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To those upgrading to X-T2 from X-T1, worth it?


ErikN

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Although running those XT-2 files through Iridient will drastically improve them as well ;)! Just recently started using the program too, and love how it handles RAF files!

I have heard great things about it, but I'm waiting for transformer to be available for Mac, since I don't need the whole thing. Have tried Irident developer once and it brought out an amazing amount of detail compared to Lightroom. Every Fujifilm owner should at least give it a try :)
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I have heard great things about it, but I'm waiting for transformer to be available for Mac, since I don't need the whole thing. Have tried Irident developer once and it brought out an amazing amount of detail compared to Lightroom. Every Fujifilm owner should at least give it a try :)

Ahh right, the X-Transformer is only PC right now :(. Pretty sure Iridient mentioned somewhere about working on the MAC version though, which will be great. I never did try the Developer, I'm kinda set in my LR / PS workflow, ha.

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  • 1 year later...

This is an old thread but I thought to add my thoughts as I took the plunge and am thinking of going g back.

Image quality what is it? Well to me I really hate noise , it ruins pictures for me and the xt2 is absolutely full of it at base iso. I'm wondering if I got a duff one with so many people not complainin about it. I would happily use iso 800 on the xt1 and provided it was well exposed it would be fine. Xt2 ? Not a chance it' too nasty for me and since I think that 200 is too noisy I hesitate to make it any worse. Not a pixel peeper I don' go past 100% and the xt1 doesnt show noise at this level at 200.

Other things I notice is that I get a consistent 1 stop under exposure most of the time and strangely a couple of times when comparing  jpegs to raw in LR the jpegs was in some cases (usually low light cases) brightened by the camera by about 1 stop. The downside of course is even more noise in the raw version.

The magic? Well after 3 weeks I can say the colours and the fuji magic are not there compared to the xt1 but maybe I haven't had enough time but the summer gave me some of the most beautiful shots straight out of the camera with the xt1 and I'm finding that the xt2 pics are rather lack luster but maybe again it just needs time to get used to the differences and do more processing to get similar results.

A curious one that I  can' explain, comparing jpegs to raw I note a lot of smoothing going on but when I took pictures with a particular lens (zeiss touit 50mm) there was a shocking difference. The picture was of a hill packed with houses mainly and the white windows in the jpegs were appeared to be over processed and smoothed with a high shine to them. The raw didn' have this, the were natural and similar to any other lense used. Quite shocked I rated the shot with similar results . Wierd.

So those are negative things and I do like the I improvements in other areas which amount t to handling and convenience and features but "image quality" must mean different things to different people because  to me a beautiful landscape with fluffy smooth rich clouds is not so attractive when that quality is degraded by noise on top and any processing usually makes it worse, so to me there is madness in wanting more pixels at the expense of vastly increased noise.

Given many are happy with the xt2 I have to wonder if I have a problem with this xt2, others accept the compromise and still see the IQ as improved, or I'm expecting too much.

Im trying to talk to Fuji about it but they are not the best at support when it comes to answering emails so after 4days I still have no reply and will just have to wait.

 

 

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On 9/11/2018 at 12:09 PM, louiscar said:

A curious one that I  can' explain, comparing jpegs to raw I note a lot of smoothing going on but when I took pictures with a particular lens (zeiss touit 50mm) there was a shocking difference. The picture was of a hill packed with houses mainly and the white windows in the jpegs were appeared to be over processed and smoothed with a high shine to them. The raw didn' have this, the were natural and similar to any other lense used.

I'm intrigued by this. I haven't noticed any such problems with the Zeiss Touit 50mm on my X-T2, or any other jpeg problems. Have you checked that your jpeg settings for noise reduction etc haven't been accidentally adjusted? I usually keep NR at -1, and Highlight Tone, Shadow Tone and Sharpness at 0 unless there's a particular reason to change them. 

I agree with you, though, that image quality on the X-T1 has always been pretty good.

Edited by dfaye
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I was testing 100 iso at this point - I wonder if that has a bearing I will check it with base iso - I doubt it though.

I am restricted to 1MB upload so I can't upload the comparison RAW from LR but if you look at the windows on the row of houses on the left they are highlighted almost.

 

 

 

Edited by louiscar
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Cropped them till they fit my 1mb limit -

jpeg Sharpening 0 NR-0 - I think the RAW is the LR default sharpening - the RAW appears first here

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Edited by louiscar
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I see what you mean; it's as if the jpeg has had too much contrast/clarity applied in-camera, and maybe a bit too much sharpness. I get something similar with my XF18-135, but I haven't noticed it with the Touit 50mm (although I've used the latter almost exclusively for close-ups and macro). In the case of my 18-135 I get the same "crunchy" effect whichever camera it's on, so I've concluded it's a characteristic either of that individual lens, or of the 18-135 lenses in general - it hasn't occurred with other lenses I've owned. So if I'm working with the jpegs from the 18-135 I just resign myself to toning down the contrast/clarity a little in LR: that usually works well enough. But I hope someone else can offer you a more useful comment on your problem with the Touit!

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yes although I think when I look at the jpeg it appears to be over-sharpened - even though in camera it is set to 0. looking at the bricks on the dormer and the block of flats on the right. There may be a bug (or feature) that gets kicked in when this lens information is read by the camera. I don't know - I did a 50mm shot with my 18-55 and this did not happen.

 

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6 hours ago, louiscar said:

yes although I think when I look at the jpeg it appears to be over-sharpened - even though in camera it is set to 0. looking at the bricks on the dormer and the block of flats on the right. There may be a bug (or feature) that gets kicked in when this lens information is read by the camera. I don't know - I did a 50mm shot with my 18-55 and this did not happen.

 

And you may find that the effect is stronger at certain apertures. Given that macro lenses tend to be used stopped down to f11 or beyond, maybe the algorithms enhance jpeg contrast/sharpness at those apertures: fine for macro, but not always what you want in a wider scene. But I find it a great little lens for close-ups.

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I don' think the aperture was that small. I bought the lens around the beginning  of summer as I did want macro capability. Its been great fun on the xt1 and I did use it for normal shots however, this anomaly could be easily missed as I only use the jpegs for reference and quite often they get discarded fairly quick. I'l have to have a look and see if I have anything left from previous xt1 shooting but nothing really stood out like this example.

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had an X-E2 and a X-T1. Traded in the X-E2 for an X-T2 and much prefer it to the X-T1. Now selling my X-T1 so that I have 2 identical bodies as it can get confusing at times because of different controls, menu items etc. I have no hesitation in recommending X-T2 over X-T1 - IQ, handling, dual slots, bigger files great for out of camera cropping. I could go on .....

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I have had an X-T2 since it came out, and recently sold my X-T1 and purchased another X-T2 at a $500 discount.  Better handling, 50% more MPX, improved IQ and EVF.  I am very pleased with my decision, and have no need for an X-T3 since I do not use these cameras for video.

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Thanks all. I'e been chatting to Fuji who thought , after I sent some examples, that there might be an exposure problem. Nothing other than that though and since I sent the camera back there's no way to get to the bottom of it. I ended up getting another xt1 to keep me going and the images from this are just so much better and exposure is perfect if not slightly over but I can live with that.

From what you guys have said I'm sure that xt2 was sub par but knowing my luck I'm scared to try again. Right now I'm stuck on this issue but at least I can carry on taking pictures.

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I upgraded from XPRO1 via X-T1 to X-T2. I was quite exited when X-T2 was announced suggesting that is was way and way better than the X-T1
OK, one advantage is the joystick. I really don't consider AF that much faster? I don't shoot movies so can't judge that.
More megapixels means more noise. With the X-T2 I sometimes have focusing issues with my 50-140 lens which I did not have before.

So am I happy? Not that much to be honest. Overall of course The X-T2 is a very nice camera. But I regret that I  sold my X-T1.
Also the differences between X-T1 and X-T2 being not significant enough (for me),  have made me decide to skip the X-T3 for sure .

NB the same accounts for my upgrade from X100T to X100F. Not that different. Nice joystick, nice ISO button, but with the premium price tag these are expensive features  🙂

My previous upgrade from X100 and X100T was a real difference in speed though.

The "artistic" (ahum) quality of my shooting remains exactly  the same with either XT-2 or X100F 🙂

For now I will stop upgrading for  a while and focus on making pictures again 🙂

I would like Fuji to concentrate even more on improving their firmware (Kaizen, there "Unique Selling Point") than bringing out new hardware all the time
which make you feel you made a bad investment all the time buying the previous model. Their Kaizen feels more like bug-fixing nowadays 🙂

Edited by JDJ
refining
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Interesting. Thanks for your thoughts. I had 2 things I didn't like and one is probably a fault (the under exposure ) but the other, noise, I expect is what is probably the consequence of the extra pixels. I just didn' think it'd be as  bad as I found it. And for me when I consider image quality, noise is definitely part of what I'd term IQ even though it appears not how others view IQ. I couldn't produce the same quality pics compared to the xt1 and manipulating in LR resulted in unacceptable noise at base iso. For me I don' see what the advantage is of going from 16 to 24 mp when noise is the trade off. I don't require prints bigger than 16mp can give me. Some of my best pictures were with a 6mp Nikon D70s. Manufacturers just love to play the mega pixel game I think, so they'l cram more regardless of the extra noise.

I really wanted  the xt2 for the other features including flash. One thing I miss about my Nikon is the creative lighting system, it was a joy and the xt1 has a primitive flash system. From my understanding Fuji have gone a long way to addressing that in the xt2 and I was looking forward to exploring that.

Sadly though I want IQ over features and the noise I got on that xt2 was too much for me at ISO 200. 

Ive no idea what the xt3 is like but as I'm a RAW shooter it would be a while before I could start to deal with the pictures and so it' not an option for me to even investigate right now.

I will try to get another xt2 sample to see if I just had a lemon but I will not get rid of the xt1 in a hurry, that has produced the most fantastic images this summer.

 

 

Edited by louiscar
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

My X-T2 has got an even better viewfinder and face detection / eye detection when compared to the X-T1. I've got a portrait shot at ISO 1600 which is fully usable for prints up to 20cm X 30cm. I accidentally shot another portrait at ISO 12.800 and it is usable at 10cm X 15cm.

Colors for portraits (Astia) or landscape (Velvia) are very good even on my X-E1.

If I had got an X-T1, I would opt at an X-T3 or just wait some years for the X-T4 to come.

I myself will wait for the X-H2 as a "second" camera.:)

Edited by fireman1961
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