Enter the FujiFilm X-T200
So far all the preliminary views and hands on previews would suggest that Fuji may just have the best entry level mirrorless camera on the market. Sound like a big call? Perhaps but to date everything I have seen about this camera screams buy me.
While it doesn’t sit inside the $1000.00 NZD budget camera zone I think that its pricing is pretty good. To date I’ve seen it advertised here at $1329.00 NZD with the 15-45 kit lens. I’m expecting the new XC f2 35mm lens to be around $300 NZD. DPreview suggest that the new lens should be a real winner for those wanting a prime lens to add to their budget kit.
The arrival of the new XA7, which has pretty much identical specs minus the EVF was a good indicator as to what the X-T100 replacement was likely to look like , but I have to confess I’m astonished at the amount of camera they have produced.
The closest Fuji model to the X-T200 is the X-T20/30. The cheapest X-T20/30 I have found as of the time of this article is $2000.00 NZD making the X-T200 a very good starting point in the Fuji system.
While camera snobs will no doubt belittle the construction & build quality of the new 35mm lens as well as the XC 16-50 & XC 15-45 as well as the XC 50-230, I have no doubt that plastic construction or not, the lack of dedicated aperture ring, these lenses acquit themselves extremely well. And all of them have image stabilization apart from the 35 mm f2, something that a good many of the more costly lenses dont have. For me thats a no-brainer, I wouldn’t ever consider an XF lens that wasn’t stabilized. Why? After a workplace fall I now suffer from varying degrees of vertigo and as a consequence my hands can be a little shaky, this is true for a lot of us for a huge variety of reasons, not to mention I’m now almost 65 so my stability isn’t as good as it used to be. However a light weight XC f2 35 mm, I would be prepared to use in the right setting. Astrophotography anyone?
By way of example see the image below.
Image taken using the XA2 with the Fujinon XC 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS Version 2 lens.
Is it the perfect lens? .. no there are obviously better lenses but at a substantially greater prices. For everyday photography the XC lenses perform far above their price bracket, another example this time from the XC 50-230 mm telephoto lens.
In every way I can think of the X-T200 is the camera I would have liked to have purchased when the XA2 was first announced. To date I haven’t been overly certain about the XC 15-45 lens as I’m not a fan of power zooms but having seen the X-T200 with this lens in operation I may well have to re think that.
Having never really wanted or desired any of the higher level enthusiast/pro level Fuji cameras the new XA20, XA7 and the X-T200 have all grabbed my interest. The XA20 is only listed on the China Fujifilm website but its predecessor has been for sale here in new Zealand ( The XA10 ) for a couple of years now, and for those not interested in processing RAW files or going deeper into photography this is a very useful camera.
It doesn’t have the newer sensor found in the XA5 and up as its the older 16 Mp sensor found in previous versions such as my XA2. Not that its a bad sensor, in fact its very good as the images above show, but the newer sensor does provide better resolution and the ability to crop images deeper while maintaining good quality.
Come its release date here in New Zealand with the bigger camera stores, we should see the pricing a little more stable. Like always I will wait a few months before grabbing one, hopefully the pricing will have dropped a little by then. I’ve come to the conclusion that like it or not a single lens setup for now at least is not readily an option in the mirrorless world. I would love to see Fuji produce a 16-200/230 focal length lens as a general purpose walk around unit, but that may just be wishful thinking, at least for now.
Dont forget to comment on this. Is it for you? Or is Fuji going down the wrong path with its current level designs?
A-KiwiRetrospective 