Fuji X-A3 First Shots: Giving the competition a run for their money at ISO 3200
posted Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 5:48 AM EST
Click here to see our Fuji X-A3 First Shots
We've been fans of the image quality from this entry-level X-A series since its debut with the X-A1 several years ago. The line has been known for terrific image quality for the price, and it has now stepped into the 24mp arena with the Fuji X-A3. We finally got our hands on a production sample, and it's now made its way through the first leg of its journey through our test laboratory.
Let the debates and pixel-peeping begin, and I'll start the discussion by saying that this is the best looking lab image of our Still Life test target I have yet seen at ISO 3200 from any camera at or near this price. It is very clean for that gain setting in tricky areas like the shadows behind the bottles of our Still Life test target, and yet retains acceptable fine detail in areas such as the mosaic tile pattern in the bottle.
In order to begin the comparisons, I've taken 1:1 crops from the Canon T7i, Nikon D5600 and Sony A6500, three current competitors all in the 24mp mid-priced APS-C camp. Of course, as many of you already know, you can compare the X-A3 at all available ISO settings to any camera we've ever tested in our world-renown Comparometer.
Fuji X-A3 vs. Canon T7i
Not much of a comparison here, as the X-A3 is simply able to resolve much more fine detail with
much less in the way of apparent noise than the Canon T7i at the same gain setting.
Fuji X-A3 vs. Nikon D5600
The D5600 comes as close as any camera of the three listed here for a relatively clean image
with good fine detail, but still can't quite match stride with the X-A3 quality level overall.
Fuji X-A3 vs. Sony A6500
The A6500 struggles with mottled noise processing artifacts in the shadows behind the bottles, and also has a bit of trouble resolving the definition of the bottle on the curve of the bottle neck. It loses stride in most all respects to the X-A3 image here at ISO 3200.
Dive in for more content below, and stay tuned for our forthcoming Field Tests from the great outdoors with the Fuji X-A3!
Fuji X-A3:
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