mjh

A camera can hardly be classified as obsolete just because it doesn’t offer a Classic Chrome option.

The output of the ADCs on the sensor chip is 14 bits and 14 bits per pixel get stored in raw files created by the X-T1 and X-T10 (in two bytes per pixel).

Not ‘instead of’: Fuji employs Sony sensors (custom versions with X-Trans rather than Bayer CFA array) now and will probably continue to do so in the future. Just with sensors based on whatever is state-of-the-art then. Scaling down the full sensor resolution to obtain a HD or 4K video stream is always tricky and the X-Trans pattern doesn’t make this any easier. Sony did choose a 42 rather than 50 MP sensor for the Alpha 7R II just to simplify creating video images – the CFA pattern is just one factor to be considered.

Not ‘instead of’: Fuji employs Sony sensors (custom versions with X-Trans rather than Bayer CFA array) now and will probably continue to do so in the future. Just with sensors based on whatever is state-of-the-art then. Scaling down the full sensor resolution to obtain a HD or 4K video stream is always tricky and the X-Trans pattern doesn’t make this any easier. Sony did choose a 42 rather than 50 MP sensor for the Alpha 7R II just to simplify creating video images – the CFA pattern is just one factor to be considered.

These are fairly typical cases of longitudinal chromatic aberration where the colour of the fringing depends on whether the subject is in front of or behind the plane of sharpness. Even the best corrected lenses (corrected for lateral chromatic aberration that is) can suffer from this phenomenon – see the Leica forum for examples of fringing produced by some much more expensive lenses.
 
Obviously firmware version 4.0 has no bearing on this.

These are fairly typical cases of longitudinal chromatic aberration where the colour of the fringing depends on whether the subject is in front of or behind the plane of sharpness. Even the best corrected lenses (corrected for lateral chromatic aberration that is) can suffer from this phenomenon – see the Leica forum for examples of fringing produced by some much more expensive lenses.
 
Obviously firmware version 4.0 has no bearing on this.

Fuji buys the X-TRANS sensor from sony. Sony just changes the CFA from bayer to X-trans. If Fuji continues to buy their Sensors from Sony, then they could buy the latest and greatest Sony sensor (the one Sony will put in the A7000) and Sony will put the X-Trans CFA on it, which is designed by Fuji

Holding back a camera ready to ship so not only the troubled camera division is losing sales, but the (quite profitable) Sony Semiconductor divison is losing even more sales as they cannot market their new sensor to Fuji, Nikon, Ricoh etc. – sounds like a completely crazy idea. But this being Sony, who knows …

Holding back a camera ready to ship so not only the troubled camera division is losing sales, but the (quite profitable) Sony Semiconductor divison is losing even more sales as they cannot market their new sensor to Fuji, Nikon, Ricoh etc. – sounds like a completely crazy idea. But this being Sony, who knows …

I never attempted to explain how the zone system works. My post was about spot metering assuming a 18% percent reflectivity which was quite useful with silver-halide film – make sure that middle gray gets rendered as middle gray and the highlights and shadows will take care of themselves (obviously the zone system adds a lot of sophistication to that simple rule). With digital photography this rule doesn’t work at all as the highlights require serious attention; it is rather the midtones and shadows that take care of themselves (or that we can easily take care of during raw development) after we have made sure that the highlights are preserved. Thus my contention that spot metering isn’t as useful anymore as it used to be. Having said that, one can use the built-in spot meter as one would use an external spot meter, i.e. for measuring highlights and shadows individually and choosing an f-stop and shutter speed to deal with the measured scene contrast.

Fuji appears to follow a conservative approach, adding new features but keeping as much of the user experience intact as possible. One could say they didn’t want to rewrite the whole manual (or at least they didn’t want to change too many illustrations) … Whether this decision will be popular with owners of an X-T1 remains to be seen; Fuji seems to care most for those who prefer to feel right at home again even when there is some new functionality added.

There are lots of things I refrain commenting on, either because it is hearsay, because I don’t care, or just because I don’t have anything valuable to add to the debate.
 
In this case I could add some facts about the different ways (and their pros and cons) film simulations can be implemented, as that falls within my field of expertise. And so I did; this should suffice to dispel some misconceptions. I haven’t seen the source code of the firmware so I cannot say what exactly Fuji has done and cannot comment on it.
 
With regard to firmware updates, I understand that I buy a camera with a certain specification and that I can expect it to conform to that specification. If it does not I expect the vendor to issue a firmware update to make good on the promised specs. Everything else is a bonus, not something I’m entitled to.
 
‘Kaizen’ is largely misunderstood, I believe. Striving for a ‘change for the better’ doesn’t mean that manufacturers should continuously add new features by firmware updates (free of charge). If a product gets replaced by a successor with new and/or improved features this is a perfect example of ‘kaizen’ but probably not what many people using the term have in mind.

See above – if film simulations are implemented using look-up tables then it is ‘just’ a matter of adding another table – i.e. data – while the code stays the same. There would be code to apply a look-up table to each pixel and that code would work with any number of look-up tables (read: film simulations). On the other hand, film simulations could also be implemented programmatically and I don’t know which one it is. In the latter case the firmware would probably be more compact (the additional code required for each film simulation would most likely take up less space than a look-up table achieving the same result) and be faster, but look-up tables are simpler to implement.
 
Adobe’s DNG camera profiles (.dcp files) which are used for emulating film simulations are mostly based on look-up tables. Such a look-up table typically comprises thousands (23,040 being a typical value) of points within the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) colour model, specifying some shift in hue, saturation, and lightness to be applied at that point within the colour space. With about 16.8 million colours and just 23,040 entries in the look-up table, the required shift needs to interpolated between the nearest colours within the look-up table. This is how Adobe does it; Fuji may be doing it differently.

Olympus supports spot metering for either highlights or shadows which comes in handy in situations as these, and this could make for a nice addition to the existing metering options. Still these days I don’t think spot metering is as useful as it used to be. The original idea of spot metering was that you metered for 18% gray (or whatever) and all the other zones would take care of themselves. Now with sensors clipping harshly at some point it should be obvious that the highlights do emphatically not take care of themselves; they require the photographer’s special attention. Or the camera’s – which implies using matrix metering, evaluating highlights and shadows individually. Or you just check the histogram to make sure you have captured all the tonal values worth capturing. It doesn’t matter if they don’t come out right at first; that is what raw development is for. This isn’t that different from the original zone system where developing the film and printing from the negative were just as important as getting the metering right.

Generally the ISO setting increases the analogue amplification up to a certain point – say ISO 1600. From that point onward the amplification stays the same but the camera will multiply the digitised signal to account for the higher ISO setting. The reason for the switch from analogue to digital amplification (i.e. multiplication) is that analogue amplification reduces quantisation noise in the eventual image, but only up to a certain point; when the ISO setting is higher than that there is nothing to be gained from amplifying the analogue signal and one could just as well multiply the digital values.
 
For example, let’s assume that base ISO is 200, the amplification is increased up to ISO 1600, and the chosen ISO setting is 6400. In that case the amplification factor would be 8 times higher than at base ISO, the amplified signal would be digitised, and the digital value multiplied by 4: ISO 200 * 8 * 4 = ISO 6400.
 
This is how the majority of cameras work. Fuji’s X models are different in that they don’t use multiplication. Like other models they increase the analogue gain up to a certain point (ISO 1600), but above that point they don’t multiply the values by a factor accounting for the increased ISO.
 
The problem with both analogue amplification and multiplication is that it reduces dynamic range. Doubling the values, be it analogue or digital, results in a one stop reduction in dynamic range. Now analogue amplification is still a good idea as it reduces quantisation noise but multiplication has nothing going for it.
 
Now of course if you don’t crank up the gain above ISO 1600 and you don’t multiply either, the images would look underexposed. This can be rectified by applying a gamma curve brightening the midtones but preserving the highlights. This way one gets a correctly exposed image but without the usual loss of dynamic range.

In that case we would have to wait for Sony to develop a sensor with the desired specs … Sensors, as a rule, have the same native sensitivity regardless of the pixel size – somewhere between ISO 100 and 200. Larger pixels receive more photons so more electrons can be collected, but they also store a larger electric charge before they overflow. As a result their ISO figure is roughly the same as that of a sensor with smaller pixels.
 
Now if you wanted to reduce the native sensitivity you could make the pixels less sensitive, say by reducing the light-sensitive area or by doing away with microlenses. But all that would give you was a less sensitive sensor, without any gains in signal-to-noise ratio or dynamic range.
 
Alternatively you could try to increase the pixels’ capacity for electric charges so more electrons could be stored, resulting in less noise and more dynamic range. But how would that be achieved? There is only so much space on the silicon chip. There are a couple of technologies looking promising, the quantum film sensor for example, but as these technologies could also increase the efficiency of converting light into electricity, the ISO number wouldn’t necessarily go down – it might just as well go up.
 
In the analogue era we have learned to associate low ISO figures with high resolution, less grain (noise), and high dynamic range. With sensors these rules don’t apply anymore, not in exactly the same way anyway.

Sure, but the lower sensitivity of that sensor doesn’t confer any advantages. It is a fine sensor but it isn’t its lower native sensitivity that is responsible for that.

As explained in #9, a lower native sensitivity doesn’t improve dynamic range. If Sony could manage to increase the native sensitivity to ISO 160 or 200 the dynamic range would still be as high. The reduced sensitivity is the price to pay for the increased resolution but that may change in the future.

While that may be true, ‘shooting mode’ is not the same as ‘shooting’.

This would be quite crazy indeed if it was a digital zoom; it is optical though. 4.3–357 mm, or 24–2000 mm in 35 mm terms.
 
The P900 features a 4x digital zoom on top of the 83x optical zoom but as far as I know that wasn’t even used here. A 83x digital zoom would reduce the resolution from the original 16 MP to 56 x 43 pixels or 0.0024 MP.

It is certainly not unheard of. The delete buttons of my X10 and XQ1 double as drive and exposure correction buttons, respectively, when the camera is in shooting mode.

Also pressing the delete button on its own does nothing; you need to take further action before an image gets deleted.

Olympus supports spot metering for either highlights or shadows which comes in handy in situations as these, and this could make for a nice addition to the existing metering options. Still these days I don’t think spot metering is as useful as it used to be. The original idea of spot metering was that you metered for 18% gray (or whatever) and all the other zones would take care of themselves. Now with sensors clipping harshly at some point it should be obvious that the highlights do emphatically not take care of themselves; they require the photographer’s special attention. Or the camera’s – which implies using matrix metering, evaluating highlights and shadows individually. Or you just check the histogram to make sure you have captured all the tonal values worth capturing. It doesn’t matter if they don’t come out right at first; that is what raw development is for. This isn’t that different from the original zone system where developing the film and printing from the negative were just as important as getting the metering right.

I've always found (with both my Nikon and Fuji cameras) that WB presets are rarely correct without adjustment. Auto WB is considerably better, but only within a certain band or relatively "normal" lighting temps. It's OK by me - I believe that, like exposure, the photographer should be in charge of this, not some algorithm. The solution is simple - shoot jpeg, but determine the color temperature before the shot - or shoot RAW and determine it after the fact. For snapshots in normal lighting, the Auto White Balance performs quite well. 

Now this would be relatively easy to implement (but still require some resources) but how many photographers would want to fiddle with a thumb wheel or whatever whenever they change the f-stop with the aperture ring? As usual it is a matter of evaluating (Usefulness of a feature * Number of users for whom it would be useful) / Resources required for implementing it. It doesn’t look too promising to me.