kimcarsons

Many non-macro lenses are soft close up wide open. The difference is that most lenses with optical designs that would be soft close up are also designed with their minimum focus distance outside the area of poor performance. For some reason Fuji decided to allow these lenses to focus closer than they perhaps should have. Although, as I said, anyone who knows what they're doing shooting macro isn't going to be doing it wide open or anywhere near it (and probably not with this lens either). The 35mm F2 was designed to be small and light above all... And I like it for that. I do wish it had more (read any!) optical distortion correction, though. Still, it's small, light and fantastically sharp, even wide open, when focused at a distance.

Halos and softness are normal for the 35mm F2 at close focus distances. It sharpens up if you stop down (which, honestly, you're going to want to do for macro-ish shots anyway to increase the depth of field).

Just to clarify a little: The Fuji lenses are metal (aluminum) clad and with metal (aluminum) mounts (although I think the 50-140 has a brass mount), but they are plastic on the inside. That is, the build quality is better than your usual modern plastic lens, but not as good as vintage all metal lens construction. Since the metal mount is screwed into a plastic internal frame, that's usually where they break.

I was looking at a menu walkthrough of the Sony A6500 and noticed that it has an extra "permanent" exposure compensation setting in there, so that you can have your exposure comp. dial at zero and have it really mean +1/3rd. Nice feature. I still think the Ricoh/Pentax "green button" manual mode + auto exposure sampling is the best method... Never forget you're at +1 or whatever, still get to use the camera's meter (spot's the best for this of course), no inconsistent exposures between multiple shots of a subject. It's too bad Fuji's AE Lock locks the AF point too, otherwise AE-L could be used similar to a "green button". Fuji take note: the other guys are doing better with metering usability.

Is this fluorescent light? Could be that the flickering is throwing off the metering... Try turning off the Shutter AE-lock option... It may be that the you're focusing and locking the exposure when the light is on its bright part of the cycle and actually taking the picture when the light is on the dark part of its cycle. The X100T didn't have this option---I'm not sure exactly how it behaves, but I believe it locks the exposure on shutter half press. EDIT: Nevermind, I see now you said you're shooting in full manual.

Pete, I think your argument in favor of riding the exposure compensation dial (which by the way, even if you're doing that, you're still shooting auto [like a chump?]), is distracting from the point that, apparently, the auto-exposure/metering algorithm on the X-T2 is more erratic than it was on the X-T1. If people wanted to fiddle with the dials constantly, they would shoot in manual mode. The purpose of auto-exposure is to allow you to get the shot (more or less properly exposed) in situations where you don't have the time or the dexterity to ride the needle (or comp dial). Sure, with the latitude of these sensors you can save a shot even if the exposure is off by several stops... It would still be nice if the auto-exposure got a little closer to the ballpark on its own like it does on other cameras (from the same manufacturer, even!) There of course, many confounding factors involved... New algorithms, new sensor gain structure, perhaps changes in RawExposureBias/Fuji's notorious ISO misrating. Ranting against using auto mode is not helping anyone get to the bottom of the problem (and it is a problem!)

Pete, you really seem to be apologizing for Fuji here, I think what people are saying is that, if Fuji is going to change the way the metering operates, which they apparently have, they would prefer it be an option (like Preserve Highlights), rather than something thrust upon them. Most likely, it's just a bug in the new generation's firmware and not a feature.

If your memory card is empty, then why would you expect to see any images in playback mode? What make/model of card are you using? Fuji cameras are very picky about sdcards. It may be that a different brand/model of card would work better for you.

No, that's the most idiotic thing about it... Turning on the advanced filters disables RAW recording on Fuji cameras (with other brands the filters affect the JPEG, but you still get the RAW...)

Everyone complaining about this lens being too expensive doesn't realize that it'll be at least $200 off in a few months, just like every other Fuji lens...

I've also found it to be somewhat erratic. My workaround has been to leave the exposure comp dial at -0.33 EV and then either leave keepers alone or push them +0.66EV - +1EV in the with camera developer. The reason for shooting at -0.33 EV is that even though the camera tries to meter to protect the highlights, it doesn't always succeed and the consequences of blowing them are indeed dire. ISO bracketing mode also works to cover your bases, but is more annoying to me than just reprocessing the keepers. I don't trust the histogram either, it'll have a hill in the middle and nothing in the right 1/3rd and still highlights will still be blown (as can be seen in the tiny preview with blinkies available in one of the playback display modes).

David, do you mind if I ask what filtering process you're using? These images have the same tonal inversions I noticed in your previous set. Look at the white shirted man in the background of the second image. Notice how he's outlined in a darker shade? This is a digital artifact, not an optical phenomenon. A bilateral filter could cause such an effect, but so could a warped tone curve.

You've got some weird tonal inversion going on in the bokeh on that last frame... Love your color toning, BTW!

It isn't a downgrade in IQ, but whether its any upgrade is debatable (depends on the circumstances). If you're not upgrading with hopes of better IQ, then I don't think you'll be very disappointed.

This sounds suspiciously like the ramblings of the Angry Photographer...

I'm just going to toss the terms high-key and low-key out there for anyone struggling to find the right word. A low-key, normal, and high-key exposure at ISO 6400 will look very different in terms of subjective noise---because we find noise most objectionable in dark tones and shadow areas (if you think about it, the shadows are under-exposed and the highlights are over-exposed, locally speaking.)

Not acceptable indeed. Try to processing a 24MP image on your Raspberry Pi sometime. We're talking minutes just to apply the film simulation---forget demosaicking X-Trans on the CPU.

Heh. Well, I think Fuji's argument against IBIS is still BS, but at least they tried to come up with more of a reason than Canon and Nikon... Re the TIFF issue, the whole situation is a bit of a farce. A failure of communication. The truth is, I think most photographers don't want RAW. They think they do because RAW is all they can get the camera makers to give them. But what they *really* want is 10, 12, 14 bit color in any format. Having cameras save in 16-bit TIFF is just another workaround (like RAW is). What's really needed is 12-bit JPEGs (JPEG2000?) or better yet, 14-bit JPEGs. I doubt anybody really needs the extra 0.000001% or whatever resolution they can eke out of RAW (or TIFF) over JPEG (FINE), they just need the extra color depth for post processing. I'd still rather have a TIFF than a RAW file... but, even compressed, they're going to be bigger than the RAW files, which are already huge.

There is some truth to the "it would require different hardware" statement. Cameras do not use their general purpose (usually ARM these days) CPUs for image processing. They employ one or more ASICs, which are chips designed to do one or more specific tasks very efficiently (demosaick, filter, denoise, encode x264, jpeg, etc). That being said, usually these chips are fairly versatile and probably even have TIFF and other codecs built in to them, as well as many other options, even if Fuji doesn't use them. For example, GoPro has long used an Ambarella chipset which supports electronic video stabilization, but without giving the user access to that feature (although other manufactuer's cameras using the same chipset do).

If you've ever owned anything made by Sony, then you have your answer. If you don't mind doing things The Sony Way, their equipment is technologically the best--and the lenses are coming along. Personally, I've hated every Sony product I've ever owned---too proprietary, too quirky.

Heh, that's another thing. I have never had play between lens and mount with *ANY* camera system in my life. Then I get to Fuji and find the lens mounts are aluminium (one step up from plastic) not brass or stainless steel and, moreover, the tolerances are so poor they all wiggle (often enough that the electrical connections break and the camera doesn't recognize that a lens is attached. Sure, you can get used to this kind of thing, but "built like a tank" it isn't.

Yeah, #1 is definitely not impossible. The reason for the way it is now is probably just that X-Trans is harder to crop at arbitrary dimensions (i.e. to zoom in and pan around) than Bayer... Similar to how line-skipping is harder/courser with X-Trans (which is why Fuji's video was s**t until the latest gen which has a fast enough processor to not have to line skip). They can do it.

I'll agree that the build quality of the X-Pro1 is pretty good. That was before Fuji started trying to add side doors :-) The thing with all the automation is... That's the whole selling point of the cameras. The IQ of the X-Pro1 is fine. One buys the newer cameras for the promise of being able to get shots where there's not enough time available to go through the procedures you mention. But they don't really deliver on the promise.

You hit the nail on the head for me. If Pentax/Ricoh made a camera that accepted Fuji lenses (or better yet, Pentax made rebranded versions with the Fuji optics, but Pentax build quality and weather sealing), I think it would be a no brainer to buy that instead of a Fuji body. Poor ergonomics, flaky firmware, questionable build quality, premium price. But it's worth it for access to the Fujinon lenses (at this point). However, Fuji needs to watch out because Sigma has also figured out how to make sharp (and faster!) lenses for APS-C. Samyang is making some killer stuff now too, and it's only a matter of time before that includes autofocus.

Yeah. Well, there are waaay more people on YouTube using Sony cameras for video than there are using Fuji period, so you're also looking at a rather small sample size. The X-Pro2 and X-T2 produce excellent video with (at least) the following caveats: 1) Fuji uses the wrong color range value in the metadata, so videos look too contrasty without forcing this value in the player. Correcting usually requires re-encoding the video. 2) Autofocus is not very good (jerky, hunts a lot) 3) No face detect in 4k mode 4) Only up to 720P when using the wifi app 5) Sometimes impossible to set the correct shutter angle. E.g. 1/48th of a second (try it!) 7) Auto aperture is not continuous (even though the aperture is electronic, it adjusts in steps, which ruins the footage) 8) Auto ISO is very slow to adapt to changes in lighting conditions 9) Switching between stills and video requires changing many settings---not easy to do quickly 10) No IBIS :-( Many would consider lack of a log profile to be a problem, but I see so much footage on youtube absolutely ruined by poor color grading that I'm tempted to call it an asset.