flysurfer
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Posts posted by flysurfer
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Any HUNCHES as too which ones?
If I had to guess, I'm pretty confident that a red-badge wide-angle zoom has high priority.
For 2017, there's also the 80mm Macro with OIS, WR and teleconverter compatibility.
X-Mount is mature, so in the long run I'd expect 2-3 new lenses from Fujifilm every year.
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Oh believe me, I get it. You've got to make a living. That doesn't make the 'charity' remark any less unpalatable.
Ending every year with a Fuji-related negative 5-digit balance has to stop in order to avoid going broke. So I'm simply shifting priorities. The reviewing activity is now relegated to my spare time, and there's little of that when Fuji puts out 4 new products at once. I am confident that there will be opportunities to write up interesting free stuff, but my timing is now based on available spare time and not on Fuji's product announcement dates. The weeks around these announcement dates are usually pretty busy with a lot of non-exciting but actually paid work coming in, and I have two (or maybe 3 or 4) additional Fuji X book projects ahead of me, each in two languages. The past years have indeed been charitiy with regards to my bottom line. My English might be insufficient, but charity is giving money for a (good) cause, right? I love to contribute to the community, but it shall not cost me my existence. My family and my bank account kept telling me that I needed to scale that back. I have no interest in becoming a paid shill or setting up a websites filled with ads and reflinks and donate buttons or paid premium content. Beyond forums and blogs, I also like to interact with real Fuji X users, so I run my home workshops "at cost" to open them to as many people as possible. Folks seem to appreciate that, that's why every available weekend between February and June has already been booked, and I'm already developing a new (third) workshop format for the second half of 2017. Of course this also means that my weekends are quite busy. It's either a workshop weekend, or I am traveling (Malta in March, California in April) to produce sample images with new gear like GFX. Of course, none of these trips are in any way subsidized or even authorized by Fujifilm. In fact, I have to buy a full GFX kit in order to have one for the planned Malta samples images in March, because Fujifilm made it clear that they wouldn't have review equipment available for me in time. So once again, my resolutions are in danger.
- adzman808, Mb.kinsman and PoulWerner
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I intend to buy the full kit and ordered everything that is available so far. I know a few others who did the same. Here in Germany, pre-orders are very good, so Fuji must be happy.
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I only just now realized there's not a "dislike" button on this forum...
Some folks simply expect too much. In my case, several users literally demanded that I write First Looks on everything new in two languages and publish them on the day new stuff is announced. At they same time, I received complaints about books being not available or not being available in German.
Luckily, Fujifilm has a large number of popular X photographers who publish plenty of First Looks. Obviously, they are compensated, but that doesn't diminish their work. I reckon the 50mmF2 had to take a bis of a back seat because it was announced on the same day along with the GFX, T20 and X100F.
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The F2 lens trio is very popular. They sell very well and users like them.
That said, some of the "large, heavy and expensive" lenses also gained popularity in recent months, probably due to the availability of the X-T2.
The next area to fill will probably be video, seeing that there's currently no video-optimized lens in the line-up.
As for additional high-end lenses for still photography, I'm pretty sure we will eventually also see a few of those in 2018 and beyond.
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The XF50mmF2 R WR is a great lens. I have nothing to complain about. It's similar to the 23mmF2, and I recommend it w/o reservations. I remember publishing sample images and a bokeh comparison many weeks ago.
I haven't published a (p)review so far. Nobody pays anything for any of those (not even bribes or gear or broken promises), and one of my New Year's resolutions was to scale back on "Fuji X Charity". Hence also no First Looks at the X100F or X-T20 (which I also like even though neither of them is perfect). That said, the X-T20 offers very good value and pretty much sits on a sweet spot.
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Want full-resolution sample images? Click here:
X100F Samples: https://flic.kr/s/aHskSHnJyj
X100F ISO Samples: https://www.flickr.com/gp/ricopfirstinger/V38m3x
X-T20 Samples: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMkLQB4
X-T20: ISO Samples: https://www.flickr.com/gp/ricopfirstinger/H2bh3z
XF50mmF2 R WR Samples: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMkLQBp
XF50mmF2 R WR Bokeh Series: https://www.flickr.com/gp/ricopfirstinger/5g23Fa
In November, I take you to New Zealand, where you can also try the GFX and all available lenses: https://fuji-x-secrets.net/events-list/31256852086/ -
Have you tested it?
I did. Touch screen works. Still missing the focus stick, though.
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Also check the ISO dial, you might have bumped it in some sensibility only available in jpg.
What sensitivity would that be?
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Possible with the Adobe Tethering PRO Plug-in.
Should also be possible with X-T2 after future firmware upgrade.
Unlikely to also come to X-T1, but cannot be ruled out.
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There is some truth to the "it would require different hardware" statement. Cameras do not use their general purpose (usually ARM these days) CPUs for image processing. They employ one or more ASICs, which are chips designed to do one or more specific tasks very efficiently (demosaick, filter, denoise, encode x264, jpeg, etc). That being said, usually these chips are fairly versatile and probably even have TIFF and other codecs built in to them, as well as many other options, even if Fuji doesn't use them.
One would think so, but then reality tells a different story. I'm sure many of us remember the switch from 97% JPEG compression to 99% compression in the X-T10 which couldn't be brought to the X-T1, X-E2 and even X-E2S via firmware, because the compression ratio was either hard-coded or limited by other hardware factors. Or Sony's inability to bring lossless RAW compression to their higher-end cameras via firmware after dpreview forced them to offer an alternative to their bad lossy compression scheme. In any case, Fuji's Tokyo developers told me that 16 Bit TIFF wasn't a firmware possibility even for the built-in RAW converter. Bummer, because this was actually a rather popular request. It's the same with IBIS. Fuji engineers insist that it's no option for X-Mount, but many armchair developers in various forums say it is. Maybe they too should offer Fujifilm their services.
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No, they don't. The CPU is more than powerful enough to handle what I described, same goes for memory requirements. It just a shitload of work because I suspect it's quite a hack to implement.
Even for the 16-Bit TIFF I doubt that. You could just stream out the pixel data to a TIFF file pixel by pixel.. It is not rocket science. There is some complexity when you wan't to compress the TIFF. The most common schemes are based on ancient FAX technology.. again, hardly a complex task CPU and memory wise.
Well, then the developers of the camera were lying to me when I discussed this topic with them – and the demosaicing ASICs (which seem only be employed in shooting mode) don't exist. It's all just the CPU and Fujifilm is lazy/stupid. Maybe you should offer them your services.
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That is no argument against, and it won't be slow either if done right.. It only means it is a bit more work to implement.. just like a good AF algorithm. I guess it just is not a priority for them.
They would need different hardware, so it's certainly no firmware update. They even told me that they'd need different hardware to enable 16 Bit TIFF output as an option.
It's no priority at all, because NORMAL+RAW already solves the issue and because this request has been formulated by less than a dozen users in the past 6 years. So NORMAL+FINE remains Fujifilm's solution, and if users don't like it, they better look elsewhere or wait/hope/pray for something that may or may not happen in the future. AFAIK, the new 50 MP GFX also works that way, given that it's based on the X-T2 processor. But I haven't checked it out, yet, I'll know more in a few weeks.
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They would not need to to that. If you zoom past JPEG preview resolution, they could simply de-Xtrans the part of the RAW file that is shown on screen and apply the saved image display settings. It should not be to hard to do, and not need to cost a lot of memory not processing speed..
That (real-time RAW processing) would be theoretically possible, but consumes more energy. Also, the processors seem to work differently in playback mode, since it takes much longer to render a RAW in the built-in converter than it does in shooting mode. So this process would be pretty slow. For whatever reason, shooting and playback mode appear to use different processing pipelines. We know similar things from Lightroom CC, where Development mode can use the graphics processor to speed up things, but the rendered Full-Screen View cannot.
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Of course it would be possible, but it's nothing most users would want, as it would slow down the camera and increase memory needs in the camera and on the computer drive. I would not tolerate RAW files that always include large, full-size JPEG previews. So if Fuji changes this, I will call them out with regards to this "glaring error". I am very sure others will join me.
Now, if that would only come as another option (to further complicate things, which many Fuji users don't like), I could personally live with it (I'm not afraid of complex systems with many options). However, that option is already there. It's called NORMAL+RAW, and it's more versatile that forcing users to use oversizes RAW files, because we can use the full-size preview as long as we need them and then dispose of them later. Best of both worlds.
So no, I don't want this feature. It's already here, as far as I'm concerned.
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#1 is impossible,
#2 and #3 have already been requested several hundred times since January 2011 (I heard the GFX finally offers color histograms),
#4 has been mentioned several dozen times since 2013, but is certainly only considered nice-to-have, not necessary.
Outlook: There's a chance that #2 and #3 will come in future models and maybe via firmware to the X-T2 (after all, the tethering plug-in offers color histograms). #4 is very unlikely to improve (better use an external real-time GPS tracker and merge the EXIF data later), #1 will never happen (Fujifilm doesn't do magic).
Recommended course of action: Write to your regional Fujifilm office and request features #2 and #3.
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Pretty much all X-series system cameras support manual focus lenses, there's even a dedicated Leica M adapter for those who like the Leica manual focus lens experience.
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X70, no question.
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The article is now final (thanks to my editor Maggie Yates at Rocky Nook for doing a terrific job as always) and can also be accessed at X-Pert Corner here: http://www.fujirumors.com/fujifilm-x-pro2-using-firmware-2-00/
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A tethering firmware update is provided for the X-T2. It's up to third-party software makers to offer connectivity to this firmware. Adobe will offer two different plug-ins (in their Adobe store), and Fujifilm will offer a new version of HS-V5 (for sale or as a probably free update).
As for C1, you'll have to ask Phase One. For now, they don't even support compressed RAWs.
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My preliminary English article on firmware 2.00 for the Fujifilm X-Pro2 is now online: https://fuji-x-secrets.net/2016/10/26/fujifilm-x-pro2-using-firmware-2-00/
The article explains changes, fixes and new features and serves as a free update for readers of The Fujifilm X-Pro2: 115 X-Pert Tips.
- Patrick FR and PoulWerner
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Any recommendations?
Wait till Thursday.
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Apparently Sony has viewfinders that keep a lag free image in the viewfinder even at a 24fps burst.
ROFL
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And while they are at it please make a menu option to base the viewfinder histogram on raw values rather than jpeg.
Sure.
it it is pretty much hit and miss guess how far beyond the right you can get away with
Not really. I know my sensor and my RAW converter, so it isn't much of a problem for experienced users.
RAW histograms are nice, but they still wouldn't show what your RAW converter can recover. RGB histograms are more important. Hopefully, we will get those in the GFX (I was told that it will happen).
Has anyone here pre-ordered the GFX
in Fuji GFX 50R / GFX 50S / GFX 50SII
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Fuji Germany doesn't commission or subsidize books, at least not that I know of. That might be different in other territories, of course.
I might do a GFX book (the camera is not that different from an X-T2), but I want to see the how it sells in the first 3 months. Pre-orders look very strong, though.