Wonder if ’X’ is the magic factor for Fujifilm, which after the success of X100 has launched its younger brother (as conceived), X10. And being a brother, comparisons are obvious. The X100 had an excellent 20mm f/2 lens, a nice big APS-C sensor, a great metal body, and of course the unique hybrid viewfinder and with X10, it has none of those things, so let’s check out what makes it stand apart.

The Fujifilm Finepix X10 takes many of its design cues from its incredibly popular big brother, the X100. It shares the same retro style and control layout that can’t fail to impress everyone that sees it and definitely everyone that holds it. The Fujifilm X10 stands out to its unique styling and bullet-proof build quality. It features a 12MP, ’2/3" type’ sensor, which means it’s between 26% and 40% larger than the sensors used by its enthusiast compact peers and twice as large as those used in almost all regular compacts. It also uses the company’s unique ’EXR’ technology that makes it easy to combine pairs of pixels to produce 6MP images that have either been averaged to reduce noise or differently exposed so that more highlight information is captured. The underlying chip uses conventional CMOS arrangement, rather than the back-side illuminated type that can help improve light capture in small sensors. With wide aperture combined with large sensor, X10 offers more control over depth-of-field than any other camera in its class. It also allows for shallower depth of field than most DSLRs when used with their kit zooms, when each are set to their respective telephoto ends. Regardless of the larger sensor, Fujifilm manages to find space for an image-stabilized, retracting 28-112mm equivalent F2.0-2.8 lens. With a manual zoom like on interchangeable lens cameras we can drive the viewfinder as we extend the lens. The mechanically-driven lens and viewfinder design has two key advantages. Firstly, it gives a pleasantly direct feeling of control over the lens’ behavior, allowing continuous zooming, along with the fact that the camera isn’t dependent on its battery for driving the lens and viewfinder. Secondly, the fast readout from the CMOS sensor allows the camera to shoot at up to 7 frames-per-second at full resolution and 10fps at 6MP. It also enables 1080p30 movie shooting and the creation of panoramas in a single sweep of the camera. 
The X10 is a charming and fairly powerful camera that anyone (may be not photographers) will have fun using. A larger sensor for low-light sensitivity would have been welcome, and manual focus is still not as good as the rest of the camera, but overall it’s both practical and lovable. It’s a camera with personality though it falls behind in some features (LCD, smaller size of sensors) but excels in others (the lens and zooming viewfinder). Therefore with all the technical aspects and money concerns, the X10 should definitely be one we check out.