kimcarsons

I, for one, think it's a great sign. There's money to be made in e-mount, so they're going to make it--without some prideful lock in to X-mount. Just look at the new additions to Sigma's Art line of lenses... The Fujinon line is not going to be king of the APS-C hill for very long. And if Sigma starts releasing lenses like their Art series in E-mount, there's going to be one less reason to buy in to Fuji's system.

Wow.

Oh believe me, I get it. You've got to make a living. That doesn't make the 'charity' remark any less unpalatable.

I only just now realized there's not a "dislike" button on this forum...

Yeah you can do it in photoshop and with many other tools too. I think Tony Northrup has some tutorials on YouTube for image averaging in PS. Stars are their own problem---you may want a camera that can do astro-tracking for that (i.e. a Pentax) Pretty much all good looking star/milky way shots you see are composites, not single exposures. There are many more techniques involved than just managing noise.

Exactly like I described. If you average the images (and don't have lengthy gaps in time between taking each consecutive shot), the motion blur will be the same, but the noise level (effective ISO) will be much, much lower.

This is an 800 second exposure though, right? There's a reason why digital cameras make you jump through hoops to take exposures longer than 30 seconds... Thermal noise becomes a huge problem and even slightly 'warm' pixels will saturate at this duration. Any CMOS sensor without an active cooling solution will suffer in the same way (although hot pixels do look particularly ugly with the X-Trans pattern). You can totally eliminate the problem by changing your practices. Shoot a dark frame, limit your exposures to 30 seconds (use the intervalometer function to take 26 shots for a total of 800 seconds and change), and then subtract the dark frame and average the results. Then you will have a very clean image. Again, the problem and solution are common to all brands of camera.

You're going to have this problem with any digital camera. You either need to use the built-in long exposure noise reduction function (assuming you're using the JPEGs) or shoot/apply your own dark frame images if you're processing the RAW files. If you really want the best results, shooting multiple shorter exposures and averaging them will produce better results than one long exposure of the same total duration.

Nice comparison. Looks like it just about ties with the camera JPEG. Iridient appears to be doing the best job in your examples. Would you be willing to share the RAF file?

It's not a setting in the camera... Fuji doesn't allow you to disable the lens correction, so it's always applied to the JPEGs (some fujinon lenses have a much wider field of view optically than with software correction applied). The camera also applies this correction to the viewfinder feed, so it should always match the JPEG.

When you say "image you get" are we talking RAW or JPEG? If it's RAW, do you have lens correction disabled in your raw processor?

I think you're going to like it :-)

The lens is not internal focusing; part of it moves in and out, and this pumps air through the gaps, drawing dust in with it.

The X-Pro2/X-T2 do have a grain option (called "Grain Effect") with three levels, Off, Weak and Strong. I've found that with high ISO images, NR +4 and Grain Effect Strong sometimes looks better than just NR -4. You don't have to take multiple shots, BTW, you can just shoot one image and develop it into multiple JPEGs using the in-camera RAW developer (if you shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG.)

Yeah, it sucks. Lots of X70 and Ricoh GR owners feel your pain. I've got my fingers crossed that the next GR model will be dust/water resistant. With Fuji. I don't know. They discontinued the X70 so soon, they may not release an updated model and the new X100F doesn't have the weather sealing everyone hoped it would. Keep in mind that your X-T1 has an ultrasonic dust removal function on the sensor that runs whenever you turn it on/off. The X70 doesn't have that.

Ha. OK. I guess we're playing a different game then. As long as you're happy with the result that's fine (and you still saved $99.) I'm just not sure those are real details you're pulling out and not artifacts.

I don't think Fuji makes a fixed lens camera that's dust resistant. Best thing you can do is put on a UV filter (to prevent the AF motor from sucking in air/dust) and not store the camera in dusty/linty places (like pockets.)

I may have overdone the sharpening on mine. I think you did the same in RT, but it in such a way that it brought out more artifacts---looks a bit crusty. I think if you'll find that you could match it in RT if you tried.

You're getting warmer with that middle one. What's better about Isaac's BTW? They look pretty close to me. The colors are a bit different (richer greens in mine). Otherwise I think they're pretty darn close. P.S. Did you even try to match it in RawTherapee though, or was that just the defaults?

Do you know of such a comparison or have access to them to do it yourself? When you look at the X-A2 against the X-E2 in DPReview's Studio Comparison tool, the color looks the same and the X-A2 appears to capture more detail in the brushes and flock, text, etc. Here's a link to see for yourself: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=fujifilm_xa2&attr13_1=fujifilm_xe2&attr13_2=pentax_k50&attr13_3=sigma_dp1m&attr15_0=jpeg&attr15_1=jpeg&attr15_2=jpeg&attr15_3=jpeg&attr16_0=200&attr16_1=200&attr16_2=200&attr16_3=200&normalization=full&widget=1&x=0.8285001781261133&y=-0.5720233669676049

The crazy thing is that apparently the new ability to generate TIFF files in camera will only generate... 8-bit TIFFs! Pentax DSLRs have been doing that for half a decade.

I'll just say that it took me less than a minute to do, wasn't difficult (i.e. didn't deviate much from the defaults) and it wasn't in Iridient, and that you too could achieve the same result without having to pay for anything, and that the tool I used has been available in functioning condition for years.

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Interesting. Would you consider posting your most problematic RAF file and a 16-bit TIFF export of what you think is the best processing from Iridient? That way we can try to match it it with other tools.

Indeed. Another real concern with flaking/chipping paint is that when that stuff gets on a glass surface like (like a camera sensor!), it can form a bit of an air seal and be very hard to remove with just a rocket blower or similar.