Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Some background: I have been an avid photographer for 35 years. My days shooting film are still fondly remembered. I've owned nearly every Canon and Nikon DSLR ever made. I am (was?) a Nikon shooter and a Leica rangefinder shooter, but decided about 6 months ago to give mirrorless systems a try. My first was a Sony NEX-5N and then a Sony NEX-7. Both do well, but are very "digital." My hopes for the X-Pro1 were that it would be a "Leica with digital on the side." It isn't. Unfortunately, it does neither "digital" well nor "analog" well. On the digital side, the autofocus is ... bad. I returned a Sigma SD-1 for similar reasons. It can't focus in all but the best light. When the light gets poor, it hunts. The hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder is a nice idea in theory. But Fuji blew it. The EVF has far too slow a refresh rate. So what you see when you press the shutter isn't what you're going to get at the end. Furthermore, the optical finder's display goes strangely cloudy/foggy when the brightlines are illuminated. This is worse in the dark. The digital side some more: the central control dial is, as Amadou Diallo said on his dpreview "First impressions," "strangely under-utilized." I can't agree more. In most modes, the control dial does nothing. Also, the "Q" menu is a nice idea, but it only goes away if you press the "Q" again. If you press the shutter half way, it does not go away. That's not the usual and expected behavior. This would be like having the central PRNDL in a car replaced with DRPLN or somesuch. In general, there are many UI features that have this kind of "hey, that didn't do what I expected" kind of quirkiness. The eye detection for the OVF/EVF is not well executed, sadly. I wear glasses. It doesn't do the right thing and enable the OVF/EVF half of the time. I resorted to switching it to viewfinder only. The annoyance there is that when the preview of a shot pops up after the exposure, it only does so in the viewfinder and not the larger monitor. The build quality. Yes, it's "good," but this is not an extremely solid camera. I was expecting something with a more solid feel. Each of the NEX-7, D7000, Epson R-D1 or even Panasonic GF1 felt more solid in the hand than this. It's metal clad, yes, but feels less dense than it should. The shutter speed dial is cheaper feeling than it should be. I was shocked, picking this up, that for a $1700 camera the quality wasn't better. Some might say "hey, why are you complaining the camera is too light, isn't that a good thing?" I would tend to agree. Here there's something missing that even added weight wouldn't fix. The plastic leatherite coating is too slippery. The hand grip is too slight. I could go on. This is my opinion, but again, I've used a LOT of cameras. 'Nuff said. The focus and aperture are "by wire." What that means is when you turn the aperture ring, the camera has a lag before it changes the aperture. Similarly, and frustratingly for manual focus, the focus ring has the same lag. About manual focus: you must use the EVF in magnify mode to get critical focus, and that has its own slow refresh rate issues. The quandary for practical shooting is that the autofocus is lacking and the manual focus is slow due to the EVF. In low light, this leaves you with few if any options besides "hope I get it right." Not really what I'd want in a camera. The NEX-7 does a much better job here and, as others have pointed out, includes the Focus Peaking feature to add another focusing aid. That's strangely not implemented in the X-Pro 1. The metering in the camera frequently stops down the lens to get a reading, and then opens it back up. So what you hear when you use the camera is a lot of clicking. It's actually quite audible because the body is so un-dense that it doesn't damp the noise. My subjects commented on this strange noise and wondered what it was. Bad for candids, to say the least. All in all, that adds up to a lot of annoyances. This camera was killed by many small cuts for me. The image quality is great, no question. But--and here's the rub-- it is only great when you can get the focus, etc, right. So having such a cool sensor in such a crippled body is a shame. It's like a beautiful woman with chronic bad breath. You have to hold your nose to enjoy it. What did I do? I returned it to Amazon. I'm going to wait for the Olympus OM-D E-M5 to see if it satisfies my yearning for a "mostly analog" digital camera. Meanwhile, I'm doing OK with the Sony NEX-7. As for the X-Pro 1, for me, it doesn't do it. Your mileage may vary. Fanbois, don't flame me. This is an opinion. Proceed with caution.