Khoji

I moved to Fuji X last year after being joined to Nikon at the hip for most of my life. My last Nikon system was a D800E, which is a magnificent camera that I was really really sorry to let go of. I still miss it in many ways, to be honest, even though Fuji has transformed the way I work and arguably made me a better photographer as well. Main reasons to let go of Nikon: Weight. Towards the end my photo backpack often weighed over 20kg. Cost. With Fuji I can get magnificent, high-end lenses for much less than the Nikon equivalents. Image style. I intentionally don't say "quality", but there is something about Fuji images that I just love. I think it's quite possible to argue that Fuji images are now as good as or better than Leica used to be, at non-extortionate prices. Benefits of Fuji so far: EVF: I thought I'd miss the optical viewfinder but the opposite is the case. I love seeing what the sensor sees directly and now I work in full manual exposure mode around 90% of the time. I have a much more direct control over the creative process than I ever had with my Nikon DSLR. Manual controls: Having the ISO, shutter speed and aperture directly there in manual controls is heavenly. I never want to go back. Image style. This has satisfied me right across the board. Film simulations and color management. Fuji's film simulations save a huge amount of time by giving you an excellent starting place, one that is much better for me than the Nikon defaults ever were. Also, they're gorgeous. So what do I miss from Nikon? Not much, really. Most of it is really just the love affair I had with my Nikon cameras, which had become part of me. The main thing I miss is that glorious, wonderful, 36MP full-frame sensor. The dynamic range of Fuji is fine, but if I'm honest the D800E's sensor is still a good way ahead. I also miss the wonderful crop freedom that the big full-frame sensor provides. With Fuji I tend to take much more care to make use of the full sensor area. But despite all that I have taken more really good pictures with the Fuji cameras and they have that certain quality that I love. And the Fuji system allows me to have a wider ranges of lenses and cameras to work with within my budget -- which is why I decided to make the full change rather than hanging on to my Nikon gear as well.

How are you triggering the external flash when you’re not using the mini flash to trigger it optically? I use multiple Godox flashes with the Godox Pro controller in the hot shoe and don’t have any sync issues — the Godox components I’m using are all the F versions that are Fuji compatible. If the mini flash is triggering correctly my guess is that the analog PC terminal on the front of the camera would also work correctly. My guess is that you’re using some other third party trigger in the hot shoe on top of the camera.

OIS is generally only really needed in longer lenses, allowing you to handhold them and still get decent pictures without incredibly short shutter speeds. Most of the longer Fuji lenses requiring that have their own OIS built in, and in-lens OIS can be optimized for the specific requirements of that lens, and that is said to be better. All that being said, OIS has its limits anyway. It isn’t magic. In my experience it will help you get an acceptably sharp shot when you have no other options, but it is still not a substitute for a fast shutter speed if you want really sharp images. My policy is to use the shutter speeds I would choose if OIS wasn’t there unless I have no other options, even if it means bumping up the ISO a little. A genuinely sharp image with higher ISO will almost always look better than an only acceptably sharp image with lower ISO. The only exception to all this for me so far has been the 16-55 2.8 lens. Since I use it mostly for reportage and often in very low light situations, I desperately miss the OIS on that lens and would instantly buy a version with OIS, even if it weighed 150g more. I still use it over the optically excellent 18-55 kit lens in those situations because of its better ability to separate the background, but the lack of OIS makes its lead over the kit lens much smaller for low light work. I’m actually considering getting an X-H1 body just to use with that lens, particularly since it has now gone down in price so much.

When you have any automatic mode on AND the automatic parameter(s) activated has/have enough leeway to attain their correct exposure, the exposure is adjusted automatically and so the image in the viewfinder and display will continue to look normal. It shows you the closest approximation it can of what is going to be recorded. When automatic exposure is on you will only get a darker or lighter display if there is no way the camera can achieve what it thinks is a correct exposure within the current limits available. It is different if you use fully manual exposure. Then, IF you have manual display of exposure on for manual exposure, the display will darken and lighten as you change the exposure parameters (ISO, aperture and shutter speed). This is a huge benefit compared to a DSLR with an optical viewfinder, because it allows you to get the results you want directly in manual mode.

I’d been having some problems with my XT-3: While shooting in autofocus mode the display would suddenly and spontaneously zoom in as it does for fine focusing in manual focusing mode. It would then stay zoomed in, making it impossible to frame a shot. Sometimes I could get it to reset by pushing random buttons, but in many cases the only way to reset it would be to shut down, remove the battery and re-insert the battery. Conversely, the zooming in for fine focusing didn’t work in manual focusing mode, which made manual focusing very difficult. At the same time, autofocus would occasionally stop working completely, and when I switched to manual focus it either wouldn’t work at all or would be so sluggish that it would be impossible to work fast enough. Finally, autofocus with face and eye tracking enabled would often go very haywire, with the focus point suddenly drifting off on its own into a dark portion of the image where there was nothing to focus on. When this happened it wasn’t possible to regain control over the focus point with the joystick (and yes, I also pressed the stick to activate it). Here too, I had to turn the camera off and back on again to get focusing to work again properly. Turning off eye tracking and leaving only face tracking on seemed to help a bit. I wrote to Fuji support about all this and got a prompt and helpful answer, saying that they weren’t aware of these problems and that I should send in the camera and the main affected lens (50-140 2.8) for checking. A few days later I got both of them back with a brief letter saying the following: There is nothing wrong with the camera or the lens, everything is normal The zoom-in in the display is a normal focusing aid in manual focusing mode Despite this, everything now appears to be working normally again. I say “appears”, because I haven’t been able to test extensively yet, but zooming for manual focusing now is working correctly (it wasn’t before, no matter whether the function was turned on or off) and I haven’t been able to reproduce the other problems again either. The second point in the letter is obviously wrong, because it has nothing to do with the actual problem I was having. As I explained to Fuji, the zoom-in didn’t happen in manual focusing mode, where it should have, and did suddenly happen while autofocusing, after which it wasn’t possible to disable it again. My guess is that they did a full factory reset of the firmware in the camera and that this fixed things. Even so, I find it a little strange that they didn’t simply say this, and instead just provided what was probably a boilerplate letter saying that nothing was wrong with the camera. Has anyone else had experiences like this?