image courtesy: f8photography
Fujifilm X-T1
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The Fujifilm X-T1 body is in stock at Adorama here and at Pictureline here.
The Travel
– British Pro-Photographer Gary Tyson traveled for three weeks through three different countries (Cambodia, Korea and Hong Kong) with his X-T1. And here is non technical and nice real life review of the X-T1, the Fujinon XF lenses (14, 18, 23, 35, 56) and also some thoughts on Lightroom 5.4. You can read his review here and you’ll understand why he highly recommends the X-system and the X-T1, “easily the best mirrorless camera of 2014 (so far for me)“. Here some excerpts (full review here):
Body: “The finish of the camera is great […] they’ve worked so hard to get most things very very right, then put on a flimsy SD card door that you open and close every time you shoot to get to the card, not a dealbreaker, just a little annoying“
Lenses: “Its already well documented that the lenses from the Fuji X-Series are all pretty damn good, I would go as far as to say most of them that I have used are SPECTACULAR. […] the 56mm is sublime, probably the best lens I have ever used for portraiture, especially on a ‘non full frame rig’, amazing quality in every sense.”
Image Quality: “For example, I made 15 A3+ prints the other day, 8 from the Fuji X-T1, the other 5 from my Leica M240, I showed 4 different professional photographers the images, they all guessed wrong as to which cameras produced which files, testament to the Fuji, once a file is shot on a good lens and processed, its not so easy to tell them apart from higher end cameras, in fact, I would say extremely difficult…apart from the fact that the Fuji colour is better than any other camera on the market“
Colour: “Spectacular, I have shot this camera in Hong Kong in artificial light, same in Korea, then in Cambodia in harsh light and amazing sunsets, and I can honestly say, I can’t remember having even once touched the custom white balance tool in Lightroom to fix white balance […] That paired with the ability to use the Fuji colour profiles for Velvia, Astia, Pro Neg, etc is really a very, very cool thing in my view, post processing has never been so easy for the colour files.”
AF: “I tried and failed badly shooting a basketball match and a soccer match, useless continuous AF for that….for someone walking or cycling down the street that you want to shoot however, its more than adequate. […] fast AF in good light allows capture of natural reactions quickly and easily.”
Battery life: “The weakest link of the camera. I carry 4 batteries around with me, if you use the camera a lot, you will need a minimum of 2 batteries for a days shooting”
Lighroom 5.4: ” Rumour has it that LR 5.4 also has a different way of dealing with the Fuji RAW files in the sense that they are better quality than previously available in Lightroom. I think this is true, before I found Fuji files to look ‘smudgy’, I don’t see that with these files, they are very very very good”
– Laurent Bourlier: “Hi Patrick, I own a splendid X-T1 since a week and i really enjoy the great improvements Fuji has done. Still got my X-Pro1, and i will keep it, i am now waiting for the 56mm 1.2 ; my local retailer (in France) tells me “100% sure before the end of April”… You can find here some shots made with the X-T1 + 35 mm 1.4 : http://laurentbourlier.wordpress.com/ Many thanks for the great job you do everyday on Fujirumors !! Cheers”
The Yashica 50mm 1.7 ([shoplink 23563 ebay]specs&price[/shoplink])
– Josiah Patterson: “Just wanted to share some images from a family hike this past weekend taken with the Fuji X-T1” See the shots at siahphoto: “All I can say is im super stoked on the Fujifilm X-T1. It’s an amazing camera to work with. For me it’s the closest camera to bridge the gap between digital and film cameras, bringing the best of both worlds into a modern package, which is why I bought it. The images above were shot with a [shoplink 23563 ebay]Yacshica 50mm 1.7[/shoplink] in raw mode, edited in LightRoom using Replichrome.
X-T1 with [shoplink 23563 ebay]Yashica 50mm 1.7[/shoplink] at siahphoto
The Action
– Dmitry Gudkov: “I brought an X-T1 and 56mm 1.2 to a gig shooting a Tough Mudder obstacle course event. I didn’t think I’d use it during the assignment – I mostly brought it along for travel shots, etc. But I ended up shooting quite a few frames with it, and even delivered a few to the client. If I didn’t know where the photos come from, I couldn’t tell the difference between my Fuji shots and my Canon 5D Mark III shots. Really really solid performance.” To see the action shots check out his flickr here.
image courtesy: Dmitry Gudkov
4 Responses
“its not so easy to tell them apart from higher end cameras,”
He, he Leica will most likely never have high end cameras 🙂 Lenses yes, camera bodies , don’t think so.
Unless they start making bodies with interchangeable sensor/logic module. But this ain’t gonna happen 🙂
What Adobe did with LR 5.4 is add some of Fuji’s film simulations to their color profiles. Lightroom 5.4 still uses the same process version (2012) they had in 5.3, so, no, I don’t think this latest version is any better at resolving detail from the X-Trans sensor.
I’ve seen it for myself, now having worked with Fuji raw files in Lightroom for the first time. There’s a vagueness that can’t be spirited away by sharpening or NR, and blotches of color noise that can be erased only with fairly high levels of correction. I’ve worked with raw files from Nikon, Pentax, Olympus and Panasonic and never saw fuzziness or artifacts like this. Their raw files were always clearly better than OOC jpegs of the same image. With Fuji the opposite seems to be the case. The jpegs are superior than what I’m able to achieve with Lightroom with Fuji’s raws. Strange and disconcerting for a dedicated raw shooter like myself.
(Perfectly willing to admit my lack of familiarity with RAF files. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. If someone wants to set me straight, I’m listening.)
We can only hope LR 6.0 finally addresses the X-Trans conundrum.
Fuji is great in creating a hype around their products. At this point I only want to say that those “fuji promoters” are overdoing , the promotion lyrics are just too thick.
From my point of view the comparison of A3 shots is worth nothing because the at that size of print you cannot see differences between professional quality cameras. Differences can be made visible under extreme conditions in combination with big size prints as far as I understand. Typically then the comparisons with high end dslr are considered unfair because the of the sensor size etc.. bla bla
Also example images that are processed and tweaked with LR or whatever say as much as nothing about a camera. At some point these pointless comparisons with high end DSLR cameras or Leicas etc get totally boring and irrelevant.
The Fuji colors (simulation) are nice and well and I was pretty impressed in the beginning too, but the more I use my Fuji (an x20 only) the more I like my Nikon. Frankly that color sauce that the Fuji cameras produce especially in situations with saturated warm colors can get on your nerves quite a bit. I still like to use the Fuji camera, but the great colors are not an argument unless you have a preference or you make a design decision for exaggerated and/or unnatural colors.
I had subscribed to this blog for some time but just could not stand the Fuji promotion lyrics anymore. The end was that guy who said that he could shoot directly into the sun without lens flare with the miraculous Fuji lens.