Astigmatism

Been experimenting with panoramas with the built in panorama function on the Drive dial of my X-T5. I'm surprised how fussy the camera is about how fast I pan. So far I haven't found any reference that specifies the panning speed range that works. I've searched the manual, the Tony Phillips book, and this forum. I get errors on some shots for going too fast, and other shots for going too slow. I actually have difficulty hitting a speed between these two limits and sometimes the error message isn't the one I would guess. I do have a turntable with preset speeds and have tried placing the camera on it to take a panorama with an accurate steady speed. The highest speed available is 25.03 seconds per rotation, which works, and 31.95 seconds per rotation works, but 36.13 seconds per rotation gives an error for being too slow. These experiments were with a Fuji 14 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 640, f/5.6, 1/60 s. Camera is horizontal, set for horizontal left-to-right scan, turntable sweeping camera left-to-right. I haven't yet tried other lenses to see how focal length matters; the manual says it should be 35 mm or less. I'd like to take more panoramas but apparently need a motorized panning head with a speed that is compatible with the camera's needs. However, I don't know what the camera's needs are, at least not very precisely for different lenses (which I could continue experimenting to find). Moreover, the motorized panning head options I've looked at so far don't even state the available speed settings. What panning speeds does the camera work with, and how does lens focal length affect these? What motorized heads work with the camera? Or -- is the built in Panorama mode not worth trying to make work, and should I instead use external software to stitch stills together? Thank you!

Glad to hear the light coming in from the left is just what gets around the lens cap. I think lens caps are just for protecting the lens, and don't promise to achieve total darkness for experiments or whatever else. As to bad pixels, well, I don't know. I kind of ignore the issue and hope the camera is managing to hide them from me, as otherwise it's just going to make me mad not being able to fix them. I'd be interested to hear how expensive it is to "fix" them (meaning replace the sensor). Also, I think of them as something that only happens during sensor manufacture, but I wonder if there's anything the user does that influences having more or fewer of them.

Any chance light could be leaking around your lens cap? What if you repeat this test, but holding your camera under dark towels or coats or something, and maybe with the room light off? Not sure your sensor isn't damaged, but I'm having a hard time imagining sensor damage that would look like THAT.

Just as a general strategy, I think the Custom Settings are good for recovering from the frequent problem of some unknown setting getting accidentally changed. Don't know aboutXH2S, just X-T3,4,5 cameras. I have C1 set up as my typical use setup, and could just hit that to get most settings back where I expect/understand them. C2-C7 I reserve for special uses. Any thoughts on this, folks?

I never followed up on this. I did get one. It's pretty amazing. Every shot I've taken with it is sharp, handheld or on a tripod, at least somewhere in the photo. I have experimented with it at home, but I live in woods and don't have very long sight lines; if there are trees in the photo, some will be sharp, but depth of field limits this. Handheld, it's a little hard for me to aim accurately (I'm pretty shaky). Just now it's occurring to me I should have tried Continuous autofocus, but I only tried Single shot. I can't control what point will autofocus as a result. This is all the more true with the 2X extender. On a tripod all of this is perfectly fine. I need to try a better environment, where perhaps handheld will work well. I live near the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River, famous for its bald eagles, which make for great targets. One unusual feature: the lens can be programmed for a focus distance. You get it focused on something and press a button on the lens to set that distance. Then, whenever you want to return to that distance, you press one of the four buttons arranged around the barrel a little behind the front of the lens. I haven't done much with it. Attached is a photo of a little monster figurine, 5" tall. Picture was taken with the 2X from 104 feet away with tripod. ISO 6400, f/11, 1/2000 s. I had to shrink the file size to upload; there's better detail in the photo I actually got.

What an interesting thread! It’s been quiet for years, but let’s revive it. Here are some accessories I’d like to see and would almost certainly buy: Lens caps that are easier to grip (my fingers tend to slip off of the Fuji ones, and I haven’t found a source of aftermarket caps for all the sizes 39 mm to 95 mm of my Fuji lenses). Three mounts allowing the camera to sit on a horizontal surface, one each for shooting in landscape or portrait orientation or straight up, and each one allows the absolute minimum distance between camera body and horizontal surface. A tiny handheld device you look through to see the field of view of each of your prime lenses, to speed making the best choice. Could go in the hot shoe or be handheld. Though, I’m calibrating a tailor’s cloth measuring tape to be held at arm’s length, which may work great. A frosted pane to handhold in front of the lens, so you can turn and look toward the light source and use the camera as an incident light meter. It would of course be calibrated (some known number of stops to compensate it). A blowing or sucking nozzle with a crossbar at the correct distance from the tip, for cleaning the glass sensor cover, so you can get it very very close to the sensor cover without ever touching (the crossbar touches the lens mount just before the tip would touch the sensor cover). Two replacement viewfinder eyecups that are intended for users who always wear glasses, and who never wear glasses, instead of the compromise design. After all, does everybody go back and forth? An optical quality clear glass "filter" that fits directly on the camera body rather than on the lens. It would protect the sensor for optics experiments, unusual lens configurations, use with bellows for macrophotography, and similar purposes.

There are three things that surprise me about taking HDR photos. 1) Even though the camera is set for HIF images, and does save HIF images for ordinary “S” shots, on “HDR” it saves a JPG instead. 2) The HDR JPG image is zoomed in slightly, compared to the HIF. 3) In HDR mode the display says it’s storing the image for a couple seconds, a surprisingly long time. This is from a quick experiment with a fixed focal length lens on a tripod, manually set at ISO 320, f/2.5, 1/320 s. I shot a contrasty scene with bright highlights and dark shadows. All this was with XF33mmF1.4 R LM WR on an X-T5. I looked around in the manual and in the excellent Tony Phillips book for hints but came up empty. Can anybody enlighten me?

I agree with the lens flare suggestion. For one thing the bands appear oriented exactly the same direction as the edges of shadows, to the extent that that's visible. For another, it beats me how something could go wrong with image rendering to create bands that are NOT perfectly horizontal or vertical.

I read that is is designed to work particularly well handheld (an impressive goal for such a long lens). Perhaps they mean the OIS built into the lens is unusually good. SJW, do you have any opinion on that?

f/8 and Don't Be Late!

I came across this here: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1855422-REG/fujifilm_16900408_xf_500mm_f_5_6_r.html This sounds like a pretty exciting lens. It's a prime lens and, apparently, more compact than the zooms. It's compatible with the 1.4X and 2X lenses, too. The thought of ordering one flits through my mind now and then. It wouldn't be the most extravagant purchase I've ever made, but it'd probably be in the top 5. Anybody have one?

I vote for the X-T30ii also. I agree with the points Sleeping Dog makes. I also really appreciate the manual controls for setting shutter speed and (on the "R" lenses) the lens aperture. You can leave these on "A" for automatic, or just set another lever for "AUTO", if you like. But I'm a big believer in understanding the settings and putting them to work, at least much of the time. That's probably a minority opinion, so your mileage may vary. And, in some circumstances -- like a news story rapidly unfolding right in front of me, where I want decent pictures without any time spent on thinking about settings -- I'll go with automatic anyhow.

A few quick thoughts: Overall, zooms tend to be heavier and bulkier and slower and costlier with poorer image quality than primes. You compromise on pretty much everything, just to get that adjustable focal length. But an adjustable focal length is a pretty huge and amazing feature for a lens. You might put some thought into your own thoughts on zoom versus prime. Many of us wind up with a few of each. I also agree the 18-135 is very good, does almost everything you need a lens to do. If I can only bring one, this is the one. I also agree the 80 Macro is good. The images are excellent for close up or distant shooting, and it offers about as much magnification as you can use handheld. If I can only bring two, this is the second one. There's a 30 Macro instead, which is a great deal smaller and lighter and easier to handle, if you prefer. You can crop an image after shooting to approximate a longer narrower lens. But there's no way in the world to approximate a shorter wider lens. What didn't fit in the image will never get there after shooting. So, I think it is good to have a very wide lens in your kit. I have the 8 mm, which is VERY very wide. Kinda expensive though. But, still, picking something pretty dang wide as your widest lens is a good strategy. You can leave a big gap between your widest and second widest, and crop as needed, but you will be able to capture the subject.

The two items I ordered aren't compatible. The threads on the camera side are coarser than the threads on the telescope side. I still haven't found (on my own) a camera part and a telescope part that both specify thread size (including pitch) and match. So I think I'd like to try the first thing you mention in your last post, jerryy, the "Fuji X Mount 2" UltraWide Prime Focus Telescope Adapter" at Telescopeadapters.com. But I have a question about it. The photos seem to show that the barrel has two slightly different diameters. The barrel is narrower close to the camera and wider further from it. There's definitely a small shoulder visible in the photo. If the wider part fits into the tube, the narrower part will be under the clamping mechanism (three screws bearing on a split brass ring). That seems wrong. If the narrower part fits, the wider part won't go in in the first place. Can you tell me what's up with that? Thanks!!

Wow, jerryy, you knocked this right out of the park! Thank you! This would be great as some permanent sticky! I think I have ordered something that will work. It's M42, not M48 -- I couldn't find both parts in M48 on Amazon or B&H Photo. However I bet this will not cause any vignetting. I've had tools for predicting vignetting, but don't know where working ones are, so I'm gambling a little. What I ordered: Astromania 2" T-2 Focal Camera Adapter for SLR Cameras Fotodiox Lens Mount Adapter Compatible with M42 Screw Mount SLR Lens on Fuji X-Mount Cameras I already have one of the Fotodiox adapters which I built into an adapter for mounting a microscope objective 160 mm from my camera sensor. It can be trusted. However it doesn't minimize the length added to the optical path, and I didn't find any others that were shorter. The scope is an "Orion SkyQuest XT10 IntelliScope Dobsonian Reflector Telescope" (this name is almost as long as the optical tube). My manual doesn't list the back focus distance, but I am hopeful, because using 2" eyepieces requires a special adapter that extends the focusing tube outward, as if the back focus is surprisingly large. Thank you for a very thorough useful answer!!