Fujifilm X-T30 Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Good saturation levels with excellent hue accuracy.

Saturation. The Fuji X-T30 produces images with accurate, pleasing colors using the standard film simulation (Provia) at default settings. The camera pushes most colors by small amounts, dark red, orange and dark green by moderate amounts, but undersaturates aqua and light purple by just a bit. Default mean saturation at the base ISO of 160 was 107.6% (7.6% oversaturated), which is a little lower than average these days, but quite pleasing and a little more realistic than most cameras. You can of course tweak saturation and/or select a different film simulation mode if the default is not to your taste. Mean saturation remained quite consistent as ISO was increased, reaching a max of 108.8% at the extended ISO of 25,600. 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-T30 rendered pleasant Caucasian skin tones when using auto white balance in simulated daylight. Results were quite pleasing, with a healthy-looking pinkish tint. (Here, too, the X-T30's saturation and/or film mode options may come into play for some users, letting them tweak the color of 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-T30 produced only a few color shifts relative to the ideal reproduction of hues, and has excellent hue accuracy overall. The largest shift is in cyan toward blue, however 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 3.85 (lower numbers are better), 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 too warm, but much better results with the Manual setting. Slightly above average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under typical incandescent lighting, color balance was quite warm using the Auto setting, with a fairly strong red/pink cast. Results with the Incandescent white balance setting were also too warm, with a strong yellow/orange cast. The Manual white balance setting was much more accurate, though it had a slight green bias. The X-T30 required +0.7 EV exposure compensation here while most cameras need about +0.3 EV for this scene, though the images are a little bright. 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 and exposure outdoors.

In simulated daylight, the Fuji X-T30 produced very nice color and exposure at default settings. The X-T30's default exposure using aperture priority AE and multi-segment metering was pretty good for our "Sunlit" Portrait shot when using Auto white balance, just a bit hot. This is much better than average exposure accuracy as most cameras need +0.7 EV to keep the face bright for this shot, but it did lead to blown highlights in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. Skin tones were pleasing, with a healthy-looking pinkish tint that's not too overdone with Auto white balance, and Manual (Custom) WB wasn't much different (just a touch warmer in the face, though a bit brighter for some reason). See the "Extremes: Sunlit..." section below to see how the X-T30's Highlight/Shadow Tone and D-Range settings help deal with harsh lighting like this.

Resolution
~3,050 lines of strong detail from JPEGs, about the same from ACR-converted RAW.

Our in-camera JPEG resolution chart shot revealed sharp, distinct line patterns up to just over 3,050 lines per picture height in the horizontal direction, and to just over 3,050 lines per picture height in the vertical direction as well. Some may argue for higher numbers, but lines begin to merge at higher resolutions. 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 slightly lower amounts of luma moiré near the limits of resolution. Interestingly, ACR produced more false colors than the camera's processing, though. And in both versions, we see more than the usual dark or bright pixels between within the lines, which are likely caused by less than perfect interpolation of PDAF photosites. 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.

Sharpness & Detail
Sharp images at default settings, with only minor edge-enhancement artifacts appearing around high-contrast subjects. Mild noise suppression is visible in the shadows at base ISO.

Sharpness. The Fuji X-T30 captures fairly sharp images by default, though there are some minor edge enhancement artifacts visible along high-contrast edges such as the relatively thin but bright sharpening "haloes" around the lines and letters of the bottle label above left. Default sharpening seems to be a good compromise between sharpness and artifacts. 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 to moderate levels of luminance noise suppression, as the darker areas of the model's hair still show a very good amount of detail. Some individual strands do merge together when local contrast is low and as shadows deepen, but performance here is excellent for an APS-C sensor. The Fuji X-T30 also does a great job at keeping chrominance noise low, better than most Bayer-filtered cameras, but it can struggle to resolve fine detail or accurate color in certain fine 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-T30 produces fairly sharp JPEG image with very good detail at default settings. Let's see how an Adobe Camera Raw conversion with relatively strong unsharp mask sharpening compares.

In the table above, we compare an in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO (160) using default noise reduction and sharpening (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 9.1 via DNG Converter 11.3 using default noise reduction with quite strong but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop. (In this case, we used USM of 300%, 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 and subtle detail in the our red-leaf fabric is noticeably better. There is a touch more detail in the mosaic crop and perhaps slightly more accurate colors, but nothing really to write home about, and the in-camera JPEGs look smoother, have better contrast and brighter colors. The strong sharpening required to keep images reasonably sharp does tend to exacerbate noise, though, as can be seen in the background of the first set of crops, however that can be mitigated by experimenting with the sharpening settings, or using some luminance noise reduction. Bottom line: Fuji's in-camera processing is excellent, and there isn't much advantage to shooting RAW in terms of detail reproduction, at least with Adobe Camera Raw and at low ISOs.

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

The Fuji X-T30's images are quite clean with good detail up to ISO 800, with low, fine-grained luma noise and very little chroma noise. At ISO 1600, luminance noise is a little stronger as you'd expect, but fine detail is still very good with almost no chroma noise. ISO 3200 shows a larger increase in noise and blurring, but fine detail remains pretty good, again with almost no chroma noise. At ISO 6400 luminance noise becomes more noticeable along with noise reduction artifacts, though noise still fairly fine-grained, and chroma noise is still well-controlled. Image quality appears to drop off more rapidly at ISO 12,800 and above, with progressively more visible noise "grain", stronger blurring and more noticeable noise reduction artifacts. Fine detail at ISOs 25,600 and 51,200 is quite soft with heavy luminance noise accentuated by sharpening artifacts, as well as chrominance noise in the form of large but fairly subtle yellow and purple blotches. All-in-all, high ISO noise performance is excellent for an APS-C camera, though noise appears to be slightly higher than its 24-megapixel predecessor, the X-T20.

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
Decent dynamic range in JPEGs at default settings. Very good low-light AF performance.

Sunlight. The Fuji X-T30 struggled a bit with the harsh lighting of this test at default settings at the base ISO of 160 (which should be best case). We preferred the default exposure (0 EV) overall here, because the exposure at +0.3 EV exposure compensation was too bright with far too many clipped highlights. Still, at default exposure, a few highlights were blown in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. There are also some very deep shadows, though they don't appear to be clipped to black as abruptly as older Fuji's did. (Fuji's default Provia film simulation is known for high contrast and crushed shadows but it appears it's been tweaked.) Overall, the Fuji X-T30's JPEGs performed about average here in terms of dynamic range, without the help of 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.)

Face/Eye Detection
The Fuji X-T30 has the ability to detect faces and eyes, and adjust exposure and focus accordingly. Options available are Face On / Eye Off, Face On / Eye Auto, Face On / Right Eye Priority, Face On / Left Eye Priority and Face Off / Eye Off.

As you can see in the examples above, the center image with face and eye detection enabled is actually slightly dimmer than with it off on the left, as the X-T30 tended to expose this shot a little hot by default. Full Auto mode (right) is also a bit bright, but the camera selected a much wider aperture of f/2.8, a faster shutter speed of 1/480s, a higher ISO (320) and used the DR Auto (200%) setting (see below) for better shadow and highlight retention.

Contrast Adjustment
The Fuji X-T30 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 seven settings each on the X-T30, ranging from -2 to +5.

Shadow and Highlight Tone. Above you can see the effects the seven settings for Highlight and Shadow Tone control on our high-contrast "Sunlit" Portrait shot. Mouse over the links to load the associated thumbnail 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 adjust the tone curve at both ends compared to a single contrast setting. Nice.

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 320 and above, while DR400 is available at ISO 640 and above. Mouse over the links above to load the corresponding thumbnail image. Click on the links to get to the full resolution images.

As you can see the images above, the Fuji X-T30's higher D-Range settings were effective at toning down and preserving highlights. As they say, though, there's no free lunch, because 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-T30's noise performance is so good. (Note that the Fuji X-T30 does not offer a multi-shot in-camera HDR mode.)

D-Range Priority The Fuji X-T30 offers a mode called Dynamic Range Priority, which appears to be an automatic combination of Highlight Tone, Shadow Tone and D-Range. It offers three settings: Auto, Strong, Weak and Off. Weak is available at sensitivities from ISO 320 to 12,800 and Strong is available at ISO 640 to 12,800. Mouse over the links above to compare settings, and click on the links to access full resolution versions.

Dynamic Range Analysis (RAW mode)
While we once performed our own dynamic range measurements based on in-camera JPEGs as well as converted RAW images (when the camera was supported by Adobe Camera Raw), we've switched to using DxO Labs' results from their DxOMark website. As technology advanced, the dynamic range of modern high-end cameras in some cases exceeded the range of the Stouffer T4110 density scale that we used for our own measurements. DxO's approach based on RAW data before demosaicing is also more revealing, because it measures the fundamental dynamic range of the sensor, irrespective of whatever processing is applied to JPEGs, or to RAW data by off-the-shelf conversion software.

In the following, we use DxO's "Print" dynamic range results, which are scaled based on camera resolution. As the name suggests, this scaling corresponds to the situation in which you print at a given size, regardless of how many megapixels the camera might have. (In other words, if you've decided to make a 13x19 inch print, that's the size you're printing, whether the camera's resolution is 16 or 300 megapixels.) Also note that DxO Labs uses a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold of 1 when defining the lower boundary of acceptable luminance noise in their dynamic range measurements, which corresponds to the "Low Quality" threshold of the Imatest software we used to use for this measurement.

Unfortunately, DxOMark has not tested the X-T30 as of this writing (and we doubt they ever will). The website photonstophotos.com has however tested the X-T30. As expected, they found its dynamic range to be nearly identical to the X-T3's, and improved over the X-T20's at the low and high ends of the sensitivity range. Compared to the Sony A6400, a leading APS-C mirrorless camera, the X-T30 does at least as good or better across the ISO range. The X-T30 doesn't do quite as well as the aging Nikon D7200 (one of the top performing APS-C DSLRs in terms of DR) at base ISO, though it's pretty much neck-and-neck with the D7200 up to ISO 800, then exceeds it significantly at higher ISOs thanks to its dual gain design. To compare the X-T30's dynamic range with the X-T20, X-T3, A6400 and D7200, click here.

Bottom line: Very good dynamic range for an APS-C camera from RAW files.

Low Light AF. The Fuji X-T30's hybrid autofocus system was able to focus in extremely low light. With our legacy low-contrast AF target, the camera was able to focus down to about -4.4 EV unassisted with an f/2.8 lens in our tests, which is very good. With our newer high-contrast AF target, the X-T30 was able to autofocus down to about -5.6 EV unassisted, which is excellent. The Fuji X-T30 also has a built AF assist lamp, which lets it autofocus in complete darkness as long as the subject is in range and has sufficient contrast.

NOTE: This low-light AF 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, mirrorless cameras like the Fuji X-T30 tend to do better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Built-in Flash
A fairly weak built-in flash.

Our standard Indoor Portrait test scene was well exposed with +0.3 EV flash exposure compensation using Auto ISO at f/4. The camera boosted ISO sensitivity to 2500, though, indicating a fairly weak flash, though that's pretty typical. The relatively high ISO led to quite a warm image with Auto white balance, due to the ambient lighting.