kimcarsons

You can bracket RAW on the X-T2. Perhaps you're in one of the many other modes that locks you out of RAW on Fuji for some reason.

I haven't noticed any problem like you describe with the 55-200 (although I'm not sure I entirely understand the problem you're describing). However, I will point out that AF performance is always going to be worse at the long end of a variable aperture zoom. That's one of the reasons why sports shooters fixed aperture f/2.8 lenses...

The behavior is the same for all the lenses I've tried, which include the 35mm f/2 and the 55-200 (both very fast focusing). It doesn't not appear to be at all lens specific. Try shooting someone walking/running/riding towards you with flash and you'll understand why you could want to use AF-C with smaller apertures. I imagine it comes up in sports/wildlife as well, although that's not my bailiwick. One doesn't always want razor thin depth of field. N.B. f/16 is just an example to see the effect. f/8-f/11 is obviously more realistic. But anyone who's ever tried to shoot with a teleconverter on a DLSR knows well enough that phase detect AF breaks down very quickly as the f number increases and is useless beyond f/5.6.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we're not the first to notice this issue. People were reporting the flickering as soon as the X-Pro2 shipped. I can't find the thread but IIRC someone already contacted Fuji about it and they gave the typical response of "it's a feature not a bug." I think when people complained about the noisy aperture actuation, this stepped re-opening was Fuji's solution. The whole cluster of behaviors seems pretty sloppy. The most frustrating thing though, is that there are so many odd little problems with these cameras (and I'm not just talking Fuji here) that any pro photographer should notice first thing out of the box, but NONE of the reviewers ever mention, and if anyone harps on them too long on the forums, the threads mysteriously disappear. I think the only problem I've ever heard about from an official review source is Sony's overheating issue. It's a good thing Amazon has such a liberal return policy, but boy this kind of thing a waste of everyone's time and I'm getting tired of it. I think there's a pretty good chance that Fuji will fix some of these bugs, eventually... But paying now and having to wait a year or whatever for the firmware update that turns it into a truly production ready camera doesn't seem like a great deal.

In AF-S, the aperture stops down after acquiring focus wide open. It all happens rather quickly. As soon as the focus square turns green, the aperture stops down (presumably to give depth of field preview? although, it does this even with "preview pic effect" off, which doesn't make much sense). But it's actually doing the focusing with the lens wide open. Try focusing on something with low contrast that takes longer to get a lock on. You can hear the aperture click on some of the lenses and also you can see the difference in depth of field in the preview. In AF-C, the aperture is stopped down the entire time the camera is focusing, which is really pretty daft and makes one question the competence of the Fuji engineers. I mean, I'm in single shot drive mode here, so it's not like I even need an aperture mechanism that can open and close at 11 FPS. Hopefully it's just a bug, but I'm not comfortable gambling $1600 on them deciding to fix this (and many other issues) in a future firmware update... I'll just re-buy the camera then (when it's hopefully cheaper and fully functional).

This concurs with my experience. Something else, which may or may not be relevant (as it's not aperture related) is that sometimes the autoexposure takes a very long time to adjust (~10 seconds). Try turning the camera on with the lens cap on and then remove the cap. Sometimes the image will be blown out for 10 seconds. Sometimes it adjusts instantly. Also the auto ISO exposure when shooting video is (always) very slow to adjust to change in lighting---too slow to produce usable footage e.g. transitioning from indoors to outside.

Perhaps you should try it in low light sometime. Obviously, the smaller the aperture, the less noticeable missed critical focus is going to be. Is CDAF at f/11, Good Enough? Maybe. But I paid a bundle for a camera with on-sensor PDAF and I'd like to use it. Nowhere in Fuji's marketing material does it mention that that feature only works in AF-C when the aperture is wide open. In AF-S, the focusing is done with the aperture open. I'm assuming that Fuji determined the aperture actuation was too slow to keep up with the burst rate and this why they keep the aperture closed in AF-C, but it really does defeat the purpose of having the PDAF system. I don't have an X-T1 to compare with, but I do have the X70 which has a firmware a bit between the X-T10 and the X-Pro2. It does AF-C with the aperture open---not that the AF-C is usable on that camera. After doing a bit of googling it looks like Sony users are having the same problem. Only apparently with Sony its firmware updates to the lenses that brings the new focusing-stopped-down functionality. It would be nice to hear something from Fuji on why they think this and the slow/stepped aperture re-opening are features and not bugs---because they really look like bugs.

Yes, autofocus performance. Anyone with an X-Pro2 or X-T2 can easily set the aperture to f/16 and do some focusing in AF-C mode to see it for themselves. Now try it wide open. Notice that the AF speed/performance is different. This is because PDAF requires a wide aperture. Now try the same thing on a DSLR. The aperture will be wide open during AF-C even though it's set to f/16 (it will only stop down when actually making exposures). If you still don't agree, then by all means produce this data you have. I would be very interested to know how the X-T2/X-Pro2 can violate physics.

Yes, all X-T2 (and X-Pro2) cameras do this. You'll also notice that in AF-C mode, all of the focusing is done with the aperture stopped down, which means performance is going to be very bad at any aperture other than wide open. I find it very suspicious that none of the 'professional' reviews mention this, which is a huge handicap compared to a DSLR (which only ever stops down the aperture when actually exposing the image). This was one of the many reasons I returned my X-Pro2... Was hoping it would be fixed in the X-T2, but apparently not---I'm likely to return it as well.