First Camera X-T2?

[CDBC]

Does mirthless much better pictures than the best camera on a cellphone ?  

 

Good question, I reckon. 

[pringles]

Hi Pringles,

 

I was in the same situation as you a couple of years ago.

I would take pictures with my cell phone or a Canon G9, but I always felt limited.

Limited, not so much with the quality of the photos with the cameras, but limited with my knowledge of how to take great pictures.

 

I wanted something fully manual which would allow me to make mistakes and force me to learn. 

For me, the Fuji fits that bill. All the dials are there, and I don't have to hunt on the screen and dive into a menu to change a setting.

I settled on the Fuji XT10, but a year later bought the XT2.

 

If you can afford the XT2, I say go for it.

 

The picture quality is fantastic, and the lens selection is vast.

Of all the lenses that I have, I find myself using the 23mm, (35mm equivalent) for almost all of my street, landscape and architectural photography.

The 23 is good for people, but may create an unflattering perspective of your subject when used close which is why the 56mm and 90mm are so good for portrait work.

I bought the 18-55 kit with the XT10 and I think I've used it once. I just wasn't as impressed with that lens compared to my primes.

 

Fuji is running a good sale now on all of their products. If you are in NY, it would definetely be to your advantage to check out B&H or Adorama.

 

 

How do you like XT10? You feel limited? I noticed Fuji has compact mirrorless but they use the same sensor as XT-2. I wonder where they fit the bill except for the compact size and cheaper price. 

Edited October 24, 2017 by pringles

[Guest Him]

X-T2 as first camera? WOW is all I can say, what a great start!

[davidh_photography]

Hello Edmond,

 

If you start photography, XT serie is a good choice. I got Canon, Nikon, Olympus before and when I switched to Fuji, I decided to stay with for multiple reasons. First, the sensor has a different technology than the classic one from Canon or Nikon. It gives less noise on high ISO. Secondly, they are not so heavy as Nikon.

 

I first started one year ago with an XT-10 and fall in love with it, due to the quality of the pictures. It is relativelly cheap in comparaison with the possibilities it offers and you might find good bundles with the XF 18-55 or XF 18-135. The XT-10 and now the XT-20 offers also what I will call a "rescue mode" with full automation, as you can find on pocket cams (panorama, portrait, sunset etc..). This is usefull if someone of your family or friends want to take a picture without being photograph. 

 

The XT-2 is a good choice for a more long term, as I bought one recently. It has more professional functions (better positionned function buttons, ISO quickly accessible etc.) and is waterproof which is not the case of the XT-10.

 

The specificities of the XT family are multiple:

1. Specificitiy of Fujifilm X and XT cameras is the direct processing of the RAW to produce a JPG ready to use. If you always work your RAW with Lightroom or PhotoShop, you don't need an XT, but if you want to shoot compositions ready to print or to publish, your are right. Personally, I try to avoid any post-processing of my pictures so the XT is my best choice.
2. Because it is an hybrid, you can see the approximated result of your picture before shooting. If it will be underexposed, you see it in the view finder.
3. Quick menus to access your predefined settings. You can switch from Vivid colours to B&W in 2 seconds, just push one button, rotate the dial to the pre-selected settings (White balance, ISO, Dynamic range, Sharpen/Soften, Colour/B&W, B&W with Y/G/R filter...)
4. The number of parameters that define the shooting (processing of the RAW) and the Exposure/Autofocus is high. You will need some time and a lot of trying to play and understand how these parameters change the resulting picture.

 

My daughter, who is 17 years old, started photography one year ago and she bought last month it's first XT-10 which is a used one but still working well. She knows now how to play between ISO, Aperture and Speed and she achieves very good results (I think that she is more artistic than me as she finds better composition  )

 

Please be advised that some Fujifilm cameras experienced quality problem. You will find more about it in other forums. Some XT encounter failures. During summer, my daughter's XT-10 losts all parameters (like factory reset). When I went to the shop, I wansn't enable to reproduce it and it worked fine again. My XT-10 makes the same one month later despite having allways a charged battery in it, and I couldn't reproduce the problem later on.Testing a new 100-400, the XT-10 starts to bug, despite the firmware upgrade. The only good point is that the waranty is working well and the time to repair is short.

To be honest, I didn't search on the Internet if other brands have also quality issues. Maybe all cameras might have problems

 

To conclude, and despite the fact that some Fujifilm cameras encounters quality problem, I will stay with this brand. The XF lens are very good and at the end all the equipment will be less costly compared to other brands.

 

I hope it will help you to make your choice. You can have a look to pictures of my daughter and myself on Instagram davidh_photography and celesteh_photography.

 

Cheers,

 

David

[davidh_photography]

Hello,

 

I forgot to add in my previous post that the XT-2 is really more battery consuming than the XT-10. You can stay one day with 2 batteries with the XT-10 and less than one morning with the XT-2. If you buy the XT-2, I suggest that you invest in the vertical power booster VPB-XT2 which can held two additional batteries (eBay will be your friend to find a less costly one) or that you buy at least 3 additional batteries.

 

Regards,

 

David

[davidh_photography]

Does mirrorless take much better pictures than the best camera on a cellphone ?  

Good question, but the answer is Yes, unless your mirroless camera is very bad. The reason is physical and comes from the diametre of the lens. Compared to cellphone's lens, the size of the lens of a 35mm wll be more than ten times bigger which means that the optical aberration might be also 10x more important with the cellphone. The processing power in the cellphone is doing all the job to correct all deficiencies of the lens but cannot reproduce perfectly a missing information.

 

Each time I took a picture with my XT-10 and sent it to friends using my cellphone, they ask me for confirmation that it was not shooted with my cellphone. This means that the difference in quality is really visible.

 

David

Edited October 27, 2017 by davidh_photography

[Steve Lew]

Edmond:

 

The camera lenses (glass) is more important than the camera body. Lenses will generally out last camera bodies. DSLR's are upgraded all the time. Fuji has taken a different tact. Fujifilm offers software upgrades that update the camera bodies and essentially with these upgrades their cameras gain new feature. Fuji is the only camera company to offer many upgrades. Other mirrorless cameras and all DSLR's offer few upgrades and expect you to just buy another camera body to keep up with the latest features.

 

For beginners the best way to learn photography is to place the camera in manual so that the three things most important things can be learned (aperture, shutter speed and ISO). Whether you begin on a DSLR or a Fuji mirrorless makes no difference since they all can shoot in manual mode. Fuji glass (lenses) are among the best and rival any Nikon, Canon, Sony or other mirrorless lenses. 

 

Therefor, you might consider Fuji as a company a beginner can grow with because of the upgrades to camera bodies and because of the outstanding lenses. Good luck.