Well, the XQ1 has some nice features in video mode.
- Compensation works great from –2 to +2 and the camera shows you the setting in effect down the far left side. This is an extremely effective feature and vastly better than any of the EXR cameras could manage.
- AF tracks pretty well when zooming. Hunting is not bad in good light, but is prevalent in low light unfortunately.
- AF is very fast in good light, which is no doubt a hybrid AF thing.
- 60p seems pretty smooth at times.
And many things I really dislike …
- Automated exposure mode only.
- No flicker prevention to fix the shutter speed to 1/50, 1/60, 1/110, 1/120.
- Stepping of exposure is far too obvious – the steps come too frequently and they are too dramatic. Contrast with Panasonic bodies, where they try to wait and do it all at once and then do it smoothly.
- The 60p when slowed down does not really look smooth as it does when you have full control of exposure. This is obvious when you see the birds flying at .25x speed. Half the time you see a split bird and that should not happen.
All in all, you will get better video with this camera than you would with any of the F series. But you cannot use this in anything but the most informal capacity. The amount of control is just too low. I would choose any Panasonic m4/3 body (and many are cheaper than this camera) for video over this one.
So Fuji have improved video greatly, but not enough to make it really useful. For shooting your kids, it is fine I think. The fast lens really helps, too. The audio is pretty good too, so I think it serves that purpose quite adequately, and far better than the F series has done in years.
