Fujifilm X30 Performance

Generally excellent performance in our tests.

The Fuji X30 is turned on by rotating the zoom lens from the Off position to the desired focal length. We aren't setup to measure this type of power-on sequence electronically, but it's safe to say it takes over 2 seconds, especially if you include removing the lens cap first. Switching from Play to Record mode is also somewhat slow, as it requires two presses of the shutter button.

Looking at the Fuji X30's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times using AF-S (single-shot AF) mode using the center AF point (our standard test), full autofocus shutter lag was interesting, in that the more we zoomed, the faster it became. Full AF lag was reasonably fast at wide angle at 0.284 second, fast at medium focal length at 0.172 second at incredibly fast at full telephoto, at only 0.058 second. And enabling the flash at medium focal length only added a small delay, for a lag of 0.179 second.

Manual focus lag was a incredibly fast at only 0.039 second, and prefocused shutter lag was 0.021 second, also very fast. (We've seen prefocused shutter lag this fast and even faster before for mirrorless and pocket cameras, but manual focus lag isn't usually this fast.)

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.

In single-shot mode, cycle times were good for its class, at an average of about 0.7 seconds for JPEGs or RAW+JPEG. (Note that we no longer test single-shot with just RAW files as results will be between JPEG and RAW+JPEG, and we no longer test buffer depth in single-shot mode either.)

In Continuous Top Super High mode (the X30's highest-speed full-res burst mode with deepest buffers), the X30 captured 15 Large/Fine JPEG frames at about 11.4 frames-per-second, 11 RAW frames at 9 fps, and 11 RAW+JPEG frames at 8.9 fps. Very good performance here, though slightly short of Fuji's 12 fps spec. There are also High (9 fps), Middle (6 fps) and Low (3 fps) settings, however we did not test those.

Buffer depths were decent but not great, ranging from 15 frames when shooting best quality JPEGs, to 11 frames when shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG before the camera slowed down. (Note that our target was designed to be difficult to compress, so buffer depths with real-world images may be greater, particularly when shooting JPEGs.) Clearing was reasonably fast with a fast card, even with RAW files.

The Fuji X30's flash recycled in about 5.3 seconds after a full-power discharge on average, which is slow for its size.

Bottom line, the Fuji X30's performance is generally excellent, with fast autofocus, very low shutter lag and very fast burst modes. Power-up and flash recycling are somewhat slow and buffers could be deeper, though.

Battery Life
Above average battery life for its class when using the LCD.

The Fuji X30 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with a single battery and USB adapter for in-camera charging. Battery life is CIPA-rated for 470 shots per charge when using the LCD, which includes 50% flash shots. That's very good, however Fuji does not seem to publish battery life when using the EVF.

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))