs without further processing applied, it should be noted that precisely because the X-T10's in-camera sharpening is restrained, careful manual sharpening on the computer could yield up to another full print size at low ISOs.

So with that note, let's take a look at the results...

ISO 100/200 images look good at 24 x 36 inches. They're more crisp-looking at 20 x 30 inches, but per the above note, we'll "call" these at 24x36, with the observation that you might be able to go all the way to 30 x 40 inches with careful sharpening in Photoshop.

ISO 400 prints also look very good at 24 x 36 inches, with just very slight noise when you get right up on the print and squint at it. At anything like normal viewing distances, though, the noise is essentially invisible.

ISO 800 hangs in there quite well at a print size of 20 x 30 inches. There's very slightly more visible noise at this size than ISO 400 at 24 x 36, but it's very well within the range of what we'd call acceptable.

ISO 1600 produces very usable 20 x 30 inch prints at normal viewing distances. 16 x 20 prints are excellent at any viewing distance, but we'll call this at 20 x 30 for actual use, hanging on a wall.

ISO 3200 is often a dividing line for sub-frame cameras, but the X-T10 delivers very good 16 x 20 prints; an excellent result.

IO 6400 performance is very much in line with the general trend for this camera, producing very nice-looking 13 x 19 inch prints. There's just a little noise to be seen here and there, but the images look great overall when printed at this size.

ISO 12,800 sees a more significant degradation in print size, with the X-T10 managing to produce very good-looking 8 x 10 prints, with just a little noise, and a bit more loss of detail in the infamous red fabric swatch.

ISO 25,600 holds up surprisingly well, producing very usable 5 x 7 inch prints; quite an accomplishment for such a high ISO on a camera with an APS-C sized sensor.

ISO 51,200, alas, is pretty marginal, even at a 4 x 6 inch print size. It might be usable if you're just looking for a small image to share on Facebook, but this ISO level is otherwise best avoided.

As time has marched on, Fujifilm has continued to advance the state of the art with their X-Trans sensor technology, as well as their image-processing chops. The X-T10 is quite a bit cheaper than the previous X-T1 which we reviewed two years ago, yet its print quality is a solid step up of a full print size at high ISOs. As noted above, Fujifilm's conservative approach to in-camera sharpening shows up as slightly less definition and pop, but the fact that it creates only minimal "halos" around high-contrast edges means you'll be able to do a lot in Photoshop to bring out crisp details. Overall, the X-T10's high-ISO results are pretty amazing. It delivers exceptionally clean, detailed images at very high ISO levels. If you're shooting in conditions that routinely require you to crank up the ISO to get the shots you want, the Fuji X-T10 might very well be the camera you need.