Formbox

I did some RAW developments with the trial recently and think it uses the very very good Apple RAW COdec with lots of adjustments possible. Was very happy with the RAW conversions - up there with RAW Therapee and Aperture and a bit better or at least equal with iridient IMO.

I really like these shots! And nice way of processing too! Great look.

And Capture One 9

So here is Photo Ninja:

I think my artisticaly disappointing crop shows one thing: All converters are better than the jpg and pretty close to each other and e.p. viewed on a tablet, there is hardly a difference, leave alone web usage.

I upgraded to El capitan without Aperture being installed. Did not use it much after switching to LR. When I decided to check it out again with X-trans I opened the App store and reinstalled it with no problems.

So regarding the most natural look of fine details like the stone and sand I really like: Aperture with it´s grainy rendering RAW Therapee and Iridient pretty much indistiguable Silky Pix 7 (just remember to set the "demosaic" to 100) Lightroom 6.5 comes in last, even though the green foilage rendering is much improved, the fine texture of the stones look pretty unnatural. Same with sharpening through the NIk Presharpener Pro with Lightroom - it is the demosaicing proccess, which needs further tweeking I guess.

And the new Silkypix 7, demosaic set to 100 and the new "natural sharpening" if I recall the settings correct. Not bad, between Lightroom and Iridient I think.

Next up Iridient Good detail, AMAZE sharpening and basically more micro contrast by default I think.

The very good RAW Therapee, 3-pass rendering 5 times false color reduction... Good stone detail

Next Lightroom 6.5 Stone texture like a paint brush... sharpening set to amount 20, radius 0.6, detail 100

I did not deliver any proof for the good Aperture 3.6 rendering of X-trans. Aperture 3.6 is running under the newest OS X El capitan. Here are the crops - best I could do with the converters - but maybe Iridient experts could have done better - it is AMAZE set and 3-pass detail. Sorry for the mediocre view. It is shot on an X-Pro1 with the 56mm 1.2 @ 2.0 First up Apple Aperture 3.6...I like how the difficult stone texture is rendered....

IMO Apple Aperture (discontinued) or RAW Therapee (free) deliver even better results and are visually better than LR and the Fuji jpg regarding fine detail.

Well, I still prefer Apple Aperture and it renders Bayer and X-Trans beautiful - so I did not have to change my whole workflow, but I am not seeing much benefit. I guess that X-Trans marketing hype thing left me feeling a little disappointed. But I think as an analogy, its not a ford with an opel engine but more like a single car brand that uses a total different kind of wheels than all other car brands - if that is a good or bad thing depends on your personal time to get it to work. And if the "Pros" of this different wheels are quite minimal my position on it is, that it might be 75% marketing and 25% benefit. I am very interested in the new Sigma SD Quattro - because I see a huge difference in the RAW files. Still some claim, the X-Pro2 has "the best" APS-C Sensor right now and I was surprised to read that its sensor is basically performing on a level of the entry camera Nikon 5500 (490 €). Less moire but also less detail in the grass tiles. No offence. But I don´t want to sound to disappointed - it is great and much needed, that Fuji and Sigma push the borders of sensor tech and they should be applauded for their constant effords to push photografy further with it.

Interesting review, as they come to the same conclusion the video review of "The Camerastore", which we had a talk about the other day .. That is, that the sensor is equal to the sensor of a Nikon D5500 in therms of noise and that you have to compare them at a full stop difference, as Fujis ISO200 equals Nikons ISO100. Fuji X-Pro1 @ ISO200 compared to Nikon D5500 @ ISO 100 - equal shutter speeds, here is what they say: "It's widely assumed that Fujifilm's X-Trans sensors use low-noise Sony silicon behind their unusual color filter arrays, and the performance of the X-Pro2 is certainly up to that standard. Compared here with the Nikon D5500 (using the same shutter speeds so that they are working with the same amount of light), you can see very similar amounts of noise up to a 4EV push, and possibly a fraction more after a 5 stop push, though the difference may simply be one of grain structure, caused by the different demosaicing processes." link:http://www.dpreview....jifilm-x-pro2/6 So the X-Pro2 has no "magical" X-trans sensor, but one of the best APS-C sensors. Regarding the X-Trans array, I fail to see a "better" noise structure in the RAW files than a conventional sensor, but there seem to be some benefitts regarding moire. That said, I very happy with my X-Pro1 and it´s noise performance, but I would love it just as much with a conventional sensor I guess.