Alan Sircom

Well, the hood on the photograph is the one for the 35mm. Presumably Fuji will either dual use this hood, or release a similar one for the 23/2 nearer the time of the launch of the 23/2.

Great image. But yes, 'part' of the reason why you don't find using a 14mm that difficult to use is those years of familiarity working with super wides. And this image is a perfect example as it exhibits all of that familiarity in action. If you are used to working with a lens like the 14mm, you will know almost instinctually to get very close to that front sun-lounger, you will know the depth of field required, the importance of those vanishing points and the horizontal, and the placement of the horizon. Someone who hasn't got that depth of experience working with super wides will miss one or more of these compositional elements until they start to nail using the lens. Most commonly, they will remain a step or two too far away from the subject. They might not be thinking of images in terms of vanishing points (especially twin vanishing points as you have done here) and may be so surprised by the perspective from a super wide, they make the rookie error of not getting the horizon perfectly level or place it badly. All of these points can and do fall into place with understanding how to use a super wide, but if the photographer's widest lens to date is the 18-55 fuji zoom (or equivalent), their composition will at first be informed by that experience.

I disagree. A superwide lens like the 14mm does take some getting used to from a compositional sense. It's not as daunting as some claim, but it is both daunting and perceived as daunting by people starting out. The old school method of learning to compose one focal length at a time wasn't a bad one because you usually started with the standard lens, then went moderately wide, then either even wider, or a moderate tele depending on your tastes. This gave you the compositional skills to best use the more extreme focal lengths. Without that, a supersede is hard to handle. It's not that hard to learn once you set to it, but you need to learn to use it.

Mine has a stiffness around f/8 on the aperture ring. I can only describe it as being like 'muscle stiffness' - it feels like there is grit in the aperture ring at first, but 30 seconds or so of repeatedly moving the ring from 'A' to 'f/2' and back warms it up and the stiffness almost goes away. It's useable, but no-one's sure if it's standard issue for the 18mm (and I'm being fussy) and my sample is at the worst end of 'acceptable'. Fuji has offered to fix it, but the cost is almost as much as a new one. I really like the lens, though. It seems to be gaining new friends as people try it on the X-Pro2, too. What do other 18mm users get here? I've tried a couple of second-hand examples and I think it might be my lens is at the outer edges of what is acceptable. But it certainly doesn't feel as intrinsically 'right' as lenses like the 35/2. I'd be keen to know the views of other 18mm users.

Yep. My i40 died on me suddenly, while 'on assignment' in Warsaw. I wasn't doing anything heavy duty with it, but it just went red-LED of death and stopped working. That was a shame, because it's so small and handy. Fortunately, I got a deal on a new Fuji EF-42 that was almost too good to be true. I expect it will also die on me at one point. It's no big deal either way, though: I mostly use Cactus flashes off camera.

With the launch of the 100-400 XF zoom, the current roadmap has just one lens - the 120 Macro. That's not really a roadmap anymore. What would you like to see on the next roadmap? As I'm enjoying the 35mm f/2 'Fujicron' more and more each time I use it, I'd love to see more of the same. I'd like to see a 23mm f/2 WR in a similar form factor, and maybe a revised 60mm and 18mm (both f/2 and WR, and if the 120 covers the macro market, Fuji could dispense with the 60mm macro functions, just make it small and fast-focus). That would make an outstanding quartet of lenses to go with the X-Pro2. I also think Fuji would be good making a T/S lens and possibly a fast tele (like a 200mm f/2.8). And of course the 33mm f/1 everyone's keen to talk about. What would be your additions to the next roadmap? Who knows, maybe Fuji is watching...

Thanks for the reply, and your suggestion of the 23mm is where I'm going, too. I work both print media and blogging, so I prefer to stay this side of ISO1600 for safety. My 'go to' lens for detail work is the 60mm, but I think it's going to struggle in the kind of gloomy rooms you get here. The 'specialty audio' section of CES is quieter than most now and I have been able to use a tripod at times, but this time it stays at home. And yes, putting humans in the picture is always a good plan. It doesn't work so well when it's the designer is too arthritic to crouch down to get close to their new product, but otherwise it's a sure-fire icebreaker. Which explains the use of the 56mm and OCF.

Hi all, I'm heading off to CES in Las Vegas on Monday. My regular beat is high-end audio. Unlike many exhibitors, audio companies try to replicate the late-night home listening experience. This typically means very low available light. At its worst, this means a series of black products on a black rack with a black background in a badly lit room. Or, in photographic terms, a subject made up of shadow noise, in a sea of shadow noise. Normally, I resolve this with a combination of tripod, fast lenses, and off-camera flash. This year, however, attendees have been warned security will be substantially tightened in the wake of recent terrorist activities. This means bags are subject to search on entering CES-related sectors, and the CEA recommends a KISS approach (the fewer pouches and pockets to search, the quicker the process). As typically you will pass through checkpoints at least two or three times a day (press launches are at prearranged times at different parts of CES), this could make the job almost impossible for the week. So what do I go for? I think I can get away with a simple bag that gives me a lens change, or off camera flash, but probably not a tripod (although a monopod might be possible). Do I go with the 23/56 as a combo, or the 18-55 with off-camera flash? I will be using an X-T1.

I don't think tautology matters anymore. In this ever-changing world in which we live in, all that matters is getting in the right number of the same preposition in a single sentence.

I disagree. Practically every press photographer I know of has a 1.4x tele in his or her bag because it gives them extra reach on their 70-200 without having to carry the extra load of a 300mm and a monopod. As many of them are now freelancers, the 'extra load' of a 300mm can be translated to 'additional cost I can no longer justify'. Two bodies, three lenses, a flash or two, a teleconverter, a laptop, and associated gubbins can all fit in a Think Tank ShapeShifter. Anything that cannot fit into that bag is excess baggage for a press photographer... unless it's a step-ladder!

Thank you so much for doing this. +1 Internets to you, sir!

I had this problem on a MacBook Air after it survived a minor adult beverage spill over the keys. The spill didn't kill the electronics (I'd say it continues to work to this day, but it was stolen earlier this year) but it did erode both the legends on the keys and leave a keyboard-shaped wear mark on the anti-glare coating on the screen. There was nothing I could do to remove it. This might be a good excuse for screen protectors. As milandro rightly points out, the cost of replacement is likely economically unviable given the resale value of the camera. Consider those smudges like battle scars worn proudly by a veteran fighter.

Having tried to use a Leica M6 with a 135mm lens in the film era, you really don't want the OVF to reach too far into the telephoto. The bright frame for 135mm is tiny in the viewfinder, magnifiers never seem to work as well as you would expect, and parallax errors plague your picture taking, no matter how good the parallax compensation system.

Well, yes... that's exactly my point. Most prospective camera buyers don't go to Ken Rockwell's site for a review. They go to Google and type the name of the camera they are about to buy, with the word "review" tacked on the end, They then hit on the one nearest the top of the first page of results that looks 'authentic', 'independent', and 'expert' to them. In many cases, if Rockwell's readers are similar to most review readers, their mind has already been all but made up, and visiting a site like Ken Rockwell's is simply a part of the buyer building a barrier against post-purchase anxiety. It's more to do with confirmation than differentiation or selection. His livelihood depends on getting enough people to click on his review page, and some of those visitors being hyped up from that review to buy on a click-thru from his site.

If you read Ken Rockwell's standalone review of the Fuji X-T10, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera. If you read the Sony RX100 Mk IV, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera. And probably if you read any of his other reviews, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera aside from the one he's reviewing at the time. This is perhaps one of the reasons why he gets such high site traffic. People don't necessarily read Rockwell synoptically, but go Googling for reviews of products they have zoned in on, and his site comes up. In such cases, often they are trying to confirm their buying decision with an independent review, rather than trying to discover good and bad points of a product in a shortlist. So, someone reading Ken Rockwell's review of the Sony RX100 Mk IV is probably not in the market for another camera, and any other cameras brought into the review are there to show the RX100 in a good light. The best thing is the one in his hands right now, and will remain so until he gets the next thing. Then that's the best. Anything else just gets in the way of people reading his review and then clicking through to buy. That is the way Ken Rockwell gets paid, and we'd all do the same under the same circumstances. People with too much time on their hands will read someone like Ken Rockwell synoptically, and find the inconsistencies, the repetitions, and the contradictions. And those with way too much time on their hands will use all of this as some kind of argument ammo in forums. In fact, what Ken Rockwell is doing is just a by-product of being handmaiden to Google. What Ken Rockwell does extremely well is pre- and post-purchase reinforcement. He staves off buyer's remorse very effectively. Those products on his site where he receives a lot of hits and click-throughs will get free user-guides and more coverage than those less successful ones, so people come back for more. As such, he's almost a bell-weather on how successful a product line is doing in his territory. While I don't necessarily like or agree with his methods, his photographic style, and his conclusions, I can't help respecting the guy for continuing to carve out a living in this manner. His ability to read the market and adapt accordingly is almost preternatural, and his SEO skills are off the chart!

Personally, I don't have any problems with larger cameras and lenses. Check in desks are another matter, and one that will likely only get worse, because RyanAir is charging customers for every single bag that goes in the hold, and Swiss can turn round flights fast because it prevents people from using the hold and restrict the size, weight, and number of cabin bags on some flights. Other airlines will follow suit, because both actions mean more profitability. I also don't think anyone here is blind to Fuji's shortcomings. If anything, those of us who use the system are more aware of its shortcomings than those who sit on the sidelines and pick holes at random. I would prefer Fuji got its act together in several important criteria, such as flash, AF (it's better but still not 'there' IMO), oversmoothed high ISO JPEGs, and its battery technology. It would also be nice if Adobe and Fuji worked still closer, although I'm liking C1 more and more. Arguments for film camera time-frames don't survive in the digital age. You could measure the life of a film camera or a lens in decades, and the only aspect of photography where that still applies (just) is Leica lenses. Everything else is on a much faster turnaround time. You don't need to buy every iteration of camera or lens, but hardly any of the Nikon lenses that currently sell are the same models that were in the Nikon line-up of 10 years ago. Canon does better in this, now. I also don't see how someone who used Nikon, then a Fuji XP1, then a Fuji XT1, and then went back to Nikon in a few years gets to lecture about people 'excessively changing from cameras and systems'. I had a Nikon system. Now I have a Fuji system. The cameras that I bought in that Fuji system I still use today, whether they are fashionable or not. Finally the arguments for Fuji going FF do not stack up, IMO. Fuji is a niche player. The niche player in FF is Leica. If Fuji spent time, money, and energy to develop a system that trailed behind Leica in the FF market, how is that a good thing? Surely Fuji would be better improving what it already does well than going after what few scraps fall from the FF table?

peterh, given your initial flash requirements, I don't think the Sony Alpha line provides a significantly better solution to your demands. It has better TTL and some kind of rudimentary wireless TTL, but even if it is a generation ahead of the Fuji, it's still two generations behind Canon's and Nikon's system. I agree that if your assignments include IBIS and high ISO in very low-light settings, then the Fuji system is not for you, but using IS in low-light is pretty far from a panacea. In my opinion, IS works best at improving your 1/focal length hand-holding technique, but beyond a certain point, it becomes academic. You may get five stops of hand-tremor removal, but below about 1/4 second, you are starting to counter slower periodicity body movement (such as breathing) that it is not geared up to deal with. In a way, this is reverse of things like noise-cancelling headphones - they are great at cancelling constant noise (like the drone of aircraft engines) but until recently not so good at countering fast transients (such as train wheels going over welded track). You might be best pushing the ISO higher than you might expect, rather than work at ISO 6400 and use IBIS. In such cases, I'd go with the A7RII instead of the A7II. Also, the point about NYT togs using Sony Alpha on international assignment is a valid one that I've heard before, but it masks more pragmatic reasoning. First, most NYT photographers are now asked to shoot video (even if B-roll) alongside stills, and that limits the pool of camera systems that reliably do both well. More significantly, the operative word in your sentence was 'international'. Baggage weight and size concerns have become unfeasibly pressing for photographers travelling across the EU, because an increasing number of airlines demand you pay excess for any luggage stowed in the hold, impose weight limits on hold luggage, and are now more strict on cabin baggage size and weight. If you fly Swiss Economy Light, for example, you are limited to a single bag weighing 17.5lbs and a maximum size of 22"x15.5"x9", and they do weigh and measure your bag. This was a contributing factor in my switch to Fuji, because I was having to pare down my Nikon system too much for what my company would pay for pan-European travel. The days of putting a big Peli case in the hold for the cameras are long gone.

Whoa! This isn't DPReview. The OP's needs are relatively specialist and not easily met, by Fuji or any other mirrorless system, IIRC. No camera system is perfect, and no camera system is ideal for everyone, and what the OP describes is beyond Fuji's flash system as it stands. We should be pleading with Fuji to make a flash system that allows people like the OP to stay in the Fuji fold than patronise people who hit the limits of the system. IMO the worst thing a company can do is listen to its fanboys. It's even worse than listening to the detractors, because at least the detractors give you an indication of what might not be that company's finest hour. The OP raised some valid points about AF (that a few of us have addressed if not entirely resolved) and about flash (which no one can fully address). It's that kind of commentary (and the rational responses) that Fuji should be noting.

I think any hope of cameras holding value today is mostly wishful thinking. They depreciate fast, and once the replacement model has been announced, that depreciation virtually spirals out of control. This is made all the worse by companies selling off old stock at low rates before the new model is launched. You are probably right that two second-hand X-T1s will just about fund an X-T2, though. If you move fast enough when the X-T2 comes out. And you are definitely right about having two identical cameras, although that's a costly way to buy a spare camera.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's much that will fit your bill, outside of the existing Nikon or Canon systems. The XP1 is far more responsive than it originally was, but it's still behind the curve, IMO. I think the camera is outstanding in many ways, and I still use it alongside my XT1s, but that doesn't make me blind to its shortcomings, and those shortcomings seem to be butting up against your style of picture taking. There are some things you can do, however. I'm very used to using the XP1 in manual with back-button focus in the kind of situations you suggest, as it speeds up the shutter responsiveness considerably. In addition, as most of the time I'm zone focusing under such conditions, using the AF system every time you press the shutter seems a touch pointless. It is also worth noting that the contrast-detect focus of the XP1 places different demands on focusing than you might be used to with a Nikon. The XP1 will focus surprisingly fast and accurately on any reasonably well-lit chiaroscuro subject, but if you are used to focusing for phase detection (where you look for edges for focusing) you are actually slowing the XP1s focusing system down, and this takes some unlearning. Having spent years focusing that way with DSLR AF systems, the change comes as something of a shock, although it's actually easy to master. Later Fuji cameras (from the X100S and X-E2 onwards) use a combination of phase and contrast detection. The advantage to contrast detection is it is consistent across the frame, and you might also want to consider a move away from 'focus-recompose' and to choosing the right AF point for the subject. Once you get used to doing this, once again responsiveness increases, although this time I think it's the response time of the photographer that improves. I certainly did! The thing here is familiarity. You need to relearn how to spot the parts of a scene you 'key' to for focusing, and recognise they are different to those used on a Nikon. In a way, you are already doing this, thanks to the Leica and Contax you use, and it's worth bearing in mind that some of your relationship with the Leica and Contax are also based on years of familiarity: if you had picked them up cold and new at the same time as the XP1, you'd possibly rank them differently. Regardless of focus, the flash system on Fuji's X system is in dire need of being dragged into the 21st century. It's a lot better with manual off-camera flash, if only because it doesn't put the camera into some kind of bizarre 'pause' mode while the flash recharges. But if you have to use a flash on the hot-shoe, need TTL, and want fast recycle times, it's back to the Big Two, I'm afraid. The fastest I can get is a Cactus RF60 with a Canon-clone battery pack, or a LumoPro LP180 with the same, but both of these are manual flash only. The fastest auto or TTL flash on the Fuji system is the small Nissin i40, which also has the benefit of charging fast, but it's not SB800 powerful. Everything else is either too slow, too weak, or too limited, or too slow, weak, and limited. Flash seems to be something of an afterthought with most systems apart from the Big Two. Olympus has a reasonably good system it developed for the E-series that it migrated across to µ43. But none of them have anything close to iTTL, IMO. If your thing is to photograph a subject using a fast recycle, TTL flash on the hot-shoe of your camera, try the Nissin i40. But if this still fails to come up to snuff, and it well might, I suspect your own real solution still has a Nikon logo on the pentaprism.

A few years back, I would have probably said 10-24 and 35, but now I'd tend toward the 10-24 and the 56, skipping the 35mm entirely. The 10-24 is most comfortable at its wider end, and it's large compared to a 35mm (or especially the 23mm on the X100s), but I'd be happy to use the 10-24 as the primary walk around lens, and that 56 for when I wanted to go for a spot of Steve McCurry!

My take on this is to mis-quote Churchill: "Fuji is the worst camera system, except for all the others." There is no perfect camera system, just as there is no perfect car, guitar, watch, audio system, suit, hamburger, etc, etc. There will be a camera system that fits the requirements of an individual slightly better than others on balance. Unfortunately, that invests the decision-making process with a high degree of personal choice, and that means an alternate camera system can be seen as a sleight on an individual's decision-making skills. Most people will decide that one system suits them better than the others, and that's where it ends. The distortion comes when things move from 'suits them better' to 'is better', and then rigidly, blindly defending that position. Fold in a public forum, and dogmatic, infantile spats break out. TBPH, the best thing to do is give such 'debates' a wide berth.

We are a fickle bunch. The 18 is an excellent lens. It is fast and light. Then, along comes the 14. The 18 is an excellent lens. It is fast and sharp and light. Suddenly, there's not much love for the 18. Then, along comes the 10-24. The 10-24 is an excellent lens. It is fast and sharp and light and it has IS. Suddenly, there's not much love for the 14. Now, along comes the 16mm...

Short answer - no. Long answer - noooooooo. You can use wireless systems in manual mode, and some of these allow for flash power adjustment, but you can't use them with TTL. It sounds like it's possible because of the term 'commander' mode on Fuji cameras. However, commander mode on Fuji flash systems means something very different to commander mode on Nikon iTTL, for example. You can put your flash into Commander Mode and all it does is disable pre-flash, so the flash on your camera can trigger light and IR sensors on off-camera flashes. It sends no special IR codes to other flashes (as commander mode on iTTL does). To make matters additionally confusing, the different IR settings on the underside of the EF-X20 allow for 'straight' slave triggering, or allow compensation for pre-flash. It's actually not quite as confused as it seems: the EF-X20 can be used with any Fuji on-camera flash, compensating for pre-flash, or the Fuji camera can be set to 'commander' mode to trigger conventional flash IR slaves (in which case, you need to adjust the EF-X20 accordingly). But, to reiterate, there is no wireless TTL built into the Fuji system as it stands. If a subsequent flash system includes wireless TTL, it will necessitate firmware updates to existing cameras. It would also mean completely new flashguns from Fuji, as none of the existing models are likely to be compatible.

Like it or not, we are in a time when a two year product life cycle is expected for almost any technology. The market decides this for itself, saying 'you must have...' for the six months of a product's life, 'you should have...' for the next six, 'you still have?' for the next six months, and then 'why do you have?' after that. By the time you bought the X100s, it was already into that second phase of its life cycle (which is just about where the X100t is now, BTW). I use an X100s and while I agree that I'd like the improvements you suggest, we don't deserve them. For the record, the original X100 owners did deserve the FW upgrade they got after the camera was discontinued, because it turned the X100 into the camera it should have always been from the outset. We X100s owners didn't have to suffer the same blunted camera system at launch, so there's no pressing need for firmware updates. Like many imaging products in 2015, Fuji's biggest competitor for the X100t is its own past. Demanding Fuji make the X100s into a quasi-X100t is letting the competitor win, and ultimately we all lose.