Well chaps I know many of you will think I’m mad and crazy, but the X-T2 wasn’t for me after all, and has been returned for a full credit. I had a good play around with it over the weekend, but was mindful to only take 2 or 3 shots in case I needed to return it.
Why you may ask. Well for a number of reasons, some of which I’m sure a percentage here will agree with and some a lot of you won’t, but hey it’s my money and my decision so there.

I was comparing the X-T2 to my Micro Four thirds Olympus EM1 and Panasonic GX8, as well as my DX Nikon D500. From an image quality point of view, yes, the Fuji produced some nice images, but (for me at least), not any better than my D500 (all the way from Low to High ISO), and not much better than my M4/3 system up to about ISO 800 (ish). Yes the Fuji colours are very nice, but with a profile I have in Lightroom, I can get really nice colours out of all of my cameras.
Size wise, I was expecting the D500 with 16-80 lens to dwarf the XT-2 and 18-55, and whilst the Fuji set up is smaller and lighter, it’s not by as much as I thought, and the OMD system (with and without grip) and the Panasonic were just even smaller and lighter.
Another contributing factor was lenses. Whilst the 18-55 is a very high quality lens and certainly doesn’t deserve the moniker – “kit lens”, the problem for me (and again this is only me), is that on both the Nikon and M4/3 my “standard” zoom lenses start at 24mm effective, rather than the 28mm of the Fuji, and I’ve checked a lot of my holiday images and a lot of them are at 24mm, which would mean me carrying a second lens (the 10-24 for instance or a prime) and changing lenses. Battery life also appeared shocking. I know Li-on batteries get better with a few charges, but after taking 2 or 3 images, and around 30 minutes total of messing around with settings etc and “playing” with the camera, the battery level dropped from 100% down to 23% very quickly. And I though the Olympus OMD batteryl life was poor.
Whilst the X-T2 is very nicely built and has an excellent EVF, some of its quirks I found irritating, mainly because I’ve come from 30 odd years of Nikon DSLR’s, and 4 years of Mirrorless Olympus cameras. Things like not being able to change the aperture with the command dial I missed. Yes I know purists will say it should be on the lens and that many Fuji lenses don’t have an aperture ring, but the 18-55 did, and I just found it unnatural changing aperture. I also have my Nikon and Olympus’s cameras set up to change EV compensation with the Sub command dial, whereas on the Fuji, setting the EV compensation dial to “C”, only allows EV changes when the front command dial is pushed in. These are all minor but are the difference between a camera you
want to use and a camera you leave at home and pick up another instead.
Other things included the rudimentary level gauge (no pitch and yaw), and when Auto ISO was set, in the viewfinder you don’t see what ISO the camera is selecting, just “for instance” AUTO ISO 3200. The only way I could see to view what ISO was being used was to review the image afterwards (unless I’m missing something) ? There were a number of other handling and interface quirks which I just didn’t get on with, but maybe I'm just too old or used to other systems to adapt
Like I say as a photographic tool it’s a great camera with excellent image quality, and if I didn’t have any other systems, I might have persevered to see if I could live with its quirks, but as I already had the other two systems (which the Fuji was going to replace one of them), I just prefer the user experience of the other two systems, I just didn’t gel with the Fuji at all, it left me cold and it didn’t make me pick it up and love it.
I know I’ll probably be flamed for stating the above, but not every camera system is right for every person (otherwise we’d all by shooting exactly the same hardware), and for me the Fuji was close, but no cigar. I’ll continue with the M4/3 and Nikon for the time being. At least it’s an itch I had to scratch and I’ve done that.
I know I'm in a minority of one...............I'll get my coat and won't slam the door when I leave.