Day 54, time flies!! I can’t believe its already the end of Feb. And yes, the much awaited review that all of you have been waiting for, is here. I’ll keep it really short and simple for now. I’ve been looking for a good compact camera with similar features of a DSLR camera and I was keen on getting a Sony Alpha, but for some reason it never worked out. On the way back home from our Dubai trip, I spotted the Fujifilm XA3 camera at the duty free store and it was love at first sight. But to my disappointment, it was not available anywhere in India. We wanted to buy it from US and just when we were about to place the order, Fujifilm had announced the latest version from the same series, i.e., Fujifilm XA5. It was released this month on Feb 9th, available in three different colors – black, brown and pink. Fortunately, we had a friend coming from the US and managed to order the very last piece available in a pink color (I missed the brown one in a matter of few minutes). But the color of the camera was my least concern.
Included with the X-A5 is the Fujinon XC 15-45mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS PZ Lens, the company's first electric-powered zoom lens. Regardless, I didn’t wanted to stick with kit lens and wanted something close to a 35 mm lens. And so I ordered Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2 R WR Lens, a wide angled lens with it.
The package had finally arrived and here’s what I think of it:
The compact size is what I was looking for my travel and this camera was perfect.
I preferred using the 23mm lens more often than the kit lens.
I found that the camera's auto-focus doesn't always respond as quickly as those on other models when capturing photos and videos. This didn’t happen often but it seemed to happen more in low-light settings.
The 4K video quality was something I was looking forward to but again the auto focus had struggled especially while video recording, which wasn’t the case while taking pictures.
Battery life is pretty decent as well. I would definitely recommend this to the bloggers (fashion vlogs, make up tutorials, etc.) who have been waiting to hear this review from the day I posted about this camera.
Also sharing few of the first images shot with this camera using the 23mm lens:
