Trenton Talbot

Dear Fuji,
 
I'm fed up. I love your JPEG colours and there are many use cases where I have stopped wasting time working on a RAW file when the JPEG is just beautiful as is. Especially for images I take of my family I don't want and need that extra work. But let me state this as clearly as possible: your JPEGs suck when using anything north of ISO 3200, especially for photographing people. I don't want my family to look like I stole them from Madame Tussauds!
 
I have only been getting stupid replies from your German staff members who don't acknowledge the problem but instead look for excuses why the images look the way they do. So now I will use this forum to hopefully put some pressure on you to solve this problem. I'm not the first but it seems most have given up after a while.
 
Let me prove the problem with some images of my son, who was obviously delighted to be photographed. Don't worry, he got raisins afterwards which made him happy again ;-)
 
The first image is an OOC JPEG shot at ISO 6400. Astia film simulation, AWB and NR set to "-2". The rest of the settings are untouched. Let me introduce you to Mr. Waxy:

 
The second image is the RAF file converted through Iridient using the standard settings:

 
The second image is great and absolutely usable for me. The first would immediately go to the trash because it is terrible. Japanese might like that look, I don't know. Fuji might like that look and call it "Image Intelligence", but to me and many others it just looks terrible.
 
Here's what I want: I want a setting to turn NR off completely. I know "completely" might be the wrong word because that is not possible from what I know. So I'll be more precise: I want an ISO 6400 JPEG to look like an underexposed shot at ISO 1600 that is pushed two stops with the in-camera converter. For some strange reason the resulting image looks completely different in the noise and detail department that a JPEG shot using ISO 6400.
 
To prove that point as well, here's my son again. This time I underexposed two stops by lowering the ISO to 1600 and keeping the aperture and shutter speed. Afterwards I pushed the image two stops in-camera:

 
It looks great to my eyes and clearly proves that your JPEG engine is capable of delivering this. Since ISO 6400 is really just ISO 1600 digitally amplified two stops this should be the easiest thing to program into a firmware update. Stop finding excuses and just do it, for goodness' sake, I thought Fuji was known for listening to its users!
 
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Dear forum members,
 
Fuji probably won't read this on their own. If you want this fixed as well, you have two options and I hope you will use both of them:
 
1: comment on this thread and express your opinion. Feel free to say if it doesn't bother you but please don't pretend that there isn't a problem. It's clearly visible to anyone with one or more eyes. Also feel free to add other examples of the wax problem.
 
2: write to Fuji and send them the link to this thread. Tell them directly that this is embarrassing and should be fixed through a firmware update. Yes, even on the left-behind-X100S.
 
 
If anyone wants to look at the full size images and compare the amount of detail in the skin, the wall and the shirt at 1:1 magnification, here's a link to my Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uutydfzb7he8pvu/AACHXnmQA4Rbfl1WUTHouAVHa?dl=0

Here you can post your night photographs (done with Fuji X cameras, of course!)
 
This includes all kinds of night photography, from night portraiture to star trails and even time lapse.
 
To prime the topic: Fuji X-T1, 55-200, 3 small strobes. Minimal post processing.

That's pretty easy to find out: just set the drive mode to Ch and shoot away. 

You forgot to mention the most important part: Fuji will let you frame the shot and see what's going on way below light levels at which the naked eye goes into mysterious realm of "Can't See Shit Captain".

Unfortunately it's not the camera, it's a light source. It's flickering pretty badly.

There's an easy way to test if your sensor needs cleaning.
 
Set ISO to 200. Stop down your lens to the maximum (f/16 or f/22 if available). Set shutter speed to auto. Switch to manual focus and rotate focusing ring to the closest distance. Take a handheld shot of some more or less uniform surface in a relatively dimly lit room; exposure should be couple of seconds. Slightly wave and rotate the camera during exposure – there should be nothing in focus (see #4) and nothing steady. Open the shot in camera, zoom in to the max and inspect the result navigating your zoomed in shot with D-pad buttons. All sharp or semi-sharp objects you see are various artifacts on the sensor (dust, lint, maybe even – God forbid – scratches…). You can get rid of most dust specks with the blower. However, some artifacts (such as dried out water drops) require wet cleaning. If you don't know how to do it yourself, you should learn 
 
 
PS: I have an X-T1 since the day it hit retail shelves… and I change lenses at least 100x every day. So far, no need for a wet cleaning.

Midnight Breeze by Trenton Talbot, on Flickr

Midnight Breeze by Trenton Talbot, on Flickr

Colors Of The Night by Trenton Talbot, on Flickr

Colors Of The Night by Trenton Talbot, on Flickr

Here you can post your night photographs (done with Fuji X cameras, of course!)
 
This includes all kinds of night photography, from night portraiture to star trails and even time lapse.
 
To prime the topic: Fuji X-T1, 55-200, 3 small strobes. Minimal post processing.

We do the weird stuff…
 

X-T1, XF 14/2.8

Wut?!   Once upon a time there was a fanboy post about XF 14mm titled "The best Leica lens Fuji ever made" or something like that… still true. Tack sharp, very clever construction (you don't have to worry about vignetting and internal reflections with filters), light and fast. Love this little gem.
 

(X-T1, XF 14mm, 26 seconds from tripod; air temperature is around -22F)

That's pretty easy to find out: just set the drive mode to Ch and shoot away. 

Wasn't expecting to shoot the sky at all but ended up staying in a castle in the middle of Wexford, Ireland during the week and it was a clear night. Happened to have my Roki 8mm in my small bag. I balanced the X-T1 on top of a wooden fence and propped it up using the lens cap. Kinda fun.

Stars by Kim Farrelly, on Flickr

Bugless Daisies by Trenton Talbot, on Flickr
 
X-T1, XF56mm, extension tubes. The story behind the shot can be found here 

From the forum's main page "…my X stuff" part is always hidden, so every time this thread pops to the top, its headline reads like this:
 

Two more factors affected by LMO, eh? Let me guess, CA suppression and… Well, you lost me on a second one. And I still haven't done any tests to find out if LMO affects RAF in any way.
 
BTW, I think I found something that you probably haven't – speaking of "pushing the limits". Sometimes, when stacking 10+ frames together, the entire PDAF area becomes visible as a distinct noise pattern that is different from the rest of the frame. That might be important for scientific and forensic photography, maybe to the star trail stacking to some degree.
 
Here's an example (just a crop of the bottom right corner of PDAF zone):
 

It's just like a car. If you try to drive from a parking lot by switching to 4th gear and cranking up the radio volume, you gonna fail: without a motor running all of these manipulations are futile. Finally you start the motor, and there's a brief weird noise from under the hood, then suddenly everything goes dark and silent. But why?…

Also remember that "open aperture" AF metering is only available in AF-S and MF (Instant-AF) modes. Not in AF-C mode. Instead, AF-C is always using the working aperture of the shot.
 
This is also important for daylight shooting, as stopping down in AF-C will increase your DOF, but it will at the same time decrease the chance that the camera can still use the fast predictive PDAF instead of the slower CDAF to track your subject. So stopping down can actually mean that your action series works less well (= less keepers) than shooting the same scene with a wide open lens and less DOF.
 
That's why it's important to know how your camera actually really works. Since Fuji doesn't explain any of this, I spend countless hours "reverse engineering" such details, then sharing them in forums, blogs, books and workshops that cover such "secrets". It's simple news to use.
 
It's also important to understand the effects that Face Detection can have on AF performance. I have seen many users always keeping it turned on, which is clearly a mistake.
 
Other users have problems determining proper settings for AF-S and AF-C priority: Release or Focus? It depends, but as long as you exactly know what these options are doing, you can improve your keeper rate.
 
Not to mention users that keep their camera at factory settings for parameters such as Power Management and not enabling High Performance Mode. Terrible mistake.
 
And how does/can Pre-AF influence your AF performance? Are there instances where Pre-AF is actually recommended? Well, yes, but certainly not always, so don't turn it on by default.
 
How do Single-Point AF frames actually work in firmware 4? What's the practical difference between CDAF and PDAF, what does each of these two AF methods "like" in a subject? How can we use this information to increase AF speed and accuracy by pointing the camera at patterns and objects that either the CDAF or the PDAF are particularly fond of? In my world, that's useful information, too, so we are practicing this kind of stuff in our workshops.
 
What about AF zones? Yep, they are new, but how do they actually work, and how can we use this information to increase our AF keeper rate? And what's the difference between an AF zone in AF-S and one in AF-C, anyway?
 
Or let's talk about the new WIDE/TRACKING. Pretty much useless in concert with AF-S, but very useful in concert with AF-C. At least in some scenarios, where real "3D tracking" is required.
 
The more features and options we get, the more homework we have to do. For me, it's not about trusting the autofocus. It's about knowing it. 

Just outside of my apartment complex. X-T1, XF 14mm.
 

I wouldn't trust any portable solar charging solution in the wilderness, unless the trip plan involves camping above the cloud layer.

Here you can post your night photographs (done with Fuji X cameras, of course!)
 
This includes all kinds of night photography, from night portraiture to star trails and even time lapse.
 
To prime the topic: Fuji X-T1, 55-200, 3 small strobes. Minimal post processing.

Part of the news assignment. X100S, small flash under the ramp, SOOC 
 

Night Train by Paul Crespel, on Flickr Italy - Verona - Fuji X100s