• PROS

  • Proven 26MP APS-C image sensor.
  • Quick, accurate autofocus.
  • Up to 30fps Raw capture.
  • EVF and built-in flash.
  • Tilting touch LCD.
  • Tactile controls.
  • 4K video.
  • Wi-Fi.
•  

• CONS

  • Body isn't weather-sealed.
  • Restricted maximum video clip length.
  • No in-body stabilization.
  • Small capture buffer.
  • Memory card slot limited to UHS-I speed.

The Fujifilm X-T30 ($899.95, body only) is the company's latest midrange mirrorless camera. It makes a few changes from the previous-generation X-T20 outside, and overhauls the internals to set it well ahead of the X-20 from a performance perspective. It can't do absolutely everything the higher-priced X-T3 can, but it's not far off. The X-T30 is an excellent camera for any enthusiast who loves the dial-based approach to exposure control, and earns our Editors' Choice for its performance and image quality.

Midrange for Enthusiasts

The X-T30's frame is about the same size as the two models that preceded it, the X-T10 and the X-T20. It measures 3.3 by 4.7 by 1.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 13.5 ounces with memory card and battery loaded.

The handgrip is fairly shallow, and while I find it adequate for most use, I wish it was a little deeper when pairing the camera with the big XF 100-400mm zoom. Fujifilm has made the rear thumb rest deeper than the X-T20's to improve stability with big glass, so the combination isn't unworkable, but I'd suggest an X-T3 or X-H1 if big lenses are a part of your life.

Fujifilm is bringing the X-T30 ($899.00 at Amazon) to market in three colors. You can opt for the all black-body, which we received for review, or the classic silver-and-black look. They'll be joined in June by a version in charcoal silver, which is quite striking in person.

I think the X-T30 looks good in any of the three finishes, a mix of sharp angles and rounded edges that give the body its retro look. Most compatible lenses are available in a black finish only, with a few zooms also sold in silver, so keep that in mind if you care as much about how your camera looks as you do about the quality of the images it's able to capture.

If you already have some XF lenses, you can buy the X-T30 without a bundled zoom. If you are just starting out, Fujifilm offers two kit options. One has the premium XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS for $1,299.95, the other includes the compact XC 15-45mm F3.5-5.6 OIS PZ for $999.95.

The normal array of Fujifilm features are included. The X-T30 supports standard Raw and JPG capture, but also includes a number of profiles for JPG shooters who want an analog look. You can choose from different film looks, including the oversaturated Velvia (great for sunsets and landscapes), the classic Kodachrome (Fujifilm calls it Classic Chrome, but we know what it is), and the black-and-white Acros, among others.

Even if you shoot in Raw format, you can apply any look to any image in-camera, even after it's been shot, and recent updates to Adobe Lightroom Classic CC also allow you to apply any film look available in-camera to a Raw image from the comfort of your editing workstation. The Raw images I converted to Classic Chrome didn't match the out-of-camera JPGs perfectly, but they're pretty close.

A note on Lightroom. The X-T30 is the first camera I've seen from Fujifilm that applies baked-in lens profile corrections to images. Unlike typical Adobe lens profiles, which can be turned on or off, these can't be disabled. You may not mind—the corrections remove distortion and chromatic aberration from images, which is typically a good thing. This may be a glimpse at the future when it comes to working with images in Adobe software, as Nikon has taken advantage of the same technology to enforce software corrections for its Z lens system. If desired, you can sidestep this by using a different Raw converter. I don't think you should worry about turning them off—the corrections are beneficial—but I don't like having the option to toggle them taken away.

Tactile Photography

Like the models that came before it, the X-T30 bucks the assumption that photographers shopping for an affordable camera want dumbed-down controls. Fujifilm cameras are all about physical controls. That said, fully automatic operation is an option.

The X-T30 is small, but makes excellent use of the available surface area. There are two controls accessible via the front panel, the front command dial and a toggle switch to change between Single, Continuous, or Manual focus modes. It's positioned at the bottom left corner and is prominent enough that you can find it by feel alone—useful if you want to make a change to the focus mode without taking the camera away from your eye.

The top plate includes a trio of dials. At the far left you'll find the Drive control. Here you can switch between Single or Continuous capture, switch to the movie mode, play with art filters and in-camera panoramic capture, or set up automated bracketing. There are two banks for bracketing settings, both of which are configurable via the menu. In addition to standard exposure bracketing, the X-T30 supports ISO, film simulation, white balance, dynamic range, and focus point bracketing—a useful tool for macro photography.

The lever to raise the built-in flash is nestled into the side of the Drive dial. You can also add an external flash—the X-T30 has an industry-standard hot shoe, centered above the EVF. To its right is a classic Shutter dial, with settings from 1 second through 1/4,000-second, as well as Automatic, Time, and Bulb options. The dial turns comfortably, but isn't a 360-degree design—if you want to move from one extreme (Bulb) to the other (Automatic), you'll have to turn it a few times. Time is used for shutter speeds shorter than 1/4,000-second—utilizing the electronic shutter—or longer than 1 second, as lengthy as 15 minutes.

The EV compensation dial turns all the way around, and supports adjustment from -3 to +3EV in third-stop increments. It also has a C setting to move EV control to the front command dial for more extensive (+/-5EV) adjustment. The dial doesn't have any sort of lock, but does require a little bit of effort to turn. I didn't run into issues where it was adjusted inadvertently when being put into or pulled out of a camera bag, which is a concern with non-locking dials.

Also up top is the shutter release—it's an old-school design with a thread, so you can use a mechanical release cable or soft release button. The On/Off switch surrounds the shutter. There's another lever, next to the Shutter dial, that switches from manual to fully automatic operation. If you know what you're doing with the camera you'll want to avoid the Auto setting, but it comes in handy when passing the X-T30 off to a friend or family member to grab a quick shot.

Finally up top is the Fn button. It's in an awkward place, a little too close to the EV dial, but also a little too close to the edge of the body. It's programmable; by default, it turns on Boost Mode, which makes the EVF a little brighter and ups its refresh rate from 60fps to 100fps, a benefit when tracking fast-moving subjects.

Delete and Play buttons are located at the top left corner of the rear plate, next to the EVF. The viewfinder is flanked by a diopter, to adjust its focus to match your eyesight, and a View Mode button to toggle between it, the rear LCD, or to utilize the camera's eye sensor for automatic switching. The rear command dial is in the same row, but to the right of the EVF. It doubles as a button and is flanked by exposure and focus lock buttons (AE-L and AF-L, respectively).

The big change in controls, versus the X-T20, is apparent when you look to the right of the LCD. The four-way directional pad is gone, replaced by a small eight-way joystick used for menu navigation and to control the active focus area. Menu/OK and Display/Back buttons sit directly below it.

The Q button, which brings up a customizable on-screen control display, has moved to the rear protrusion that serves as a thumb rest. It makes it easier to find and press by feel, which is a good thing as the Q menu is a useful and powerful interface. If you buy an X-T30 and find yourself accidentally launching the Q menu frequently—something I suffered with during testing—install 1.01 firmware update. It adds a slight delay to the Q button response, much like what macOS does with the Caps Lock key, so you won't find yourself launching it accidentally.

The Q screen has become a familiar sight for Fujiflm photographers. It's a simple interface—a gray background with 16 banks of settings. The arrangement and options shown can be set to match your preferences, so if you're not happy with the default layout, you can fine-tune it. There are dozens of options available, including quick access to up to seven customizable profiles for quick changes to settings. You can set up one profile for mechanical shutter shooting and one for high-speed 30fps capture with the electronic shutter if desired—a change that would normally take a dive into the menus to make.

The rear LCD is a 3-inch panel with touch support. It's a little thinner than the one found on the X-T20, so it sits flush with the body. The screen is articulated—it can tilt to face up or down. But it doesn't have the sideways articulation you get with the pricier X-T3, nor is it as versatile as the swing-out vari-angle display Canon uses for its EOS M50 mirrorless camera.

The X-T30's electronic viewfinder is an OLED panel with a 2.36-million-dot resolution—pretty par for the course in this price range. Even without Boost Mode enabled, the 60fps refresh rate is speedy, and fine for most disciplines of photography. Turning on Boost ups the display to 100fps, which is useful when photographing sports, kids, wildlife, and other fast-moving subjects.

I would have liked Fujifilm to make the EVF a bit bigger to the eye. It's one of the areas where the Sony a6400 betters it. The X-T30 has a 0.62x magnification rating, which feels a little dated in 2019. The a6400's EVF equals the X-T30 in resolution, but is a little bit larger to the eye (0.70x).

Connectivity and Power

The X-T30 includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. You can pair it with an Android or iOS device for remote control and image transfer, both via the free Fujifilm Cam Remote app. The addition of Bluetooth makes pairing a smoother process than with older Fujifilm cameras that don't have it. I was able to connect the X-T30 to my iPhone in under a minute.

The camera has a single SD card slot. It supports the SD, SDHC, and SDXC formats, but only at UHS-I speeds. We see the same limitation with the Sony a6400. Both Fujifilm and Sony reserve faster UHS-II support to pricier bodies.

The memory card slot is located in the battery compartment, accessible via the bottom plate. The X-T30 is rated for 385 shots or 45 minutes of video per charge. It's not what you get with larger mirrorless models, which typically house larger batteries, or SLRs. You'll probably want to get a spare battery or carry a portable USB battery and USB-C cable to charge the camera in the field.

A trio of ports sit under a panel on the left. There's USB-C for data transfer and power delivery—the X-T30 is able to operate while the battery charges via USB. There's also a Mic/Remote port, but it uses the oddball 2.5mm size, so you'll need to get an adapter for most microphones.

The X-T30 doesn't have a headphone jack for audio monitoring, but does send audio out via its USB-C port to compatible headphones. There's also a micro HDMI output port.

Performance, Imaging, and Video

The X-T30 delivers performance that is very much in line with the pricier X-T3, albeit with some restrictions, notably a smaller buffer. It's just as fast, finding focus in less than 0.05-second and grabbing the first shot after powering up in about 1.3 seconds.

The camera can track and focus subjects at 8fps using the mechanical shutter, just shy of the 11fps you get with the Sony a6400 and X-T3. It also has an electronic shutter option that can push the speed to 20fps at full resolution, or to 30fps with a slight sensor crop (1.25x) and 16.6MP output. Both high-speed capture modes work when shooting Raw, but be aware that the X-T30's buffer is small.

The electronic shutter can induce banding when photographing under certain types of artificial light—LED is typically the culprit. We saw it in tests of the X-T3; this isn't an issue unique to Fujifilm cameras, competitors with electronic shutter functions are prone to the same issues with pulsating light frequency. Using a longer shutter speed, or opting for the mechanical shutter when a short speed is required to freeze action, is necessary when working under these types of lights.

The number of shots you can capture before the camera's buffer fills is limited, especially if you use Raw capture. Expect about 16 uncompressed or 18 compressed Raw shots to fit, and you'll wait about 50 seconds for all of the uncompressed images to write to a card, or 30 seconds for compressed photos. (Fujifilm states that its Raw compression is lossless.) If you opt for JPG capture, the buffer can handle about 90 shots, and it clears to a card in about 13 seconds.

The camera also supports a pre-shot buffer when using the electronic shutter. Holding the shutter down halfway not only engages autofocus, but continuously keeps the last ten images in memory—a full press records those ten shots to memory, and continues to shoot another 12 photos at 30fps. The duration extends to 22 shots at 20fps and 68 images at 10fps.

The autofocus system is essentially the same as the X-T3—the X-T30 actually offers some enhancements, which are coming to the X-T3 via a firmware update. In practice, it performs quite well. It locks focus quickly, supports eye and face detection for human subjects, and can track moving targets with ease.

There are a number of different focus modes available. You can opt for the wide setting, where the camera makes the decision on what to focus, or you can opt to manually select your focus point; the rear joystick comes in very handy here, as it makes it very quick to move the focus point from one area of the frame to another.

You can change the size of the point—use a very small one for fine precision, or a large one when moving the focus quickly is a priority. There is also a tracking option with a flexible spot—place it over your target in AF-C mode, and the box will move through the frame along with your subject.

The X-T30's autofocus system is exceptional when you consider its price. To date, the best focus we've seen in a camera around this range is the Sony a6400, which competes with models that sell for much more. The X-T30 just about matches it—the two systems aren't identical in operation, but both will net crisply focused images, even in difficult situations.

A Few Pixels More

About 24MP of resolution is standard across the industry when it comes to APS-C sensors. Samsung put out a couple of models with 28MP chips, but then promptly decided to quit the camera business, leaving its customers in a lurch. Fujifilm isn't going anywhere, but has opted to use a 26MP sensor design in recent models, starting with the X-T3 and continuing with the X-T30. Fuji typically standardizes sensors across its lineup, so I'd expect to see this 26MP chip in more models to come.

Image quality is absolutely identical to the X-T3, which we reviewed late last year. For JPGs, the X-T30 captures photos with excellent detail and little visible grain through ISO 1600. There's a bit of contrast loss and smudging around the edges at ISO 3200, and it's just a little more of an issue at ISO 6400 and 12800. Output is on the blurry side at the top ISO 25600 and 51200 settings.

All of our JPG tests were done with the Standard film simulation, but the camera has other built-in looks available. Fujifilm calls back to its analog heritage with the muted look of Classic Chrome, the saturated Velvia, and the soft focus Astia, among others. Each has a customizable level of grain and, for the black-and-white-modes, the simulated effects of an optical green, yellow, or red filter are available. You can also enable a Color Chrome effect, which better preserves detail when photographing subjects with extremely saturated colors, like spring flowers, for example.

Raw capture is also an option. As mentioned above, the X-T30 applies in-camera corrections for lenses, even for Raw images. But it doesn't change processing settings for images when loading, like we saw with the Nikon Z 6 and Z 7. We processed our Raw test images (included in the slideshow that accompanies this review), with Adobe's default settings applied in the latest version of Lightroom Classic CC.

Raw image quality is among the best you'll find in an APS-C camera. Images show strong detail with little noise through ISO 3200. There's some grain at ISO 6400, but it's not overwhelming. Images look a bit rough at ISO 12800 and 25600. At ISO 51200 the noise overtakes the image, but Raw output definitely shows a little more information than the JPG.

Shooting in Raw isn't just about noise control. The ability to capture images with more dynamic range than a JPG can manage is a real benefit. If you capture in Raw format you can rein in highlights and open up shadows. The image above is a very quick shot—I essentially pointed the camera toward a pigeon that had just taken flight and jammed the shutter down, praying the focus point would find its mark. It did, but where the JPG shows a blown-out white sky, you can see from the processed Raw photo below that it is possible to get more range out of the scene.

Lightroom now supports all of the same film modes that you can get in-camera, so if you like Fujifilm's JPG output (and there's a lot to like about it), you can get the same looks and also enjoy some flexibility in toning photos to taste. In-camera Raw processing is also available, so if you shoot an image in Velvia mode and would prefer it in Classic Chrome, it's only a few button presses away.

High-Quality 4K

Fujifilm has certainly stepped up its video quality over the past year. It started with the X-H1 ($1,649.00 at Amazon) , still the only X camera with in-body stabilization. The first two clips in our video below were shot with the 16mm F2.8 lens, which doesn't have stabilization, while the rest were with the stabilized 100-400mm. Everything was shot handheld.

The X-T30 doesn't quite match the X-H1 or X-T3 in features, although it's not far off. Its internal recording is limited to 4:2:0 at 8-bit quality, though its HDMI port carries a clean 4:2:2 10-bit signal so pro-level, external recording is an option.

The X-T3 can do 10-bit internally, and it also supports 60fps capture at 4K—the X-T30 tops out at 30fps when reocrding in 4K UHD or DCI resolution. Despite some limitations when compared with its pricier siblings, the X-T30 is very capable, even if it doesn't have IBIS. It supports 4K recording at up to 200Mbps, but does limit clips to 10 minutes. You can also record at 1080p for up to 15 minutes at a time. If recording long-form clips is required, the Sony a6400 is able to record continuously until it runs out of battery or your memory card fills up.

There are a number of video profiles available, including all of the same film looks for shooting stills. The camera does have Eterna, which was introduced with the X-H1, and is targeted for video use. It also has a flat profile, F-Log, which is available for both internal and external recording.

A Compact Dynamo

I like the approach that Fujifilm has taken with the X-T30. Instead of artificially limiting features, it has put almost everything from the pricier X-T3 into a smaller, more affordable body. You get the same sensor, image processor, and autofocus system, so you're not losing any sort of focus speed or image quality by opting for the lesser-priced option.

There are some differences. The X-T3 has a deeper shooting buffer, dual card slots with faster write speeds, weather protection, 10-bit video, and some other luxuries that you'd expect from a camera priced at $1,500. That the X-T30 gets most of the way there for $900 is no small feat.

The camera's closet competition in price, design, and capabilities is the Sony a6400, which earned Editors' Choice marks when we reviewed it. The X-T30 does some things better than the a6400. Its ergonomic design is stronger, especially now that the Q button isn't overly sensitive, and Fujifilm has a very good library of dedicated APS-C lenses. With Sony, you may find yourself buying full-frame FE glass on occasion to fill some gaps in its APS-C line, but you get unlimited recording time for video clips, a slightly faster maximum burst rate, and a forward-facing LCD.

Both are excellent cameras. I'll typically recommend one product over another, but they are so close in capabilities and performance, and different enough in design philosophy, that there's room for two Editors' Choice winners here.

Fujifilm X-T30 Specs

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