Fujifilm is pretty clear about its target audience for the X-A5. Its features, brochure and promotional materials are all targeted heavily at Instagram influencers and female family ‘record keepers’, rather than gadget-obsessed males.
So let’s not knock it. This is a big audience that's as deserving of good camera kit as anyone else, and the X-A5’s features need to be looked at with this audience in mind.
The slogan in the X-A5 brochure is “Whenever, Whatever, Whichever, However, Wherever… and Forever!”, and you’ve got to admit that’s pretty catchy.
Features
- 24.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor
- New compact 15-45mm OIS power zoom
- 4K video but only at 15fps
Perhaps the first thing to note about the X-A5 is that this is another (yes, another) beginner-friendly mirrorless camera with no electronic viewfinder, just an LCD screen on the rear for composing photos. And while serious photographers might not be impressed, the X-A5 isn’t designed for them – it’s designed for smartphone upgraders who are used to touchscreen interfaces and don’t mind that kind of arm’s-length photography.
Inside, the X-A5 has a regular CMOS sensor, not one of Fujifilm’s more advanced X-Trans sensors as found in the likes of the X-T20. We’ve seen this before on Fujifilm’s entry-level models, and we’d be surprised if anyone but a photography expert could spot the difference in image quality.
It’s what’s on the front that’s more interesting. The X-A5 comes with a new retracting 15-45mm power zoom kit lens. That’s equivalent to around 23-68mm in full-frame terms, so it’s a little wider than the average kit lens, and a little shorter at its longest focal length. The extra angle of view makes it handy for cramped interiors and narrow city streets, and you can always get the Fujinon XC 50-230mm f/4.5-6.7 OIS II telephoto zoom for when you need something a little longer.
The real story here is the kit lens’s size and weight: when fitted to the X-A5, the all-up weight of this camera-lens combination is just 496g. Even better, the retracting design means the X-A5 will take up a lot less space in a bag than with Fujifilm’s previous entry-level 16-50mm lens, which doesn’t retract and is a good deal longer, attached.
The X-A5 with kit lens is now about the same size as the Canon EOS M100 with Canon’s retracting 15-45mm lens, though not quite as small as the Olympus E-PL9 with Olympus’s 14-42mm EZ pancake zoom. Fujifilm’s retracting kit lens design might not sound like a particularly big deal, but it suddenly makes the X-A5 a whole lot more appealing as a take-anywhere camera, and pitches it right up against the best of its rivals.
Other key features include a rear screen that flips up through 180 degrees to activate a selfie mode
Other key features include a rear screen that flips up through 180 degrees to activate a selfie mode (there’s a Portrait Enhancer mode for smoother skin, too), a macro mode for photographing objects as little as 5cm away, and a wide range of exposure modes for different situations and skill levels.
You can select the SR Auto mode to let the camera take care of everything, select a scene mode manually from the 14 available, experiment with Advanced Filters like Fog Remove, CrossScreen, Dynamic Tone, Soft Focus, Low-key, Toy Camera, HDR Art and POP Color, or switch to the regular program AE, aperture priority, shutter priority or manual modes when you want to take control yourself.
You also get to choose from Fujifilm’s highly-regarded Film Simulation modes, including Provia, Velvia, Astia, Classic Chrome, Pro Negative, Monochrome and Sepia (though not the new ACROS black and white mode introduced on Fujifilm cameras further up the range). Fujifilm has a long history of making film, as well as cameras, and it does trade heavily on the film-like look of these Film Simulation modes.
The X-A5 may not have the X-Trans sensor found in more advanced Fujifilm cameras, but it does have fast phase-detection autofocus, offering a variety of focus patterns including a Wide/Tracking mode, Zone AF over a smaller area and Single Point AF, all using various combinations of 91 individual AF points that extend almost to the edges of the frame.
The camera’s continuous shooting speed for full-resolution still images is 6fps, but there's also a 4K Burst Shooting mode, perhaps inspired by Panasonic’s 4K Photo mode, which can capture 8-megapixel 4K images at 15fps.
On the downside, while the X-A5 does shoot 4K video, it’s only at 15fps That’s a major disappointment, and makes its 4K video capability largely useless except for high-speed stills. If you want smooth video you have to downsize to Full HD, although here the X-A5 can shoot at up to 60fps for a 2x slow motion effect.
The X-A5 also has the electronic shutter found in other Fujifilm models, with a maximum speed of 1/32,000 sec. Due to the way it works, however, it’s not suitable for fast-moving subjects; instead it's designed to allow you to use wide lens apertures for a shallow depth of field even in bright light.
Build and handling
- Comprehensive external controls
- Touch-focus and touch-shot modes
- Selfie mode with automatic eye detection
The Fujifilm X-A5 is designed with an attractive retro look, combining an aluminum body with leather-look trim in a choice of three colors: black, brown and pink. The new compact 15-45mm power zoom kit lens makes it more pocketable than previous entry-level Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, although if you put it side by side with the original X-A1 from way back in 2013 it’s clear that not much else has changed externally. In fact, all the major controls are exactly as they were on the X-A1, and the only real changes are some differences in the trim and materials, a few bevelled edges and maybe an extra millimeter or so in height.
That’s fine, because the X-A series cameras have been good-looking and ergonomically satisfying right from the start. There’s a good-sized mode dial on the top which lets you quickly choose between auto-everything mode, scene modes, effects filters and manual control, depending on your level of camera know-how and how much time you’ve got to fiddle with the settings.
To the right of the mode dial is an unmarked control dial that can be used to adjust various settings, but which is best employed for exposure compensation: if your pictures come out too dark or too light you can simply spin the dial to make an adjustment, shown on the LCD screen as a vertical scale of exposure values – there’s no need to get drawn into technicalities.
Just in front is the combined shutter release and power switch, and just to the right of that is a small function button which you can program to bring up the ISO, self-timer, image size and quality settings, film simulation mode and more.
Round the back of the X-A5 are four directional buttons arranged around a central Menu/OK button. These are used for menu navigation or setting the focus point position, depending on what you’re doing at the time, but they also double up as shortcut buttons for the self-timer, AF mode, white balance setting and drive mode (continuous shooting and bracketing modes).
Many more settings are available when you press the ‘Q’ button to bring up the Quick Menu screen. In fact, this has pretty much all the options you might want to change while shooting, and you may not need to dip into the main menu system very often.
And, as if all that isn’t enough, there’s a small clickable control wheel tucked away behind the rear thumb rest. You could easily miss it, but it's handy for scrolling through menu options and settings screens.
The X-A5's touchscreen display works very well. You can use it to change the focus mode or Film Simulation mode, but it’s not used for menu navigation and other settings changes – you use the regular buttons and dials for that. Its main function is focusing and shooting – you tap on the screen to set the focus point or, if you tap a small icon to enable ‘Shot’ mode, you can both focus and take the picture with a single tap. It’s simple, intuitive and effective, although it can be a little tricky to tap precisely on the tiny settings icons at the right edge of the screen when you’re in a hurry.
The selfie mode works brilliantly – once you understand what to do. When you first flip the screen up through 180 degrees the screen image is upside down and partly obscured by the top of the camera. What you have to do then is pull it up just a few more millimeters on a small sliding cantilever mechanism – if you don’t know it’s there you could easily miss it.
Like most of its rivals, the X-A5 will connect to your smart device via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Once you’ve got the screen in the right position the X-A5 activates its eye-focus feature, which automatically focuses on the subject’s eye (in other modes you can even choose which eye). All you have to do is compose your selfie face and press the shutter release, or use the touchscreen’s touch-shot feature if you find that easier. One-handed selfies are easy once you know where to place your fingers on the camera, although balancing the camera from a high viewpoint requires a strong grip; light as it is, the X-A5 still weighs a lot more than a smartphone.
Like most of its rivals the X-A5 will connect to your smart device via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, although in our tests with an iPhone it wasn’t clear what the Bluetooth connection was achieving, as all the remote app functions seemed to require Wi-Fi, and although the camera should in theory be able to transfer pictures automatically, it wasn’t obvious how to actually make that happen unless the Wi-Fi connection was live.
Performance
- Average autofocus performance
- Great focus accuracy and image stabilization
- Excellent image quality
The Fujifilm X-A5 does have an advanced on-sensor phase-detection autofocus system which should deliver faster, better autofocus than the contrast-based systems on older cameras, but a lot will depend on the AF tech in the lens you're using – how fast its AF motors are, basically. Swapping the 15-45mm kit lens over to an old X-A1 revealed that the new camera does feel a fraction faster, but there isn’t a whole lot in it. The X-A5 is fairly snappy, but it's not the fastest-focusing mirrorless camera we’ve tried.
What it does offer is an AF mode for practically every situation. You can set it to Wide/Tracking mode if you’re happy to let the camera decide what to focus on, Zone AF where you know roughly which area your subject is in, or Single Point AF when you want complete control over the focus point. In the Zone and Single Point modes you can choose not only where to focus, but change the size of the focus zone/point with the rear control wheel. The eye-detection AF mode is especially good if you’re photographing people, since it’s always the eyes that need to be sharp in successful portrait shots.
The operation of the new power-zoom kit lens is a mixed bag. It produces great image quality, but the electrically-operated zoom feels a little unresponsive. Sometimes it failed to react to our first attempt at an adjustment for no obvious reason, and with no external markings it’s the devil of a job remembering which way to turn it to zoom and out.
Between them, though, the X-A5’s autofocus and the lens’s image stabilization deliver a really high hit rate of sharp shots. If you leave the camera set to auto ISO, you can effectively forget about the lighting conditions and just keep shooting; the high ISO performance is good enough that you rarely need to worry about the image quality.
Image quality
- Images are sharp and rich in color
- Regular P mode does a great job in a variety of conditions
- Advanced Filter modes are a bit of a damp squib
Indeed, image quality is where this camera excels. It may not have Fujifilm’s top X-Trans sensor technology, but the regular 24.2MP CMOS sensor in the X-A5 still does a great job. Images are sharp, rich in color and well exposed. You can get great results without having too get embroiled in the technicalities, but more experienced photographers can still dig in and take manual control to pretty much the same degree as with more upmarket enthusiast cameras.
Do you need the scene modes? Probably not, since the regular P mode does a great job in a wide variety of conditions, and you get a little more control over the settings.
Likewise the Advanced Filter modes, which, although they look interesting are a bit of a damp squib. The Partial Color filters give interesting results in black and white, and the Miniature Filter can work well if you can find the right kind of angled overhead view on your subject, but the Toy Camera filter is very heavy-handed and the HDR filter is actually pretty poor. If you want to experiment with special effects and retro looks you’re better off using a smartphone app, or shooting regular images on the X-A5 and editing them later on a computer.
That’s a pretty minor complaint, though, and while the X-A5’s autofocus and general responsiveness is about average for a mirrorless camera in this class, its image quality and the proportion of sharp, well-exposed shots it can capture are well above the norm.
Verdict
The Fujifilm X-A5 isn't really designed for experienced photographers, but rather for Instagramers, lifestyle photographers and ‘life-loggers’ who want a step up in quality and features from a smartphone – and the X-A5 certainly delivers on that front.
Compared to a smartphone the screen is a little small, and the camera is a little bigger and sometimes more awkward to handle, but it opens up a whole new world of photography that’s simply out of the reach of a smartphone.
The large sensor and interchangeable lenses offer a much wider range of viewing angles and depth of field effects, and the image quality is as good as you could expect without taking another major step up and investing in a full-frame camera.
It’s a shame there’s no viewfinder, and that the autofocus isn’t just a little snappier, but for the type of user it’s aimed at, and at the price it’s being sold for, the X-A5 is just great.