larsdaniel

Well, I certainly hope that Fujifilm will make a change to their faulty camera firmware.

Clarity is set to zero.

Thanks for checking! Now I am wondering if this flaw is specific for X-H2/X-H2S or if other Fuji cameras do the same kind of thinking. Like, why on earth are these cameras not: Playback? Certainly Sir, here you go. BAM. (The way it works with a non-communicating lens like my Samyang 8mm.) But instead they are: Playback? Oh, let me check procedure. Hmmm, I can see that the lens is at close focus, but I will see what I can do. We do have rules, you know. Let me get back to you when we are ready. Anyway, I have used X-T1, X-T2 and GFX50 extensively in the past, and I don´t recall any of them having a go-to-playback speed that was a variable depending on what lens and how it was focused.

So, I did some testing to see if I could figure out under what situations it goes up to three seconds (to go to Playback). And what I have found now is this: It all depends on what lens, the zoom setting AND focus setting. I don´t know in what world this makes any sense - not in mine. So, using the 16-80mm, if I set it to 16mm and focus infinity, then it takes 1 second to go to playback (from pressing Play button). If at 16mm and close focus, I get only slightly more than 1 second. If I go to 80mm and infinity, the time to get playback is still about 1 second, but if I go 80mm and close (minimum) focus, it takes 3.5 seconds to go to playback. That is, three point five seconds! With my 23mm f/2, the times are: Infinity: 1 second. Close focus: 1.5 second. Not alarming (but still a bit weird if you ask me.) My Samyang 8mm fish gives you a taste of what the X-H2 is capable of. Press Play, and you will see an image 0.5 seconds later, no matter what. This is the kind of snappiness I was expecting from a "flagship" camera. And I really, really hope that Fuji can get their stuff together and fix this nonsense. I will definitely send them a letter.

Have you tried pressing the VIEW MODE button (on the right side of the viewfinder)?

Yup, sometimes my X-H2 takes three full seconds to show a picture after pushing the Play button. However, sometimes it takes two seconds, and at other times it takes 1 second. (I have used a stopwatch, so not just guessing.) Off course, I have tried to find some kind of sense in this, but no luck so far. I can be shooting a fixed setup on all Manual, and from one shot to another it can decide to go from one second to three seconds. I have tried Slot 1 vs Slot 2. I have tried RAW only vs RAW+jpeg. I have fast cards, bought specificly for the camera. Boost mode is always on, and batteries 100% or near. Newest firmware. When I tried the camera for the first time, I remember a disappointment about the go-to-playback speed. I tried to ignore it for some time, but one day it seemed to be even slower, so I started doing some measurements. I guess I could live with two seconds, but three seconds is just too much, and not knowing if it is going to be one or three sec. is really not ideal. Does anybody recognize this behaviour? Any ideas?

IMPORTANT UPDATE Regarding the issue that a Fuji camera will always be in TTL mode if a Godox product is in the hot-shoe: I got a sad response from Godox, but at least we know now that this issue will not be fixed. From this point on I can not regard Fujifilm and Godox to be actually compatible. (Many users will off course never feel this is a problem, but for shooting very timing specific action (think skateboarding or dancing) a delay to the shutter (because camera is always in TTL) is no joke.) Here is the message from Godox:

Since it works for you with a Nissin flash, there is definitely hope. The first thing I would try, would be to cover all connectors in the hotshoe except the big center one, with a piece of tape. This makes your camera act like there is a "dumb" flash connected, e.g. one that does not do TTL and other fancy stuff (like your Nissin). The sad thing is: In many ways, Godox does not make their products truely compatible with Fuji. When you put a Godox flash or trigger on a Fuji cam, the camera is forced to use TTL which is NOT a good thing. Essentially one can only escape TTL by hardware hacks (like the above tape) or by using the camera function assigned to an Fn button: TTL Lock. (I am not sure all Fuji cams has this - my X-H2 does.) (Btw: Using PC sync cable should work the same as using only the hotshoe center pin, so you might have had a bad cable connection. Those PC sync connectors are not exactly the most reliable connectors in the world.) Oh, and yes, one can put your Godox flash in manual mode, but the point is that your Fuji camera still behaves like it is shooting TTL, which creates problems as the above, as well as introducing shutter delay and making it impossible to shoot in Fast Continuous mode with flash.

On X-H2 you can assign any Fn button to be a toggle to bring you to C1 (Custom setting 1). So save your desired settings as C1 and assign an Fn button of your choice. (Asuming that X-H1 also has this function. If not, your option will still be to use one of the C settings, and then just use the top dial to go to it.

It is a frustrating problem that placing a Godox flash or trigger on a Fuji camera will not allow the camera to be in anything but TTL mode. As far as I know it is the same for all Fuji cameras, and all Godox triggers except for X1T that reportedly has a firmware that fixes the problem. This thread is a good read: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62565196 Also, please write Godox an email. They need to fix it.

I have used quite some effort to to put my story down in pictures and writing. Hope it will be of interest for some. http://larsdaniel.com/2016/06/09/switching-from-canon-to-fuji/ Thanks for reading. :-)