Hits, 50/50, and a Miss

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Great read from The Strobist himself, David Hobby. First a hit:

Focus point joystick. LOVE this. Thank you. [ … ] This is something the engineers came up with absent our input. So sweet.

Bang on. And kudos to Fuji’s engineers. This is one my my two top features of the X-Pro2. Next, a 50/50:

Battery. [ … ] Here's the dilemma: Faster, more power-hungry processor. Do you give it a bigger gas tank, or go you continue to allow the battery continuity across Fuji's ILC line that so many of us appreciate.

I’d file this under “Miss,” personally. I grumbled in my review about Fuji going with the same battery as their previous cameras. I still think it was the wrong move. Sure, there’s convenience in having the same battery across multiple cameras, but I think we are quickly going to see a lot of people using their other cameras much less once they get their X-Pro2’s, or going with dual X-Pro2 kits and doing away with the other cameras entirely. Additionally, the camera most likely to be added to an interchageable X-Series is surely the X100, which requires a separate battery and charger anyhow. Now was the time to move to a higher capacity battery. Too bad. Not much to do about it now aside from be thankful whatever extra batteries we’ve purchased will still work.

A Miss:

Eye Relief. And to clarify, this is a miss for me, personally.

Not just you, David. I’ve received a fair number of emails on eye point and have started including it as part of my comparisons. This is one area the X-T1 outshines Fuji’s new flagship.

Head over the Strobist for the full article. It’s great insight in the development of the X-Pro2.

X70 Pricing, X-Pro2 Ship Date

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For any of my American readers who were on the fence about preordering an X70, it seems to have dropped $100 from its original price of $799 to $699. I’m not sure if it’s a temporary thing, are a price adjustment as of yet.

That’s the good news. The bad news is shipping dates are either slipping, or demand for the X-Pro2 is outpacing supply, as both Amazon and B&H Photo are showing a ship date of February 25 for the X-Pro2 instead of the original February 4. Bummer. The X70 looks to have also been pushed back, but not quite as much to February 15, according to Amazon.

For my Canadian readers, our plummeting dollar might be making you sad, but you can dry your tears when it comes to X-Pro2 pricing. At just $1,899, our price is pretty awesome compared to the American MSRP after conversion.1 You can stick it to the dollar even more by preordering from the folks at Aden before February 4th and get $150 knocked off the price of an XF 35mm f/2 WR, which was pretty much made for the X-Pro2.

  1. $1,699 USD = >$2,400 CAD, or, put another way, $1,899 CAD = just over $1,300 USD. Folks close to the border might be asking themselves if $400 is worth a warranty in the country of residence. ↩︎

The Fujifilm X-Pro2

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Fuji Fujifilm X-Pro2.jpg

Incredibly, there are actually are X-Pro1 shooters out there who have made it this far on their one camera body, eagerly awaiting the next iteration in OVF interchangeable bliss. That day is awfully close now. In just 20 days we’ll all know if it’s been worth the wait. I hope this review and my forthcoming comparisons will tide you over, and help you decide whether or not to preorder.

Check out my X-Pro2 Review

Fujifilm X-T1 IR (Infrared)

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Fujifilm USA has announced the forthcoming availability of an Infrared (IR) version of the X-T1. I gotta say, this came out of nowhere, and is a surprising move in a way, but one need venture no further than Fuji’s other key areas of business to understand why they’d make a camera specific for “technical experts, law enforcement, medical research and scientific communities.” Fujifilm spends at least as much time blocking light rays as they do allowing us to capture them.

For $400 USD more, the X-T1 IR “adds advanced infrared technology to see light from the ultraviolet (UV), visible and infrared (IR) portions of the light spectrum (approximately 380nm – 1,000nm).”

One more body to consider in your purchase decisions come October. Hopefully this hints at the possibility of other niche cameras like perhaps a monochrome or astrophotography-specific version. Too bad Dexter is already over. Would have made for an awfully convenient product placement opportunity.

X-T1 Ver.4.00 and the Future of Firmware

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Today is the big day. If you’ve got an X-T1, you’re about to get a partially new camera. X-T1 Firmware Ver.400 adds some great new features, and refines others.

There really is only one write-up so far that needs your attention, and that’s Damien Lovegrove’s over at ProPhotoNut. Damien struggled to incorporate Fuji “New Autofocus System” into his own professional workflow, preferring instead to stick with single point AF that he adjusts as needed, however he had more success when it comes to action and fast(er)-moving subjects that can be easily isolated, but there appears to be a speed limit. I also share Damien’s theory of a foreground bias when it comes to Zone/Wide AF areas.

I’ve decided not to compose yet another rundown of what the new firmware update includes since most of that can be found in my X-T10 review. What’s interesting to me is what was excluded, and where I think Fuji should take their firmware in the future.

UI Inconsistency

First and foremost, I don’t want this to come across as looking a gift horse in the mouth.1 I absolutely love what Fujifilm are doing with their firmware upgrades and appreciate it immensely. I wonder, though, if they could do things in a different way that would ultimately be better for Fuji and their customers.

The strangest thing about Firmware Ver.400 for me is that the user interface on the LCD of the X-T1 has not been updated to match not only the X-T10 and X100T, but the UI in the X-T1’s own EVF, which is especially strange since it was the X-T1 that delivered this new UI to begin with. It has resulted in many of the screen items (histogram, exposure compensation, dynamic range, etc.) appearing in different locations on the X-T1 LCD, the X-T1 EVF, and the X100T’s LCD/EVF.2

I have other gripes about the overall consistency of the user experience with these cameras, especially when moving between multiple Fuji cameras, but this UI weirdness exemplifies it perfectly.

One Firmware to Rule Them All

In a recent post, I wrote about how the firmware for each camera is handled by a different team. This, in my opinion as someone who has never actually worked for a camera company before, is the crux of the problem. Imagine if Fuji treated their camera “firmware” as what it actually is, an operating system. In this imaginary world, Fujifilm X-OS, as I’ve dubbed it, would be consistent3 across every camera they make, and available to as many cameras as possible. What I mean by that is the UI can change and evolve across all their cameras, all current cameras would be consistent in their overall user experience, but more processor intensive features like maybe the new AF system would not be available on older cameras that can’t handle them.

Does this approach to operating systems sound familiar? It should, it’s Apple’s. Apple runs a pretty tight ship when it comes to iOS upgrades, and Fuji could do a lot worse than emulate them to the letter when it comes to updating theirs.

This would result in Fujifilm X-OS upgrades to all eligible cameras at the same time, bringing all cameras in line with the same consistent operating system, meaning less of an overall investment in development resources across the various body types so things like no Classic Chrome for the X100S could be avoided, as it would be bundled with the overall OS update.

I’m probably over-simplifying, and could very well be overlooking a ton of logistical nightmares this strategy presents, but it would be awfully nice for Fuji to bring this kind of consistency across the camera line-up, and it seems like it would be worth it in the long run. Maybe the next generation of cameras can usher in a new era of camera OS from Fuji. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying the awesome update Fuji has given us for the X-T1, and patently awaiting that X100T update.

  1. What a bizarre phrase. ↩
  2. The X100T has its own problems like the histogram being in different places in the OVF vs. the EVF. ↩
  3. At least, as consistent as possible. Concessions would need to be made for cameras with more dials, and those with fewer, but it’s a design problem I’m very confident could be solved. ↩