Firmware 4 - My main issue

[flysurfer]

Since FD always "breaked" PDAF, I don't see the connection to firmware 4. Nothing changed here.

[ychen]

 the new Firmware gives you more options. If you take advantage of them, of course the camera gets slightly more complicated. That's the price for the added versatility, you can't have one without the other.

 

 

I work as a UX designer. I have to disagree with that claim.

There are always better ways to do things, but it takes time, feedback and experience. That is why we have updates and versions.

 

The assumption that more options equal more complexity is true to a degree and depends a lot on the design and architecture of the system.

In this particular case, the use of physical dials is a disadvantage for implementing quick functions that have dependencies on the dials settings.

 

Take the shutter speed issue that received a new implementation in FW4. That was an experience issue that got solved by implementing a dial override option.

A few months ago, if someone would have complained about this, he would probably get comments to either "don't use" that feature or "thank fuji for giving you that option".

And yet, Fuji came up with a solution that make the experience better.

 

I'm sure there are ways to ease some of the complication that came with the new AF features and one can start by giving clear indications on screen that some things don't work in the current camera settings.

 

I also think its good to let Fuji know about things we think can be improved (sound off-off = on) and don't assume every implementation is the best one.

There is always the next version... , or camera :-)

 

Cheers.

YC

[flysurfer]

 

 

I'm sure there are ways to ease some of the complication that came with the new AF features and one can start by giving clear indications on screen that some things don't work in the current camera settings.

 

X-T10 is doing it. New UI.

X-T1 doesn't. Old UI.

[lichtundlaerm]

1. Best in class for what it did. Didn’t pretend to outdo competitors in specialised fields.

 

Right there with you. Still waiting for them to finally let me reassign this strange red button on the top... can't remember that I ever used it. Does it have a function?

 

Okay, jokes aside, I installed FW4 a few days after its release but don't care much about it. The "eye" feature of face detect might come in handy one day, but at the moment, my "old" method still works faster. Besides that, little has changed for me. I don't do sports or fast moving stuff, so I work 99.9% in "S" drive with AF-S (that's why I seriously love the "lock" feature that came with one of the FW-updates).

For me, the X-T1 already had way more features than I needed to begin with, but new options are always nice to have (as long as they allow me to still use the camera in the way I'm used to). Focus&Spot metering interlock was a godsend. So was MS+ES because it pretty much makes accidentally NOT capturing a RAW impossible.

 

And yes, new features make things more complicated, especially when they are forced into an old UI (as Rico mentioned). But that's the price you pay for allowing the people who do not care about the new features to keep using the camera the way they used to. If there was something new I cared about, I reread the manual, if not, I didn't have to. That's a good thing. Because seriously, I read the manual once when I got the camera to set it up in a way that it behaves as I want it, and from there on it was aperture, shutter speed, ISO and my Fn-Buttons. Sometimes the Q menu, becoming able to costumize it was also a good thing.

 

In the end, for me, a camera is always just a tool that allows me to capture my vision of a scene. And it should do so in the least hindering way.

[charlesn]

The OP makes a great and valid point, one that's being missed by replies like, "you don't have to use the new features" and "you don't have to install the new firmware." FW4 represents a shift towards the kind of camera experience that many of us came to the X series looking to escape: endless feature choices buried in umpteen layers of software menus that turned photography into a Mensa memory test. Obviously, Fuji isn't there yet, and the OP isn't saying that it is... but FW4 is a few steps down that path, and if it represents the future of feature implementation on X cameras, then the Fuji X user experience will become very different from its original promise. 

[milandro]

I stand by the thought that even if you install all the new bits and bobs you can still use the camera in the simplest of the ways.

 

After fiddling around with most new things and having found that none of the new features really interests me all that much, I went back into using the camera as I have done since I've bought it.

 

The only addition has been the possibility to shoot with the electronic shutter when I shot something where being absolutely silent was important.

 

There is a certain amount of Luddites among the Fuji followers. Probably I am one. I just want an old fashioned working, but modern for everything else, camera  and I got it.

 

Keep cybernetics, as much as possible in 2015, as distant as possible from my camera experience.

 

I find any autofocus already very modern!

 

It is working well so far and if one wants there are plenty of cheap X-Pro-1 around.

[Jürgen Heger]

I fully agree with ychen and some others that some of the new features are pretty complicated to use. They remind me a little bit to the scene modes that some cameras have. Instead of selecting one of the zillion scene modes becore each shot I always found it easier to set my camera to professional mode (P) and take care of special light situations myself.

 

Probably some of the current restrictions result from hardware limitations of the T1 and Fuji just tried to make the best out of it.

 

I guess we have to wait for the Pro2/T2 or Pro3/T3 or even longer, until Fuji makes a camera where no one will argue any more that it cannot compete with professional DSLRs for sports or wild life photography.

 

Nevertheless I appreciate that the low light performance of the AF seems to have improved and that Fuji in general tries to improve their cameras with firmware update. May be they sometimes take the mouth a little bit too full. I guess this is how marketing works.

 

But most of all I appreciate that FW 4.0 did not break any exsisting feature at least I am not aware of it and that my T1 and E1 are still wonderful cameras with or without updates where I have a lot of fun with.

[flysurfer]

Nothing gets more complicated with firmware 4. Actually, it gets simpler as MACRO is gone, so less thinking and less button pressing. And no more forgetting to exit macro mode after shooting close-ups.

 

Apart from that, everything can be used like firmware 3. Everything. Nobody needs to use any of the new modes, one can simply forget about them. I often do. The old Single Point AF (aka Area AF) is still available, only faster and more reliable. Which tends to be a good thing for most people.

[MrJones]

Nothing gets more complicated with firmware 4. Actually, it gets simpler as MACRO is gone, so less thinking and less button pressing. And no more forgetting to leave macro mode after shooting close-ups.

 

Apart from that, everything can be used like firmware 3. Everything. Nobody needs to use any of the new modes, one can simply forget about them. I often do. The old Single Point AF (aka Area AF) is still available, only faster and more reliable. Which tends to be a good thing for most people.

I agree completely and I don't consider myself in the camp that thinks Fuji should forego new features and functionality to maintain "the reason that many of us chose Fuji".   I want new features and functionality and I want them implemented in the best possible way and Fuji does that better than the rest and that's one of the main reasons I chose Fuji.   The one feature that I consider to be a subpar implementation is face detection but the others are what I would expect from Fuji.   And I can say from using other systems with complex AF modes that the new AF features in fw 4 were much easier to learn and when you combine that with the AF document Fuji published it was a breeze.