kimcarsons

RAFs have 14-bits of dynamic range, JPEGs 8-bits. Part of the art of processing raw files is in determining how to squeeze that 14-bits down to 8. It looks like you had some 'highlight recovery' going on there too, in which the raw development software tries to fill in blown out regions with the color of the surroundings (resulting in large, detail-less patches of color). Flowers are tough for subjects with digital for multiple reasons, but one is that it's easy to blow out e.g. the red channel while there's still plenty of headroom in the blue and green channels. Recovery here looks bad too, but not as bad as when all three channels are blown. Take home lesson: a properly exposed flower shot should look under-exposed before processing (and probably after too, if you want to maintain any detail in the petals). Bear in mind that display calibration entails calibrating the brightness and gamma also. The ideal brightness is a matter of opinion, but 110-120 nits is a common value. Any decent colorimeter should be able to do this. BUT this also entails having a standard level of ambient illumination. So if your workstation is in a room with variable lighting (i.e. daylight), all bets are off (unless you have one of the fancy colorimeters that stays plugged in all the time to measure ambient illum. and compensate--even then there are compromises). As always, the histogram and your software's over/under exposure warning indicators are more objective guides than your own perception.

@merlin, you need to try that calibration again, buddy. Just looking at the histograms should show you that most of these images are over exposed.

Well, there certainly could be something up with your phone, but the fact is that Apple's screens are the best out there in terms of being roughly calibrated to sRGB out of the box, so if your monitor isn't an Apple one, then I'd suspect that it's just a case of the two lower quality displays matching (the fuji and your montior) and the iPhone display being the more accurate one. Note that white-point (warm or cool) is not strictly part of the sRGB calibration here. It's possible for two displays to have different white balances and yet still be accurate representations of sRGB. (Similar to looking at the same print in daylight and tungsten... the colors will be perceived the same [barring metamerism], if you only look at one screen at a time and allow your eyes to adjust/match the ambient illuminant.) If you *really* want to know what's what, you have to calibrate your monitor with a colorimeter/spectrometer and if you *reallyreally* want to match colors you need to profile your camera (a much more involved procedure). And your printer too if you print. If/when you do this, the first thing that will be very obvious is that the displays on the Fuji cameras are not calibrated. Nor do they have a method of calibration (some other brands actually allow you to use a colorimeter to calibrate the camera's display). Yes, this does put a damper on the whole WYSIWYG EVF thing. My advice is to use what limited controls the camera provides to tweak its display so that it matches your phone as closely as possible. You might want to do this with the Show Pic Effect setting off, so that you're not confusing matters of display settings (which affect only the display) with film simulation settings (which affect the recorded JPEGs).

Well, for one thing, the screen on your iPhone is much higher quality than the LCD on the camera. The screen on the iPhone is also pretty well-calibrated to sRGB by Apple. The screens on FujiFilm cameras, AFAICT, are not calibrated at all. Not even the LCD to the EVF. However, you can tweak the the settings a little bit... Brightness and saturation only. I find turning the saturation and brightness down on the camera displays helps get a more accurate impression of what the image will look like on a calibrated display... But it's an impression only. As to the 'overexposed' part, you probably have the brightness on your screen turned up much too high (if you left it at the defaults or on auto brightness). Most modern smartphones have blindly bright backlights designed to make them usable in broad daylight.

I'd rather have had some bug fixes than the addition of more half-baked features...

The on-sensor phase detect technology is horizontal-only (only sensitive to vertical lines). There are no vertical, cross ,or X type points as there are on DSLRs.

Facts, experiences, and opinions with which you disagree do not constitute trolling. Nothing is perfect. If you want to throw a sarcastic tantrum every time someone points out some imperfection in Fuji equipment (or any other brand), you're going to spend an awful lot of time posting "Bugger. The camera is unusable. I will sell mine!" (which I see you already do). Why should everyone walk eggshells and tiptoe around the truth just because OleDK might get triggered?

Definitely not normal. If I were you I'd return/exchange it with the retailer before your window expires with them, rather than deal with Fuji.

If you don't like trolling language, then why do you use it yourself?

It's so subjective though. You really can't assume the defaults are correct. There's absolutely no reason to believe lightroom's sharpening is in any way ideal for either camera. A better approach would be to tune the sharpening to match visually. Even if you end up with both images oversharpened, it should be possible to tell which is cleaner. One will look (really) sharp, and one will look like it has wet mascara.

Are you 100% certain that lightroom isn't also responsible for the softness of the X-A2 output? Anyway, when doing comparisons like this its best to change one variable at a time. Different sensor pattern, different resolution, different software--it's just too many variables.

Yeah, they never mention everything they fix (or break!) in the descriptions though. Basically, unless the camera and lens are running the latest firmware, all bets are off as far as them actually being compatible with each other (which incompatibility could potentially cause a problem like the one you experienced). All evidence points to Fuji doing very little testing/QA on their firmware releases, they're certainly not going to be testing the latest camera firmware against older lens firmware versions. Let us know if you can still reproduce the problem with the new FW...

It also recently had a firmware update to fix OIS oscillation (even with OIS switch in the off position). Are you running the latest firmware on it?

What lens were you using anyway?

The number you can shoot depends on the buffer more than the card. It's the time it takes the camera to dump the buffer to the card that varies with card or interface speed. You need to time it with a stop watch. The speed of playback is more apparent, as you can flip through pictures with the wheel or joystick and plainly see that playback from slot 2 is slower than playback from slot 1 with the same card. (indicating that both read and write speeds are lower with slot 2) The EVF switching issue requires a specific set of circumstances see: http://www.fuji-x-forum.com/topic/4288-slow-eye-sensor-evf-switching-response-with-uhs-i-cards/

@hildasea Try setting the camera to "sequential" mode and putting one card in. Time a RAW+JPEG burst in slot 1, then time reviewing the photos from slot 1. Then move the card to slot 2 and repeat. On my camera, I get different performance depending on which slot the (same) card is placed in. And it follows that one does not get the full benefit of a fast card when it is in slot 2. However, as I have also found, putting a UHS-I card in either slot results in slow EVF switching. So you have to use a UHS-II card in slot 2, even though slot 2 doesn't use the cards full speed. A very frustrating (not to mention expensive) set of circumstances.

I think my finding that slot 2 is slower also suggests that slots 1 and 2 are not identical and not sharing a single controller interface.

I just tried wiggling the lens while recording on my X-T2 and it just stopped the recording, so that's probably not it after all.

It definitely does look like the lens correction is turning on and off. One thing worth mentioning is that many of the fuji cameras and lenses have excessive rotational play at the mount, which can cause the electrical contacts on the lens and body to be misaligned. It could be that your lens was twisted in such a way as to have intermittent connection/noise on these contacts and the X-T2 responds by turning the lens correction on and off (although it seems unlikely that the camera would be monitoring this during recording, and I'd expect to see some flickering of the aperture too if this was the case) Seems more likely it's a firmware bug. Could you see this happening on the screen at the time of recording?

It may surprise you to learn that many landscape photographers do in fact use autofocus. If you don't even own an X-T2 or know anything about it, why would you even comment in such a thread as this?

Ah, how convenient! So then the people who recognize your tactics for what they are become silent, and yet the mass of users of the forum (especially non-members) browsing via google, continue to see your misdirecting posts. With this behavior and the number of posts you have under your belt here and elsewhere, it certainly looks like your account is controlled by some 'reputation management' firm.

What a stupid question. Why would you pay $1600 for a camera with supposedly excellent autofocus and similarly expensive autofocus lenses if you were just planning to use manual focus?

Thanks. The point of the copy function was just that it was a reliable way to reproduce the intermittent read errors. The read errors happen anyway, but at random times. I don't think I'll be spending ~$200 on Lexar 2000x cards anytime soon. I returned the Lexar 1000x cards. P.S. The copy function actually is useful on its own! You can, for instance, shoot with a fast 16GB card and then use the copy function to back up in the field (no need for a computer) to a larger, slower (cheaper card) say a 256GB, which you keep say in your hotel room. Then format the 16GB card(s) and resume shooting.

I can't say I'm surprised either... When I got the X-Pro2 I did some resolution-matched tests against the X-Pro1 and found it was almost impossible to discern the extra detail in the X-Pro2 images even at 200% magnification. 16 to 24 just isn't that big of a jump. It's a shame the X-A3 doesn't shoot 4K. But you know, a similar principle applies to 4K... Good 1080P upscaled can look better than bad 4K.

Might I suggest using a more moire-prone target and placing the camera farther away from it? There's only so much that can be learned from comparing sensors of different resolutions, but it would still be interesting to see. Any chance you're going to try the X-A3?