Fujifilm’s X-series has a new flagship! Weather-sealed Fuji X-Pro2 is jam-packed with great new features

posted Friday, January 15, 2016 at 12:31 AM EDT

For years, you've waited patiently for another brush with greatness; now that wait is over, Fuji fans! The venerable X-Pro1 -- the camera which firmly stamped Fujifilm's legendary name on the compact system camera market -- now has a successor, and the new Fuji X-Pro2 looks to be a very worthy upgrade indeed!

Based around a brand-new 24.3-megapixel imaging pipeline, the Fuji X-Pro2 is an all-new design inside and out. Not only are the X-Trans CMOS III sensor (complete with on-chip phase-detect autofocus pixels) and X-Processor Pro image processor new, but so too is the X-Pro2's weather-sealed body. Said to be both water and dust-resistant as well as freezeproof to just 14°F, it still offers the same retro look, but sports twin control dials and and provides an at-a-glance view of even more exposure info for quick confirmation of your setup.

The new image sensor offers not just higher resolution, but also a wider sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 12,800 equivalents, expandable to encompass everything from ISO 100 to 51,200 equivalents. And there's clearly been a big push in the performance arena, too. Burst shooting is now possible at a swift eight frames per second with autofocus between frames, and a generous buffer will see you capture as many as 83 JPEG or 33 losslessly-compressed raw frames in a burst. The AF system, meanwhile, sports no less than 77 phase-detect and 273 contrast-detect focus points, yet is said to be capable of determining a focus lock in just 0.08 seconds.

And while the unusual hybrid viewfinder with which the original X-Pro1 gained so much attention back in early 2012 is still present and accounted for, it boasts a significantly higher electronic viewfinder resolution than before, as well as both an on-demand EVF overlay in optical viewfinder mode, and an automatically-adjusted bright line function that accounts for lens focal length. There are also now dual SD card slots for added versatility, and the latest must-haves are also included, such as in-camera Wi-Fi wireless networking connectivity and high-def 60p movie capture.

Available from February 2016, the Fuji X-Pro2 is priced at US$1,700 body-only in the US market. For much more information, take a look at our just-published Fuji X-Pro2 preview!

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