BobJ

The sensor is behind several layers of glass. There is an anti static cover glass, an infra red reject filter and the micro lenses for the sensels. Then there are the colour filters for the photodiodes. So you are not actually cleaning the sensor, only the cover glass. It is coated though, so you definitely can't use your shirt sleeve It does have an anti reflection coating but is actually quite tough. The main thing is to make sure that you blow off any loose dust before you use the swab, only use the fluid supplied with the kit and don't press hard. I have been cleaning sensors for years with no problems. Don't use those sticky pad things, they are dodgy. Most dust can be blown off with a rubber "rocket" blower. Never, never, use canned air. If the propellant gets on the glass you will never get it off, plus they are too powerful and can damage the shutter.

Why is this an issue? It is the same for all cameras as far as I know including all film and digital slrs. You can only focus accurately with the lens at its widest aperture simply because that has the shallowest dof. Then if you want to get some indication of the dof you half press the shutter button, which is way more convenient than pressing the dof button on an slr and getting a view so dim you can't really see anything. For dof do not rely on focus peaking. It wil only give you a rough idea. Use the magnified view for that. You have to have some understanding of dof, (which varies according to how big the final image is displayed), where to focus and what aperture to use. I assume you are talking about landscape. It's not easy but It will come with experience. Take lots of photos and analyse the failures.
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No, it doesn't work if you have pulled the ring to manual. The 14mm is a sharp lens by the way. You won't be disappointed.

Buy a secondhand 55-200. It5 an amazingly good lens.

I know exactly how much bit depth my camera has. If you actually read my last reply you will see that I quoted 14 bits for raw. When processing raw you can take full advantage of this input. The formats you are talking about are output formats that are produced either in the camera or by post processing software from the 12, or usually now, 14 bits from the A to D converter. As things stand at the moment jpeg xl seems to me to be the best bet for stills, although I could be wrong. We will have to wait and see. As I said, video may be a different  matter.

Not sure what went wrong for you. I have an X-T3 and do not have any real exposure problems. The XT-30 is smaller and lighter but the X-t3 is, as you say, weather resistent and has a much better viewfinder. I would say plump for the X-T3 if you can get one within your budget.

The firmware update may be coincidence. I had this experience with an x-t2. it was caused by a faulty SD card. Swopping them around will not work. The bad one will cause this fault in either slot. Replace both in the first instance and see what happens. I do hope that it is that simple for you too.

It's not a stupid question Pranfeuri. In a nutshell then, here goes. Dynamic range is a term used in electronics. In a camera it is used to describe the brightness range from the deepest shadow tone that can be distinguished from noise to the brightest tone that can be recorded before the sensels become saturated and cannot convert any more photons. In ye olden days when I used film the equivalent was known as the films latitude. An analogue to digital converter is used in the camera to digitise the output from the sensor and can usually give a 14 bit wide digital output. Jpegs are only 8 bit so they cannot include all those tones. However 8 bits are enough to describe all the tones that a monitor, tablet etc can display or a that print can reproduce. Therefore we have the opportunity to compress the 14 bits into 8 bits using what is known as the tone curve. The algorithm in the camera does this for us but may need altering for some images. The DR and shadow and highlight settings in the Fuji cameras can be used to do this. Basically the DR settings underexpose so as not to blow the highlights and boost the mid and shadow tones to fit in. The shadow and highlight adjustments change the tone curve to make them darker or lighter as required. Of course if you use raw then you can decide afterwards how to fit the tones in. That is one of the main advantages of raw. With the latest sensors it's amazing how much detail can be rescued from the shadows before noise becomes a real issue.

Micro contrast has nothing to do with colour. A lens with high micro contrast can distinguish between increasingly small variations of tone at high frequencies. It is about resolution, which is not the same as sharpness. An image can look sharp but have low resolution. All lenses are optical compromises. A lens with high macro contrast and low micro contrast can appear sharp despite not being able to resolve fine detail. A lens built for high micro contrast can show fine detail but can produce dull and lifeless looking images. In practise a lens designer has to balance these two qualities together with many other lens characteristics. Leica and Minolta, who worked closely together for a while in the pre-af era, made low macro contrast lenses that could resolve fine detail and had a lovely subtle tonal reproduction. What the designers did was to boost the MTF figures at finer than 60 cycles at the expense of the 10-30 cycle range. A decade ago David Kilpatrick wrote a very illuminating article called "Historical Perspective on Minolta Lens Design Philosophy". I have a hard copy of this but I don't know if it can still be found online. In it he discusses some of this together with coating decisions made to help give contrast and colour consistency (lens colour was much more important in film days for obvious reasons).
 
Nowadays with exotic glasses, aspherical elements and design methods that were not available in the 70s and 80s, lenses can be made with less compromise but differences are still there. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to attend a factory tour at Cooke optics in Leicester. Their hand built lenses are used for many feature films and TV dramas and are famed for the "Cooke Look". It's difficult to explain but involves smooth tonal transitions and beautiful bokeh. Interestingly they told me that they are able to design for the look in the design software. If you have to ask how much they cost you can't afford one! The TV companies mostly hire them. The feature film people have such big budgets that they are not a significant cost to them. Have a look at their website, it's quite interesting. www.cookeoptics.com

I thought I should give the Fujifilm service in the UK a pat on the back. I have had three experiences with them, all positive. My X-T1 developed a flash fault. It was repaired under warranty. They had to replace the main circuit board. It was done very quickly (I can't rember exactly how long it took.). Then I had a problem with a huge piece of 'dust' on the inside of the rear element of my 10-24mm. I am pretty sure it was a piece of glue that had come loose. This was the only lens that I bought as a grey import, so I had to pay for the repair - be warned. Neither of these faults should have happened in the first place though. Most recently I lost the eyepiece cup on my then brand new X-T2. I was caught in a storm at Durness and I probably caught it on a divider in the backpack as I hurriedly put it away. I couldn't find a source for a replacement so I called Fuji service. They sent me one by return of post for free! By the way, the weather sealing of the X-T2 works very well!

Hi Kimballistic. With respect I don't think that you have quite understood my point, which maybe I made poorly. I agree that "very bad" or "excellent" are scientifically meaningless. However exact measurements of lens performance are not really relevant since in the scenario you mention the lens would only be the limiting factor if it had an MTF that was huge compared to the sensor's, so that the product of the two was mostly determined by the lens. This is never likely to happen in practice. My point is that the system resolution is always a product of the lens and sensor resolutions so a higher resolution sensor will always improve the system resolution with any lens. It is highly unlikely that one or the other could be a limiting factor. Diffraction is bit of a minefield but you are right. As the pixel pitch becomes smaller so diffraction starts to occur earlier, but the system will also also have greater resolution. in other words, if you were content with the same resolution as the wider pitch sensor gave  then the limit would be much the same. And of course smaller sensors need shorter focal length lenses for the same angle of view but the result is better depth of field, so that f11 is about the smallest aperture we can use before diffraction starts to become a factor but a full frame camera has to be stopped down to f16, its diffraction limit, (roughly) to get the same dof.
 
At the moment, as far as I am aware, apsc sensors with pixel counts larger than 24mp are not available. I personally don't believe that they have reached some kind of limit though. It looked like full frame had "topped out" at 12mp, then it went to 24, 36 and now 50. I would guess that full frame will go to around 80mp within the next couple of years.Sony is almost the only game in town now. The latest tech is never released straight away though. Sony will need to recover their development and tooling costs and a profit from the existing silicon first. It may be that Fujifilm are aware of a new sensor and working on a model to incorporate it. In the meantime they have to defend their present situation, much as they did with their statement about IBIS being impossible, while they developed it and no doubt agreed to patent payments. That's just my opinion of course.

Lightroom has been ok with raf files for some time now. The only time you might see "worms" is if you over sharpen and look at the image at 100 percent. I regularly make 30 x 40 cm prints and I have never been bothered by it. Is there someone local to you that has lightroom classic cc so that you could judge for your self? I could do it for you if you could get a raf file to me via Dropbox or something.

He wants to know how to stop the thumbnails showing Man.
 
The following should do it:
 
Open file Explorer, right click in a blank space. select "view" from the menu then choose what you want, in your case "details". Once details is set click the File tab in File Explorer . Click on "change folder and search options". The folder options window appears. click the View tab then look near the top for "Folder Views". Click on the "Apply to Folders" button. answer the question about whether you want to apply to all files with yes, click Apply and then OK.

Well the 10-24 is a lot more useful than a 16 for the obvious reason that it covers more focal lengths! Only you will know whether your personal style will benefit but I find that a lot of my work makes use of around 20 to 24mm and the longer focal lengths of the 55-200 with occasional use of wider down to 10. I believe that the 10-24 is considerably larger and heavier than the 16 though.

Well the 10-24 is a lot more useful than a 16 for the obvious reason that it covers more focal lengths! Only you will know whether your personal style will benefit but I find that a lot of my work makes use of around 20 to 24mm and the longer focal lengths of the 55-200 with occasional use of wider down to 10. I believe that the 10-24 is considerably larger and heavier than the 16 though.

Blue Hour
Frankfurt/Germany

One from Good old New York on a very unwelcoming day. Shot with the X-Pro1
 
Gloomy NY by Photolographer, on Flickr

A couple from Leeds.
 

 

Isle of Lewis, September 2017.
 
The Fujifilm X100F is probably my favourite of all digital cameras I have owned and used since 1999.  Used here with the WCL-X100.

Lightroom has been ok with raf files for some time now. The only time you might see "worms" is if you over sharpen and look at the image at 100 percent. I regularly make 30 x 40 cm prints and I have never been bothered by it. Is there someone local to you that has lightroom classic cc so that you could judge for your self? I could do it for you if you could get a raf file to me via Dropbox or something.

I would recommend the 18-55 and the 55-200. They will cover all of the focal lenghts you are using and then some. The 55-200 is a sharp lens. There is nothing to stop you using a zoom in the same way as a prime. If you feel the need to zoom around too much apply some electrical tape!

I have only bought one Fuji lens from a grey importer. It is the only lens I have had trouble with, and of course I had to pay to have it fixed. I guess that I was just unlucky but you have to ask if the cost saving is worth the risk.

I have only bought one Fuji lens from a grey importer. It is the only lens I have had trouble with, and of course I had to pay to have it fixed. I guess that I was just unlucky but you have to ask if the cost saving is worth the risk.

Looks like a great camera, but a touch screen while taking winter landscape is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.