Enter the Fujifilm X-T5

The urge to upgrade to the newly released Fujifilm X-T5 was strong and was solidified by fighting with the autofocus system of my old (hint hint) X-Pro3 in a dimly lit gym trying to keep track of my daughter doing her gymnastics routine.  After that night of struggling with the focus and the camera just getting in my way, I made a rash decision to sell the X-Pro3 and try to find an X-T5 in stock somewhere.  Lo and behold, within 30 minutes of listing the X-Pro3 kit for sale it sold and I managed to find an in stock silver X-T5 that arrived 2 days later.

Watching all of the reviews for the X-T5 and X-H2 gave me confidence that the new changes to the AF system would greatly help out shooting fast action and pretty much everything else.  It may not be up to the level of the newest Sony’s, but it appeared to be a huge leap over previous Fuji camera’s.  The new IBIS system would be wonderful to have when shooting lenses without OIS, which is most of what I own.  The bigger viewfinder would make framing easier and the controls were overall a bit better than the X-Pro3 so I wouldn’t have to menu dive as much.

Jumping on the X-T5 bandwagon seemed to be the correct decision, but I was still hesitant.  What finally convinced me was thinking about how little I was using the OVF vs. the EVF on the X-Pro3. I have been loving the Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 manual focus lens, and I tried to love using the OVF with the little corner EVF for focusing, but I found that I was paying way too much attention to the corner of the viewfinder and neglecting the rest, so I would just switch back to the EVF.  At that point, the X-Pro3 became just another camera, and with that, it was sold.

The X-T5 arrived just a few minutes before I had to take my daughter to gymnastics practice, so I quickly unboxed, connected a portable USB battery charger and drove us there.  After a very quick setup, one of the first pictures I grabbed was this:

The gym was dimly lit, there was a lot of background clutter to confuse the AF system and my shutter speed was at 1/1000, but the camera stuck the focus perfectly.  We were off to a good start.

Next came some pet portraits at night. I was playing around with trying to balance ambient light from the fireplace and Christmas Tree lights with just a touch of fill flash through a small 12″ round softbox.  I also processed these RAW files with Fuji’s Eterna LUT meant for their video files through darktable.  The animal autofocus worked great and picked up both the dog and cat without issues.  More points for the X-T5.

Next up was some ice hockey shots for a friend.  I was using AF-C mode with tracking and for the most part, the camera AF nailed it.  There were some dropped focus, but the hit rate was very good considering and much better than what the older X series cameras could do.  I haven’t done enough playing around with the AF-C custom modes to fully dial the camera in, but this is a big step up.

Lastly we go back to the cat of the house.  These were some ambient light shots I wanted to try with a slow shutter speed of 1/30 to see how the IBIS worked.  Zooming in 100% and I couldn’t tell the shutter speed was that slow.

All in all, I’m loving the X-T5 so far.  The camera is slimmed down from the X-T4 (which I owned, but never fell in love with) and it just feels so dialed in.  While the 40MP are nice to have, the biggest upgrade for me is the autofocus system.  I’m looking forward to using it more.