The Fuji X-H1 - A fantastic camera and a great all-rounder — **The Fuji X-H1** - A fantastic camera and a great all-rounder

The bulkier side grip is very useful on a long day shooting

INTRO

The Fuji X-H1 is a stills and video workhorse in the Fuji lineup. Featuring a reinforced metal body, in body image stabilisation (IBIS) and a top plate LCD screen, this camera is currently everything I need in a professional setup.

Long gone are the days of ultra retro styling and although you get a couple of dials on the top this camera has a much more ‘DSLR’ look than anything else Fuji has put out in recent years, this ain’t a bad thing however as function trumps form when you are using these things constantly.

A camera that can do the job is better than one that looks damn cool doing it. (However I own and love my Fuji X100F)

I’ll keep this review simple, I don’t tend to do charts and all that. All of these images are edited in post.

The body

Magnesium alloy construction. It’s a hardy camera that can take a good knock or ten.
Reinforced lens mount. Good for the bigger fuji lenses and adds strength to the body.
Weather sealed. Take it out in the rain (with a weather sealed lens on) and you’re good to go.
Chunky grip. Really nice grip that I personally find super useful during a long day shooting.
LCD on the top plate. CUSTOMISABLE - Really handy LCD, you loose the exposure compensation dial but this screen is great. Best part is seeing battery life when the camera is turned off.
Flip out screen. Great for hip shooting or above your head, handy when you need it.
Leaf shutter. A low impact shutter for quiet operation, takes some getting used to and doesn’t have an old school shutter release thread.
Duel card slots. My main reason for upgrading from the X-T2, this is a must have for me.

This is overall a very tough camera, the magnesium body and weather sealing ensure you can be rough with it, I found this out in Iceland while getting blasted by a waterfall, it holds up. Certain features make using this camera very nice, the top LCD can be customised to show what you want, when mine are off I see battery life, frames remaining and which cards I’m writing to.

This is the kind of camera that you’ll know after using it for a few minutes whether it’s for you, for me it just fit into my hand and I knew I was going to find this a comfortable camera to use.

TECH SPECS

24 Megapixel, APSC sensor
12800 ISO, goes up to 51200 in JPEG
1/8000 max mechanical shutter speed
Electronic shutter (also has a flicker reduction feature for fixing banding)
4K video 30p
F-Log - for shooting ungraded video

The Fuji X-H1 has everything you’d expect from an X-series camera, it’s a little old now in comparison to the X-T4 but the specs hold up for sure, better 4k would be nice and you need a battery grip to record for longer than 15 minutes, or you can sue an external recorder, more on this in the video section.

IBIS: In Body Image stabilisation

One of my top reasons for getting this camera was to be able to do video work with it, but seeing as I don’t own any stabilised lenses having the camera do this is a welcome feature. It works by moving the sensor using magic and dreams to give you 5 stops of image stabilisation, 5 stops, that’s madness, this combined with the leaf shutter allows mind-bogglingly slow shutter speeds.

Using a slow shutter is great (as long as your subject isn’t moving) when the light is low or you need to stop down to increase your depth of field. I tend to shoot using auto ISO and a shutter speed of 125th, then when I need to I jump over to the shutter speed dial on the top plate and dial in what I need, comfortably going as low as 1/8th second and getting a steady shot, examples below.

IBIS also shines for video, removing micro shaking from your footage, and allows you to use non image stabilised lenses to get a nice smooth hand held shot. I use the 56mm for a lot of my wedding video work and the shots come out steady and smooth.

Overall IBIS is incredible!

VIDEO

The Fuji X-H1 is a fantastic camera for video, and one of my main reasons for getting it.

Features:

IBIS - Great for smooth shots with non-image stabilised lenses.
F-Log - Log recording to get ungraded footage for more latitude when editing.
1080p 60fps - Nice slow motion options, but it’s a shame you can’t do this at 4k
4k Recording at 200mbps - Limited to 15 minute clips unless you have the battery grip (then it’s 30 minutes)
5x slow-mo, good option if you want something super slow motion
4k HDMI out, so you can record to an external recorder and break the 30 minute time limit on video clips

For my wedding videos I shoot 90% of the day on one Fuji X-H1 with the 56mm lens, using a mix of manual and back button focus, shot in F-Log and graded in post, I’m still getting to grips with everything this camera can do but so far I’m super happy with my wedding films. For the ceremony and speeches I have a single camera set up to record the whole thing, on a tripod with the Black Magic recorder attached to record for over 30 minutes and make one long file. I’ll do more about my video set up in a future post.

One big negative is that it can only record video to one card at a time, so no using the duel card slots to create and instant back up!

Photos

As a photos camera the X-H1 takes from the fuji cameras that came before it, it has great colour rendition, decent autofocus speed and is overall a joy to capture images with.

Features:

24mp sensor
ISO range of 200-12800
Compressed RAW, great for saving space on the card, I’ll get about 2400 images on a 64gb card.
Great film simulations for JPEG if you’re into that, I tend to shoot everything RAW and use my own presets in Lightroom
Electronic shutter up to 1/32000 sec, good for bright light and wide open, creates a bad rolling shutter effect on moving subjects and banding with certain frequencies of light. One tip is to have the shutter sound on when using it as it makes it much easier to tell when you’re taking shots.
No built in flash
GREAT viewfinder for clear bright images and reviewing your shots as you go

As with all of my Fuji journey I’ve always enjoyed the look these cameras give and the smaller size and weight makes then easier to shoot a long wedding day on, the photos it produces are exactly what you’d expect from Fuji.

Click to see full size images

The Fuji X-H1 is a bargain at the moment, if you can find one in stock.

Summary

The Fuji X-H1 is a very capable camera, well suited to both photo and video as well as keeping that Fuji spirit alive with wonderful colour rendering and small-ish form factor.

This camera would suit anyone who needs a tough camera body with the options for video but feels the X-T and X-Pro series are a little too small for all day shooting and want something a little bigger.

One last thing is right now this camera is a FREAKING STEAL, over on Amazon you can get it for under £650* (April 2020) but better than that, head over to the Fuji Shop and get a refurb model (if you can find it in stock), with two batteries and a grip for £699 (April 2020)

*NOTE - The link above is an Amazon affiliate link, if you do end up using it then I’ll gain a little commission and be very appreciative! (it won’t cost you any extra)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post, if you have any questions then feel free to comment here of over on Instagram @colinnichollsphotography
Please feel free to share this blog!

Cheers,
Col-

Fujifilm, Fuji X-H1 - Review (updated)