Fuji X10 and other advanced compact cameras

Nearly all major camera manufacturers have updated their advanced compact cameras in 2012. The only exception is Fujifilm. Well, Fuji fixed / replaced sensor in X10 camera. [I am not sure if the company stated that X10 cameras now have new sensor but I don't see any reason to fit the body with old sensor.] The most intriguing model for me is Sony RX100 with 1" sensor, twice bigger than the sensor in Fuji X10. The Sony camera is very compact but the lens is slow at long end. Also, distortion is relatively high but it is corrected automatically. This is the first compact camera with sensor of that size. The camera enjoy immense popularity. 

All other camera makers ended up with slightly smaller sensors in the latest models of advanced compact cameras. Olympus kept his wonderful lens on XZ-2 and improved a user interface. However, both Canon and Nikon have updated the lenses on P7700 and G15, and this thing alone made their models very attractive. The new models got brighter lenses, so it would be possible to use the cameras at low iso. Nikon P7700 also lost an optical viewfinder, and became more compact. Unfortunately, dpreview has not published their analysis of the latest breed of advanced compacts. 

Fuji X10 is somewhat stand-alone camera in this category. It has fairly big 2/3" sensor and it is not designed to be a truly compact camera. The camera has an exceptional lens with mechanical zoom and fairly good set of external controls and optical viewfinder. With such "traditional" interface Fuji targeted a specific group of photographers. It does not mean that other people would not enjoy the camera but other brands may provide a cheaper and more compact options. I do like user interface on Fuji X10, and consider it as one of the best current compact cameras. It is my favourite camera at the moment. I doubt that the difference in image quality between current advanced compact camera is huge at low iso, so for me it is boiled down to usability of a camera. For my type of shooting (mainly Aperture priority mode) the key parameters on Fuji X10 have dedicated buttons and can be changed very fast. Unfortunately the camera does not have a build-in Neutral Density filter: the shutter speed at f/2.0 is about 1/1000 sec, so it is impossible to shoot with wide open diaphragm at bright light. I would like to have a non-fixed screen - it is really handy for macro shooters.