The Online Photographer

The Fuji X-H1: Mike's Verdict

It's human nature to chase extremes, to decide that one thing or another is "good" for some reason and then to keep exaggerating that quality or property.

Consider how, in recent years, the fashion at Apple, Inc., has been to make everything thin, light, and stylish. But with personal vehicles, which in the USA now means SUVs and trucks*, the opposite extreme has become fashionable, to the point where single individual human beings feel it's reasonable to convey their fat butts to the hardware store on Saturday or the diner on Sunday in pickup trucks the size of railroad cars with huge, comically exaggerated front ends that seem like parodies of aggressiveness and macho swagger.

Settle down, bro.

They're both just fashions. But in both cases they've been taken to extremes. Both go too far. The styley slim slenderness of Apple products makes them less functional and less convenient to use; the grotesque bloat of piloting a three-ton pickup truck for personal conveyance—to do, most of the time, almost exactly what the driver could use a Corolla for—seems wasteful.

Note that I'm not telling you what to do or think; drive your giant diesel six-wheel pickup to mail a letter with your MacBook Air on the seat next to you if you want to. I'm just telling you where I'm coming from.

Failure to excel...?
In its review of the Fuji X-H1, DRPreview criticized the camera with a phrase I thought was extraordinary. "Our only real concern is the camera's failure to excel in any respect."

Seriously? Well, I only used the camera for a week. Maybe I'm misjudging it.

But I would say it excels in all respects.

For still photography, that is. Which was how I judged it.

At least, saying it excels in all respects is a lot closer to the truth than saying it excels in none.

I suppose what they really mean is that none of its features are the absolute best available in any one parameter—that is, there exist cameras with slightly better DR, cameras with more megapixels, cameras with better focus tracking, cameras that will do better making ultra-large prints, smaller, lighter cameras, and so on and so forth. Maybe cameras with better videocentric features—I wouldn't know about that.

But "excel" in that sense of the word has never impressed me much. "Best" in any parameter is quickly superseded anyway. Just let a little time pass, and whatever used to be best no longer is. Whereas very good is usually still very good. So then is very good better than best? It's more robust.

So this is why I began these posts talking about the excesses of the ludicrous Bugatti Chiron and those obscene hundred-million-dollar pieds-à-terre on Central Park South.

Because I don't like excess. Even if it's fashionable. I'm not impressed by taking things to extremes.

I like balance.

I say, get a nice car that's practical and reliable and that you feel performs responsively in normal driving on public roads, and don't go to extremes; I say, don't buy a house to show off, but to be comfortable in. Like, say, billionaire Warren Buffet's house. He lives in a nice house. He didn't go to extremes.

Anyway, the very quality that DPReview slagged the X-H1 for might be the exact reason I like it. It's balanced.

It doesn't chase any fleeting, phantom "absolute bests." It's a nice balance between big and small; it's got a middle-sized sensor, better than smaller ones, almost as good as larger ones; it has plenty of pixels but not too many; and the IBIS works great, including with all the beautiful small primes Fuji's X system is known for.

High marks
On the topic of the camera layout and ergonomics, holistically, the camera gets high marks from me. (It doesn't from some others—one review called its ergonomics its "big flaw," which I find fairly incomprehensible. But to each his own.) It's not small, but it's not actually too big. It feels and looks clean and purposeful, with adequate flexibility but no "extra" buttons, nothing "jammed in where it will fit," and everything within easy reach of whichever part of your hand will operate it. I didn't get fluent with this camera's controls (not in seven days) but I sure started to, and I have little doubt I'd get there if I worked at it. Or if I just used one for a few months. I've used a lot of cameras over many years, and I think this one's exceptionally well laid out. For my tastes, anyway.

The "hyper" X is a camera that doesn't go to extremes in any respect except by being solid and very well-engineered for fundamental tasks—which I call a good thing. It's seems extremely well made and well judged, and will likely be more than good enough for most every utilitarian purpose for most everybody's still photography. Plus it feels great and it's a pleasure to use.

As I mentioned at the outset, I took a real shine to it while it was here, and now that it's gone I miss it. I'd be delighted to own one.

Mike's verdict
All in all? I thought it was one of the best cameras I've ever tried, film or digital. Right there in the top five. If it's the right size for you and you like rather than dislike the distinctive "feather touch" shutter feel, I strongly recommend you investigate the X-H1 further. It might be a "one off" in Fuji's lineup, but I thought it was uncommonly excellent.

Mike

*Ford and GM have recently discontinued a large number of cars, including, in a few cases, premium sedans with very expensive development costs that were quite early in the model lifecycle (Cadillac CT6 and Lincoln Continental).

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jeremy (partial comment): "All in all, I agree with you on the mismatch between actual value of products reviewed vs. the value assigned by reviewers. Too often, opinions on products shared in the mass media are—at least in my view—too far removed from the actual needs of potential users, and instead reflect the intricate mechanics of modern marketing. The need for 'hype' is reflected in posting reviews based on 'using the pre-production model for one day,' 'one-upmanship' reflected in too much focus on technical specifications, the need for the 'new'—reflected in only the newest products receiving attention."

Dave Raaum: "Balanced is an excellent verdict and pretty much sums up my feelings. I have other Fuji X digital cameras but this is the one that I grab more often than any other. I also have Nikon digital cameras (a pristine D700 and a D810)—but more often than not, I grab the X-H1 as I head out the door. I love that camera and the results I get from it."

The Fuji X-H1: Opinions and Impressions

Still Pond, Fuji X-H1 and XF 35mm ƒ/2

The culture of objects seems obsessed with excess these days. On one of the auto channels I watch, More Doug DeMuro, Doug answered the viewer question "what is the best car?" by proposing the "Bugatti" Chiron (I use the scare quotes because I know what real Bugattis were, and they weren't hypercars for oil sheiks built by Volkswagen). The Chiron is a two-door, two-seat mid-engined "sports" coupé with a 1,479-horsepower V-16 engine.

Really? Is it fun on on-ramps? Whatever.

Compare a "Bugatti" Chiron to the car in this video. I get that things move on, but doesn't it seem like maybe the world's gone a little nuts? I bet the Chiron'll be made "irrelevant" by a car with a 2,022-HP V-24 engine any day now. Then, mere Chirons will be for the weak. Like those poor passed-by girly-men driving Veyrons now.

Well, Doug likes supercars, so that's his business. They bore me stiff. Give me Scotty and his beaters any day.

(Fun fact—Scotty's grandfather's real name was Elmer Kilmer. Made me laugh.)

Or, take exhibit two. As the numbers of homeless climbs, both worldwide and in the once-democratic USA—we don't bother to count them here, nationally, because of course they do not matter, but officials in Los Angeles estimate that there are approximately 70,000 people living without roofs over their heads on any given night in Los Angeles County—New Yorkers are complaining that the new "needle-thin" super-skyscrapers south of Central Park are robbing the park of daytime sunlight. One such skyscraper has only 50 palatial residences in it that cost up to $100,000,000 each.

Which doesn't seem so bad until you consider that most of the people who buy them won't live there. They will just be New York City pieds-à-terre for people who have multiple other residences around the globe. So people who use the park are being deprived of their sunlight by massively expensive buildings that will remain, on any given day, mostly empty.

Enter the X-cessive Fuji
The "H" in X-H1 stands for "hyper," according to Fuji, and the X-H1 is the "hyper X camera." Though X-cessive, I don't actually think it's a bad name. This is hearsay, so take it for what it's worth: years ago, when Fuji's involvement in camera marketing could be described by the word "dabbling," an industry insider who had warm 'n' friendly ties with Canon told me that a high-up official at Canon had confided to him that there was only one company that Canon was afraid of, and that it wasn't Nikon—nor was it Leica or or Sony or any of the other usual suspects. It was Fuji. Fuji is a formidable technology company with impressive competencies and capabilities, and the X-H1 reads to me like an attempt by Fuji to engineer and manufacture an X-mount camera that represents some semblance of the best it can do. Hyper X indeed.

I tried the Fuji X-H1 for seven days courtesy of Lensrentals. Lensrentals very smoothly and efficiently rents a full range of cameras and lenses so that you too can do exactly what I did and try out any camera or lens for yourself. If you've never tried it, you ought to. It's potentially useful, and usually fun. I certainly enjoyed my time with the X-H1, even though it rained for five days out of the seven.

I used the 35mm ƒ/2, 23mm ƒ/1.4, and 14mm ƒ/2.8 lenses with the X-H1, all of which belong to me (I have an X-T1). Seven days is not long enough to get to know a camera. So these are my impressions and my opinions of its various quirks and features (as Doug DeMuro would say).

Bias
But first, my prejudices, because a reviewer ought to always be honest with his prejudices: I kinda fell in love with this camera. I liked it much better when it went out the door than when it came in. It was tough to part with it, and I miss it. So read this review with that rosy glow, and whatever level of caution it triggers in your skeptical self, in mind.

Size
I'm a bit weird in that I like small cameras but I have big hands so I prefer a big grip. Years ago, Canon made a film camera with a pellicle mirror that had several exchangeable handgrips, one of which was oversized and extended below the base of the camera (you can see it here). I loved that. It also had a soft leather padded hand strap that went over your knuckles. That's one of the downsides of reviewing cameras for decades, something the late Burt Keppler, revered guru of Popular Photography magazine, once wrote a column about: sooner or later you see every single facet of a camera done perfectly, so you always remember the one camera that really got that one thing right according to your own taste—and no camera gets everything right. (The X-H1 does get one thing perfect according to my taste, and I'll mention that.)

The X-H1 is a wee bit on the large side. With a bigger X lens like the 23mm ƒ/1.4 it's what you'd call a full-sized camera—not huge, but not compact or light by any stretch. It's helped by mating it with a Fujicron, even if it then looks a little odd and unbalanced.

I ended up liking it, though, because it handles so well. The large grip is perfect for my largish hands, and I didn't find it too heavy. I like cameras that allow you to let the camera hang by inserting your fingers between the grip and the lens with your hand open, like this...

(Here demonstrated with a GX8 and Panaleica
45mm Macro. I sent the Fuji back already.)

...while you change a card, and the X-H1 does this nicely.

If you go to camerasize.com and call up the Panasonic G9 (Micro 4/3), this camera (APS-C), and the Sony A7 III (FF), you might be surprised by how close in size they all are. So you might argue that this camera's size basically just embodies the contemporary Japanese idea of how big a camera ought to be.

At any rate, with the camera in hand, actively shooting, everything falls into place. Feels great, handles great. Very comfortable camera to shoot with, at least for me.

Controls and configuration
Excellent. I love the way this camera is laid out. Absolutely nothing has that feel of "this is here because it's the only place we could fit it in" as you'll find on so many smaller digital cameras (or digital cameras crudded up with too many buttons and wheels and so forth). The layout of this camera is nice and clean. Everything is thoughtfully placed. You have all the controls and flexibility you need, but it's not overdone. If you need to customize any of them, you can do that, but I think you'll find this camera both easy to get to know and then easy and intuitive to operate once you get the "feel of the wheel" and start doing things by muscle memory. I realize I might feel this way partly because I'm already familiar with Fuji cameras and controls. While that's true, I really liked the control layout and the camera's handling, and I believe most people will like it too once they learn it.

Controversial features (EC)
There are only two controversial aspects of the controls and configuration, so I'll mention those in detail: the top-plate LCD and the missing exposure compensation dial.

Top plate LCD: One is  the presence of the top-plate LCD or "sub-monitor" as it's sometimes being called. I had a little trouble getting used to this, because it's always on. I'd glance at the camera, see the readout on the top-plate, and reflexively assume I'd left the camera switched on. After years of finding out at the wrong time that digital camera batteries are depleted, I'm a tad sensitized to that, so it would give me a start for half a second before I remembered. But that's the kind of thing you'd get used to after a while. Personally, I liked the top-plate readout. I like to know in my head exactly how the camera is set while I'm looking at the world, and I'm in the habit of checking this by looking down at the camera and taking note of the settings—which is no doubt why I tend to like Fuji's knobs 'n' dials layouts. The top plate readout helps with this, and I found it handy. I liked it.

No exposure compensation dial: The other aspect of the camera that has given Fujistas pause is the flip side of the above, namely, the absence of the exposure-compensation (EC) dial, that being one of the things that most of us have liked about our Fujis since the X-100. It had to be done away with to make room for the top-plate readout LCD. To activate EC, you either press a little button and turn the rear wheel while holding the button in, or you can set the button to lock on with one press and lock off with another. So set it how you want it. The top-plate readout when the camera is off tells you by default how many exposures you have left at your current camera settings and the state of your exposure compensation. Being able to see where you have the exposure compensation set is one of the main advantages of a dial for me, because I can check it at a glance even when the camera's off. I can do the same thing with the top plate LCD on the X-H1 as well, so the absence of the EC dial is moot for me.

On balance: the top-plate readout LCD is a win, even though the EC dial had to go. There's a nice upside and no appreciable downside.

Viewing screen
This is the thing that the X-H1 just gets absolutely right. I know this depends on personal preference, but I find flip-up viewing screens preferable to the flip-out articulated type that for some reason are preferred in the video world (I don't know why but I assume there's a reason). I suspect it largely depends on what each of us got used to, although my own first digicam had the flip-out style. The Fuji's viewing screen can be flipped up fully in landscape orientation, angled downward helpfully for above-the-head shots, and flipped up partially but quite adequately in vertical/portrait orientation. It's very easy to use and really works a treat. No idea how it will last over a decade of hard use. The only thing it won't do is turn the viewing screen all the way around to face the body for people who don't like to use, or see, the viewing screen at all. While I get the argument for that, I've never needed it, so that's not an issue for me.

My opinion? YMMV, but for me, this is perfect, and dare I say...un-improvable? All cameramakers could adopt exactly this mechanism, and Fuji could use it for the rest of its history, and I'd be all for it. A+++. But just my opinion.

Eye-level viewfinder
The VF is really good. Big, clean, smooth, and easy to see. It has none of the harshness of early EVFs, which could look like old TV screens. It  looks like a FF-camera EVF for the most part, and you can of course customize it in various ways to show different information.

The only negative thing I noted was that sometimes it doesn't give a very accurate report to the eye of the subtleties of colors in the scene, or of the subtleties of the light—something we take for granted with an OVF. Of course, I didn't mess with the EVF custom settings, so it's quite possible that that could be improved over the default. This is a strength of Fujis: the EVF of the X-T1 was a revelation when it came out, and the X-H1's is a whole 'nuther level better. It's so good you don't really notice it.

Battery life
The Internet says it's not the greatest, but of course I didn't get a feel for it in seven days. Might be something for you to consider, though.

(As you do so, a tiny mini-Mike will be sitting on your left shoulder whispering in your ear, "no camera's perfect.")

Video
I do stills, yo.

Menus
I'm comfortable here, no doubt because I'm already pretty accustomed to Fuji menu choices. There was only one time I got flummoxed, and that was when I tried to reset the bracketing intervals. I was way out in the country and it was raining, and I couldn't find the right menu item anywhere. In one of those surreal moments we all find ourselves in once in a while, I soon found myself sheltering in my car, on a wet road deep in the country, Mennonite farm silos over the crest of the hill, listening, on my phone, to a YouTube video of a guy from England giving a tutorial explaining how to set the bracketing on the camera I held in my hands. Weird.

I guess the experience just struck me as being a world away from using an old manual Leica or Pentax and finding it natural to be alone when I'm alone. Back then I would have found it incredible that there could be a control on a camera I was holding in my hands that I didn't know about. Times have changed. Anyway, the item is in a focusing submenu [Correction: the Drive menu], not an exposure submenu, which is why I couldn't find it.

But of course you get this sort of stuff settled relatively quickly—it's no big deal. For the most part, I found the menus logical and comprehensible.

IBIS (in-body image stabilization)
This is a big deal to me, as I'm sure regular readers are tired of hearing. I already told you about my initial impressions of the IBIS, here, and that didn't waver for the short time the camera was here chez TOP—using normal/wide lenses, I found it relatively easy and remarkably reliable to handhold the camera down to shutter speeds of 1/6 sec. with no problem, and often as slow as 1/3 sec. Given that my own comfort/ability level with the unstabilized X-T1 is 1/30th with the same lenses, that's...great.

Keeping in mind the context of my general comments about the controls above—love 'em, but maybe because they feel familiar to me—here are three highlights: the joystick, the AF-ON button, and the shutter button.

Joystick
I've become agnostic about joysticks. I used to like them, no doubt because I got used to one on a long-ago camera I owned. But I know a lot of people strongly prefer them. It was a nice addition to the X-T2, and it's the same here—the feel is good and it's ideally positioned. I just didn't use this camera long enough to really know whether I would become attached to the joystick again. It's entirely possible. If you have an X-T2 or X-T3 you already know what you think of it (but in that case you're probably not thinking of getting an X-H1).

AF-ON
A change from the X-T[1/2/3] is the addition of an AF-start button next to the AE hold/lock. It might be tied to the shutter button's unusual feel and operation, I don't know. This is another thing people who get used to it tend to like, and on the X-H1 it falls so easily to hand that I found myself using it. I don't know, but I think if I owned this camera I'd turn off the shutter focusing (I assume you can do that, though I don't actually know) and go with the AF-ON button for a while, just to see how I felt about it set up that way. Nice addition, IMO.

Shutter button
The feel of the shutter button is very unusual. I've tried a lot of cameras in my time, but I'm not sure I've owned a digital camera with a shutter release this light, responsive, and fluttery-feeling. It's very responsive, and probably works a treat when shooting video, but it lacks the distinct half press / full press stages that most stills camera shutter buttons have. The two stages are there, they're just very light and not very distinct.

I don't know though...I ended up really liking the shutter button on the X-H1 quite a lot. Rumor has it that you can send your body to Fuji to get them to reset the shutter feel to more a more conventional level, but I'm pretty sure I'd leave mine the way it came out of the box. I liked it. It helps give the camera its character, like steering feel does on a car.

The shutter mechanism (see picture at right), which Fuji calls "feather touch," is very purposeful—it's part of a holistic design solution that includes the large handgrip for a firm grip, the high-precision IBIS system, and isolation bushings for the shutter assembly, all of which are intended to contribute to steadiness and the elimination of mechanical shock and movement.

But the stock shutter-button feel is certainly different and quirky, so it's something you're going to need to try in person before deciding on this camera for good, however you manage that.

Personal impressions
And talking about character is a nice lead-in to discuss my impressions of the X-H1.
Usually, it takes me a long time to get used to a new digital camera. The early stages are almost embarrassing—I particularly dislike three things: one, needing to change a setting and not knowing how to do it; two, screwing up the setup by accident and not knowing how to get back to the way I had it set before; and three, finding a control or feature to be placed somewhere I don't expect it to be and/or finding it awkward to use. An example of this last includes the card slot in my Panasonic GX8—it's in the battery compartment, and I can almost not grip the card with my clumsy fingers.

Anyway, I was surprised by how quickly the X-H1 became a friend. I got used to it, and started to trust it, within days. With three cameras in the rotation, it was the one I would grab in preference to the others just to take a quick shot of something interesting.

Coming soon at some point in the future*: Mike's verdict of the X-H1. At that point I'll explain why I opened this post talking about Bugattis and New York skyscrapers.

Mike
(Thanks to Nico Maijer)

*"Don't hold your breath or you'll turn blue and die." <—as my friend used to say on the playground in 4th grade

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ramón Acosta: "If you would shoot any kind of event on video you would understand why the flip-out screen is more useful for video. With video there is no stitching images or switching to portrait orientation, so sometimes you have to place the camera against the back wall and stand next to it, making sure your subject remains in the frame. Sometimes you are directly underneath your camera and those extra degrees vs. a screen that can only tilt can save your shot. Sometimes you need to show the person in front what the framing is so they know how much they can move around, and of course, they are a lot more useful for selfies and for one man band vloggers."

Miserere: "'Volkswagen are now into speed and luxury and all that nonsense.' Scotty made me laugh outright with that statement.  :-D  The video put a big smile on my face. Thanks for linking to it, Mike; I think I agree with Scotty and I've started the day with some chuckles."

Mike replies: He's a hoot.

Michael: "Thank you very much for that, Mike. I use both X-T3 and X-H1, but often find myself grabbing the X-H1, especially late in the day. If I only could have one, then...umm...probably the X-H1, just for the IBIS."

Curt Gerston: "There are four things about the X-H1 that make me keep picking it up in preference to the X-T3, and it's all about feel (much like your review): the grip, which is so comfortable; the top screen + rear dial, which I prefer to the EC dial; the IBIS, which helps with my favorite primes; and that lovely shutter.... Oh how I love that shutter. The X-T3 is a very good camera; the X-H1 is a very delightful camera."

Michael Bulbenko: "Actually, on the X-H1, if you do want EC on the rear command wheel and have it toggle, simply reassign the Rear Command press action to be 'Exposure Compensation' and that will do what the top EC button does by default: activate EC. Then without moving your thumb you can dial in plus or minus comp, press it again to take it out of EC to prevent accidental bumps. Then, you can re-assign that top EC to something else, like Focus Check."

Mike replies: Excellent idea.

The Fuji X-H1: An Aside

[Just to be clear—this is not a review. This is the bit that I couldn't justify putting in the review. I'm still working on the review. Sorry it's not here yet. I'll get back to work now.  

P.S. I didn't mean to offend anyone who loves Nikon, by the way. Just using them as an example. Don't worry, I like Nikon—and I love people who shoot Nikon.  :-)  —Mike]

I've been wrestling with what to do with these thoughts. What follows just doesn't seem to belong in a camera review. And yet it's a significant part of my reaction to the Fuji X-H1. These ideas don't really "attach" to the object—the camera—in any meaningful way, and they're not really relevant to someone who's considering buying and using the camera. (Why should that person care?)

Fuji X-H1 with battery grip, rear view

Here's the thing, though: the Fuji X-H1 doesn't seem to quite belong in the Fuji lineup. You've heard the expression "odd man out"? It's an odd camera out.

Consider, for comparison, just as a "fer instance," Nikon. Nikon has legacy products stretching back all the way to the horizon behind us, but that's not its fault—that's just the result of having been in business for many decades. I'm not going to blame them for that. But other than that, Nikon's product offerings are largely...a mess. Not a hopeless mess, just a mess. Nikon goes one way and then another, buffeted by competitive reactivity, by constantly shifting marketing strategy, and by inconsistent vision. Their flagship products (professional FF DSLRs) are essentially replicants of 35mm film SLRs, so that the large system of 35mm SLR lenses could be transitioned without modification and the installed user base wasn't left hanging. They devise whole product lineups (Nikon 1) strategized mainly to protect their more profitable products. They fail to support whole segments of their lineup (absence of APS-C primes), abandon certain customers for agonizingly long periods of time (the gap between the D300 and D500), shift strategies (dedication to APS-C jettisoned when Canon had success with FF). They make me-too products and charge to much for them just to pirate other companies' success (Coolpix A). They don't even follow up with refreshed iterations of their own most successful products (no real update for the landmark D700). They announce a lineup of cameras and then later decide, ah, no, we're not even going to make those at all. (I can't even remember what those three cameras were called.) Most recently, they rolled out a whole new lensmount just to compete in a segment that another company was having success with (full-frame mirrorless, Sony A7/9). They just wander this way and that, scarfing up little blobs of market demand where they can, reacting to competitors where they think they need to. It's not evil or even bad, necessarily. It's just that there's no detectable overriding vision anywhere. Maybe there is but it's just buried under this and that and the other thing. Maybe under heaps of old discarded rebranded point-and-shoots.

I'm not saying the Nikon product lineup is completely inchoate, or that the offerings overall are a total hodgepodge. But I will say that when a company gets in the habit of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, pretty soon you've got a big mess on your hands. (Always the visual in my memory—I'm reminded of my childhood friend Karen's twin sons Galen and Isaac when they were two years old. She had to spread a big plastic painter's tarp on the floor when she fed them spaghetti, and then carry them off to the shower afterwards because they'd be coated from their hair to their toes in tomato sauce. Despite the tarp, there could still be the odd strand of spaghetti on the floor or the wall. Those little boys sure had a blast with Italian food.) The result for Nikon is a company that's had no real consistent vision for so long that its product offerings resemble a junk drawer. Even if it's not a total hodgepodge, it's still sort of a hodgepodge. Hard to argue otherwise.

Dazzlingly clean
Fuji has pretty much been the inverse, the exact opposite, of that. Starting with a clean sheet after the surprise success of the X100 in 2012 or '13, they've followed a coherent strategy and come out with a product portfolio that looks purposeful, balanced, and sensible. They have several distinct tiers of cameras for different levels of the market; options of camera styles at each tier; they update the products with thoroughly researched and really thoughtful iterations at regular intervals; and their lens lineup—although there are, of course, earlier and later products that differ somewhat—is for the most part carefully judged, balanced, complete, and sensible. Heck, even the big GFX is perfectly situated to complement rather than conflict with the established X mount line—you can easily envision the same customer owning and using both.

And that's a big part of why I like Fuji. It's the vision company. It has a clean, clear, consistent idea of what it wants to offer you. There's not a lot of  me-too-ism, no chasing of little puffs of tasty market share here and there willy-nilly, no spinning of wheels or yawning gaps in the lineups or redundancy or stunted little vestiges of marketing blunders or missteps left hanging and spinning slowly in the breeze like the corpses of fired Nikon product lineup managers*.

Into that admirable orderliness, that unusual coherence, the X-H1 seems oddly out of place. Sort of an interloper. It doesn't really quite belong anywhere. It's not part of the X-T[x] series; but it's still pretty close. It feels like a one-off. More significantly, it feels like the first product where Fuji said, "Hmm, we don't have what we need to compete here, in this little market segment, so let's react to the competitors' product offerings and counter what they do." Like they were getting criticism for what their cameras didn't have and they said oh yeah? We can do that. Take this.

...Which might not be dumb; I mean, if they see that they don't have a videocentric offering with IBIS, why not start a new line? But then they turn right around and put almost all the video goodness of the still-new X-H1 into the X-T3, minus just the IBIS. That kind of steals the thunder of the X-H1. Quick, which is better for video, the X-T3 or the X-H1? It kinda depends on what you mean by "better."

So what's going to happen in the future? Is X-H[x] going to become a new category—the videocentric Fuji—reiterated in successive iterations like the other cameras? Or are the features of the X-H1 going t0 migrate into the X-T4? Or is the X-H1 going to be orphaned, like what Panasonic did with the GX8 or Olympus with the E-1?

The X-H1 just doesn't seem to fit any plan. It may not be the first product that Fuji's made that's merely a Nikon-like reaction to the competition, a we-can-do-that-too camera, but it feels like it is.

Not that there's anything wrong with that**
Note that all this isn't necessarily a criticism of the camera. It doesn't really have anything to do with the camera. It's more a reflection on the marketing plan of Fuji and the gestalt of Fuji's systematic thinking overall.

I don't know, maybe Nikon's spaghetti-mess quality is just what happens when companies stick around for a long time and continually try to adapt to changes in markets. But Jay Leno says he likes cars that were the product of one strong vision, one person's clear ideas, and I like that too. That was why Apple became such a success, because it expressed one strong-willed person's clear vision. (Whether you liked that vision or not is beside that point.) I have no idea if there's a single individual behind Fuji's beautiful clear strategy, or who that might be, but there sure seems to be. I've loved the fact that Fuji goes its own way and does its own thing with such calm boldness and assurance. It's...refreshing. Maybe that will become muddled as they evolve from a young company (the post-X100 camera division, I mean) into an older one. 

And see what I mean? None of this really has to do with the X-H1 as a camera. It doesn't affect how any one owner will be able to use the product. It's really just a holistic marketing concern, an aspect of corporate identity. An issue of...consistency. It's a "meta" concern. It doesn't belong in a camera review.

Mike

*Sorry. I get carried away.

**Seinfeld reference.

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Dennis: "I get what you're saying here and I think this is part of what some people find so appealing about Fuji. However, I find myself a little disappointed in the actual details of the concept when I look at Fuji. You have bodies with ISO dials, bodies without, bodies with Bayer sensors, bodies with X-Trans sensors, lenses with labeled aperture rings, lenses with unlabeled aperture rings, and lenses without any aperture rings at all (including the 18mm pancake, not just cheap consumer zooms). Zooms with IS, zooms without IS (16-55mm), and now, bodies without IS, but a body with it. And you have compact camera models that have people wondering about replacements for (only the X100 has been consistently upgraded).

"Meanwhile, in Nikon land, if you restrict your view to F mount, things look much less messy. Sure, there are all of the DSLR inconsistencies you've mentioned (and probably a few you haven't) and I don't deny that it's messier than Fuji. But looking just at F mount, it's cleaner than looking at the entire Nikon product line, and Fuji, I think is messier than its image portrays.

"As for going from F mount to mirrorless, that was inevitable. It's a shame they waited to copy Sony, instead of showing leadership. But as you say, it's not their fault they had a legacy mount that pretty much necessitated some mess.
Ultimately, though, even if I find Fuji a bit messier than you do, I agree with your assessment: Fuji seems fairly 'focused' and Nikon seems to lack vision.

"As for the X-H1, I can't say much about it, but I think you can only be so focused for so long if you want to grow. I don't know if they could have done a better job designing a camera for the video crowd while fitting it in better with the rest of the X series, but on the other hand, I don't know that it sticks out any more than, say, the X-A5 with its PASM dial."

Dillan: "Your exasperation with Nikon makes me feel slightly better about Canon's mess. It puts things into perspective."

Eamon Hickey: "This is tangential to your topic but Mike, after reading you for many years, it's clear to me that there's just something about Nikon that rubs you the wrong way. Which is fine. I feel that way about Verizon.

"All the behaviors you selected (out of a larger pool of behaviors) and are putting in the harshest possible spotlight for Nikon are to be found in all the other camera companies. All of them are, after all, for-profit technology corporations from the same nation and culture. Their DNA is 99% the same.

"And in the case of the Fuji X-H1, that's great, as far as I'm concerned. As your picture clearly shows, they finally—finally!—were smart enough to copy Nikon's AF-ON button size and placement, making this the first X-series camera with a good implementation of this crucial feature that Canon (!) invented 28 years ago.

"Come to think of it, the last time Fuji had a good AF-ON button was on the S5 Pro. Wait, what happened to that lineup of DSLRs? Surely, they didn't abandon it because it didn't turn out to sell as well as they hoped? I kid, I kid."

Mike replies: No, I don't think I accept that as fair. What's more true is that I tend to exaggerate for effect when I make points, which makes me seem harsh to people who feel tenderly toward what I'm writing about (cf. my occasional disparaging comments about singers, which I'm trying hard not to do any more—I've learned that there is always someone out there who loves that singer who will be offended. It's never my intention to be offensive to anyone. Even people who like Ji...nope, not going to say it! Heh.)

I don't think it makes much sense to either love or hate companies. They're soulless, really. Your tastes and desires might align with their product portfolios and marketing philosophies for a stretch, but sooner or later they'll go their own way and let you down. It's seldom safe to get sentimental about them. I'm much more passionate about and engaged with photographers I like, not so much with camera nameplates.

But of course I like Nikon. I have an antique Nikon on display in my front hall next to my 1903 Rochester Optical whole-plate camera. I shot with Nikons for years; literally wore out two N8008's. As for the behaviors I spoke of being found in other companies, of course! I said as much. Just used Nikon as an example because they've been a little worse lately (and I know the details a little better, thanks to Thom), not because they're the only ones getting caught up in such tangles. Far from it.

Jeff: "Contrary to your response to Eamon, you’ve written before: 'I admit to a certain bigotry about Leica.' And you frequently admit to your own snarkiness toward the company, despite your use (film M's) and praise of some its products (the S). Methinks price weighs heavily in your seemingly emotional assessment.

Mike replies: You can believe what you want, but I'm not terribly sentimental about brands. I'm just not a brand fan or foe. I have disliked some individuals; the former President of Hasselblad USA had a vendetta against me for some years, and I established a personal policy of not writing about Hasselblads as a result. But that wasn't really about the brand, it was about the individuals and the situation.

As I interrogate my feelings now, I can't discover any hostility toward Leica. They're simply not for me, is all. It's a brand targeted at a market I am not part of. The same is true for expensive medium-format backs, but no one accuses me of being anti Phase One. It's true that I regret Leica's transition from tough working tool to overpriced status symbol, but that's the way they went and that's life—BMW's transition has been worse to witness.

What's consistent about me is that throughout my career people have accused me of being for or against certain brands, just as you're doing now—often the same brand. Usually, when people accuse me of being a hater of some brand or other, it's merely because I'm not a loyal fanboy like they are. Which is usually the case. At one point I had a pair of letters from readers of Camera & Darkroom, one of which accused me of being a foe of a certain brand and one of which accused me of being a fan of the same brand. The only thing that's true is that I tend not to worship brands and I tend not to demonize brands. Neither one makes any real sense to me. They're just cameras. The magic is not in the cameras. The magic is in photographs.

I hardly think that article you linked pegs me as any sort of Leica hater, by the way.

John Merlin: "I like the fact the way Fuji keeps adding capability and new form factors to their lineup while retaining what I find are the two biggest investments I make in a camera-line: the lenses, and the time I spend learning the controls/menus.

"My photo interests keep evolving and Fuji keeps offering more solutions in a rational system that I can understand and anticipate. I left a Nikon system for the compact easy-carry XEs, then as I started a new personal project, the faster AF and more sophisticated flash capabilities of the X-T1 were just the thing for it. Lately I have missed the larger form factor, the deep grip and the top display of the Nikon—and Fuji produces the X-H1.

"I can't help but think that the continuing rational line extensions, including the GF series, new form factors, and the regular firmware updates within each series, must make the Fuji systems more and more attractive both to current users and those new to the system."

Joe Holmes: "I'm deep in the Nikon environment. I've owned 12 Nikon SLRs and DSLRs, and I've got so many Nikon and Nikon-mount lenses I can't even count them. But I think a lot of what you complain about, Mike, is true. Nikon often frustrates the hell out of me. I've owned other cameras (my wife and I both own Fuji mirrorless for example), and I've used others including Leica, Mamiya, Olympus....

"But I'm stuck here in Nikonland because this D850 is plainly superb in my hands. It's the best picture-taker I've ever lifted to my eye. The thing is close to transparent in use. It's 95% perfect for my needs (and at half the weight it would be 98% perfect). So while Nikon the company frustrates the hell out of me, Nikon the camera gives me enormous pleasure every single day. What's a guy gonna do?"

Mike replies: Exactly what you're doing, I'd say.

Hishimaru: "The logic on Fuji's part was pretty simple I think. That massive 200mm ƒ/2 needed a body to match."

Mr. Handsome (Fuji X-H1 Part II)

Mr. Handsome (Fuji X-H1, radical center crop)

As usual when a new camera arrives, the first thing I did when the Fuji X-H1 got here was to wander around my quotidian environs snapping meaningless snaps, because, what else are ya gonna do? I also took some photos of my favorite captive but cooperative model, above.

And naturally the first thing I did was to gather some immediate initial impressions of the feature that I'm most interested in, the only thing my X-T1 lacks that I want: IBIS.

"IBIS" stands for in-body image stabilization, a technology that moves the sensor to compensate for camera movement, making slower shutter speeds possible.

It would take me weeks to really get a handle on the X-H1's stabilization behavior, but first thing off the bat I did a few quick trials. The inset frame in each of these pictures is the "magnifying glass" in Adobe Bridge (which doesn't render the image fully sharp, by the way) set to 100%, just as a quick check to see if there is any motion blur. These were made with the XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 lens, which Fuji rates at "5 stops." Manufacturer ratings for IS can normally be taken with large doses of salt. I'm happy if I can consistently get two stops, so I initially tried the IBIS at around 1/8th of a second. I can normally handhold a 35mm or equivalent lens at about 1/30th second.

1/6th sec.

Window screen makes a nice test subject because it's easy to see if there's any blur.

1/7th sec.

This is a JPEG...it was about the second shot I took with the camera. This one was taken with the 35mm (52mm-e) ƒ/2, come to think.

I had the IBIS set on "SHOOTING ONLY." That keeps the IS on only while you're making the shot. The other two modes are "CONTINUOUS," which keeps it on all the time (so you see it in the viewfinder) and allegedly drains the battery, and "OFF."

For these next trials I got slightly more serious, and shot a series of three with a second or two between them, to check if I wasn't just getting lucky:

1/4th sec.

1/3rd sec.

Nope. On both, all three shots showed no motion blur.

This is pretty great, I think. It's certainly reassuring. I like to work in low light, and being able to trust 1/8th with the 23mm would be luxurious. As it would be nice to use 1/2 sec. as a Hail Mary speed.

I tried a bunch more, of course. Wandered around the house shooting stuff at low shutter speeds then magnifying it on the viewing screen to see if there was any blur. I do get blur pretty regularly at a second and a half and more. But then, I'm not very good at holding the camera steady.

Note, though, I do kinda have to roll back my comments yesterday about the camera's size. With the fast 23mm attached it's what I'd call a full-sized camera. Not huge, but this is definitely no compact body.

So, first impressions: very positive and encouraging. Looks like the IBIS works well. More time, and especially real shooting, will reveal more.

I finished my evening with a few torture tests for DR (dynamic range, properly exposure range). This is one of my usual trials. It might look fairly naturally balanced here, but it actually has a heavy amount of HDR applied; I could pull more information out of that lower light, but letting it wash out a little makes it look brighter. This is what this shot looks like out of the camera:

Anyway, this is just geeky stuff, sliding the sliders and seeing how the raw files hold up, but I have to say I'm pleased and reassured in this regard as well. The DR might not be quite up there with a good full-frame camera, but it doesn't feel like it's too far off the pace. There's a lot of forgiveness in these files.

Other than that, I just wandered around making friends with the camera, snapping this and that and the other thing, getting familiar with the handling, making discoveries. For instance: to get directly to "Format" in the menu, hold the trash icon in for three seconds and then press the rear control dial in (it's also a button). There ya are. Wish I had me some more of these fancy UHS-II cards...I only have one. Their prices are not going down.

It was a horribly dull, gray day, of course, weather that is caused by me renting a camera. Does this look all gray? Well, I had to juice this shot up considerably just so it wouldn't make you weep. We did have some sunlight, for about nineteen seconds. I dashed into the house for the camera, but by the time I got back the sun had vanished. The weather will get beautiful again on the 21st, right after I send the camera back to Lensrentals.

Next up, I'm going to take a look at the various ISO speeds.

Really like what I'm seeing so far. I like the X-H1.

Mike
(Thanks to Lensrentals)

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Rob de Loe: "Your story made me smile, not because of the IBIS (which sounds great) but because you have a standard routine for testing out cameras. By coincidence, a new (old) Fuji X100F arrived today. I've been eying one of these for a while, and finally bit the bullet after unloading some gear I wasn't using. My routine is different in the details, but my little X100F had the pleasure of photographing the exact same objects and scenes many other cameras and lenses that have passed through my hands have shot. Like you it's going to take a few weeks to really understand this camera, but my basic routine tells me it will be worth the effort."

Look What Came (Fuji X-H1 Part I)

I had a lunch meeting today, and as I was speeding South toward home I passed the FedEx truck speeding North. Thinking he might have my eagerly-awaited Fuji on board, and not wanting to lose a precious day, I screeched to a halt, pulled a yooey, and gave chase.

Back in town I ran into the UPS man twice but failed to find the FedEx truck.

...Which brings up an interesting point. With Lensrentals, your rental period starts whenever the equipment is delivered, so if you miss FedEx or they miss you, you still get the full however many days, whatever your rental period is. However, if by chance FedEx gets it there early, you still don't have to ship it back it until your rental period is scheduled to end. So if delivery is late, you still get all your days, but if delivery is early, you get that extra. Possible bonus, but no penalty. Thought I would clarify that.

First impressions of the X-H1
The size/weight brouhaha is a tempest in a teapot, turns out. Not as significant as I had feared. The camera came in a soft case inside a hard case inside a corrugated boxl as soon as I peeled the layers and got the camera in my hand, I immediately thought: this is fine.

It's a camera. It's camera-sized. Not too big. No big deal.

It's larger than the X-T1/2/3, but if you use the large handgrip with the latter like I do, then the size and weight of the two aren't very far apart. And the X-H1 feels relatively light for its bulk, which helps the impression of a comfortable heft.

I wish I had that scale I used to use to weigh equipment, but it's in the barn somewhere. Oh well.

Other points:

• Fits my hand really well. But then it's not like the X-T1 doesn't.

• The shutter sound is suh-weet. I don't think this matters all that much, but it's really, really nice. And you can customize the volume! It's delicate-sounding and quiet on the middle volume setting.

• The flip-up screen is magic. It can't work the way it does, but it does. Sorcery, is my guess.

• AF seems a little slow.

• I really like the way the eyepiece overhangs the back of the body.

• I love the whatchamacallit top plate info readout thingy (I'll look up the names for these things when I have more time; I'm kinda rushing right now). [UPDATE: It's the "secondary LCD monitor."]

And it lights up in the dark! (You can see the eyepiece overhang in this view, too. Please excuse moiré—iPhone snap.)

• Touch screen also seems pretty laggy. I like moving the focus point around with the toggle—joystick—whoops, that's officially the "focus stick (focus lever)."

• Curiously, the shutter button is extremely sensitive. I don't know if you can adjust that, but it's very light (Fuji calls it "featherweight"). A curious choice; shutter-button feel varies, of course, but I'm not aware of having had this impression of a hair-trigger release quite like this on any camera before. I don't mind it so far, but it's different for sure.

And of course I had to run a quick test on what really interests me—the IBIS...

...But now I'm out of time. More about this tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, whenever I get back to this.

Gonna have me some fun this weekend! Of course it will rain, because it always rains when I rent cameras—it's a law of the Universe, for some reason—but I'll manage somehow.

Mike

Oh, did I forget the unboxing video? Oh no.  :-)

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Armond Perretta: "When will Fuji provide a sync cover that stays put?"

Mike replies: Fuji is a high-tech company of considerable capability, but naturally it can't do that. It would be like curing the common cold. Photographers have been losing the little rubber or plastic covers to PC (Prontor-Compur) terminals on cameras since they became the worldwide standard for flash sync in the 1960s. The purpose of this is so the terminals can become bent and get dirt in them, at which point the question of whether the flash will fire becomes a delightful adventure.

The best solutions that I know of are a.) to use the tiny little hotshoe flash that comes with the camera...

...to trigger the slave on the monolight or other studio strobe, or b.) Nikon's 1980s invention of using a hot shoe adapter, although these naturally only work with standard hot shoes. They do not solve the problem of lost covers, of course, but when the sync socket gets bent and dirty you can just get a new adapter and throw the old one away, paying only $14.95, as opposed to having to send your whole camera to the authorized repair station and waiting eight weeks while they let your camera sit around for seven weeks before finally installing a new PC sync socket in your camera and then reluctantly send it back.

I suppose another alternative would be to buy a handful of PC sync socket caps and keep a dish of them handy. (It may come as a shock, given their retail price, but these do not actually cost a reasonable fraction of $2.95 each to manufacture.) This solution is a manful stopgap, but it requires an appropriately fatalistic attitude on your part, like that of a magnificent salmon struggling mightily to swim upstream to spawn and then taste grim death; you must realize that, fight as you will—meaning it does not matter how many spare caps you buy—you are contending against fate and the natural order and are doomed in the end to fail.

El Inglés: "I bought the X-H1 several months ago with a view to it becoming my main Fuji camera. After a few days, I was smitten; after a few weeks, less so. Now it comes into play only when I know I'm going to need its IBIS. Yes, it's neither too big nor too small, and it has that gorgeous EVF (and the IBIS, of course). But I hate the shutter release with its lack of feel; the exposure compensation button which is nowhere as good as a dial, no matter how it is set up; and, for my money, the raw conversions to black-and-white are far less rewarding than those from the 16MP X-Trans II sensor (something I'd already suspected from the X-T20 which preceded the X-H1 in my menagerie). Bottom line is that I'm back to using the X-T1 and X-T10 which are fast enough, and have enough megapixels, for my photography. Of course, YMMV (and I'd be pleased for it to do so)."

Peter Baglole: "X-H1 is not quite as eye catching as the silver X-T3. However, the more you use the H1 the more you appreciate its attention to the process of making photos. I think it is quite a nice looking body too. I dated the X-T3 but married the X-H1."

David Wilson: "The light touch shutter button is one of this camera's many plus points. Couple this feature with IBIS and a decent mass, and I'm extracting more from my XF lenses than any other Fujifilm body."

A Few Sony Samples (Sony A7III)

[Note: the A7III body only is currently back-ordered. —MJ]

Mind you, I'm not trying to get into any arguments. We're all friends here. I just do my thing, run some trials, do a lot of looking, get a feel for things, and render my personal opinion. That's all. I'm not even saying I'm right. If your opinion differs, I have absolutely no problem with that. If you refuse to shoot with anything smaller than medium format or anything bigger than 1", that's completely cool with me.

But...

(There's always a "but" when a blog post starts out like that, isn't there?)

Here are a few Sony A7III samples at 100%. Or rather, if you double-click on them on a computer, they will open and you'll be able to see the full 800-pixel-wide size.

They're all smaller sections of larger frames, and I'll give just one example of that as it's not a difficult concept. Like, for instance, if this is the the full frame:

...Here's the "detail." Note that the blog software, for some unknown reason, does soften the image slightly. Probably some sort of auto-compression. The files opened in Photoshop CC look just a bit more crisp than the popup. But you can get the gestalt from the images as they appear on the blog page.

So here are some more small details of larger test shots:

As with the first one these are all just details of larger whole frames. For instance the test shot of the flowers looks like this:

But it's not just the detail and "sharpness" that impresses me about the Sony A7III's files, not just the accuracy of the colors and the impressively easy way it has with dynamic range. Just as nice is the flexibility of the files and their responsiveness to corrections in ACR and Photoshop. There's no strain. It's like the opposite of the iPhone, where noise proliferates quickly and highlight detail can be like walking a knife's edge, often spilling over into the ugliness of a blown channel. The Sony sensor gives you such flexibility that you're not wedded to the narrow way the capture "wants" to look; it admits of various interpretations.

What I like about this is that as I do my corrections I find the file kind of "snaps" into my recollection of how the scene looked. As you get the HDR balance right, or as you recover the color of the real light, the file kind of arrives at a feeling of visual rightness.

It's funny—I used to say that the bigger the negative, the harder it was in the field and the easier it was in the darkroom, and the smaller the negative, the easier it was in the field but the harder it was in the darkroom. That's why I always shot 35mm, because my chops were never the strongest with the camera in my hand but I was a darkroom ninja. Well, the Sony A7III reminds me that there is still some truth to that old adage even in the digital imaging age. It's a more demanding camera when the camera is in your hands, but then once you get those scrumptious files into post, that's when it takes it easy on you. It locates a lot of the fun of photography to in front of the computer. Too subtle a point? Maybe I'm just musing, I don't know.

David Brown said yesterday, "I think we're to the point where all cameras are 'good enough,' as in, if the photographer gets the basics right...the person viewing the photos won't be complaining about any obvious deficiencies." Phil Service's fastidious comparison of the Sony A7RIII and iPhone 8 (in good light) that he shared with us also reinforces this. I agree that we're to the point that all cameras are good enough, but with one important caveat: as long as we ourselves like the camera we're using and are happy using it!

At any rate, it just sure is nice to have those gorgeous, forgiving A7III files to work with, that's all I'm saying.

Mike
(Thanks to B&H Photo for the loan of the A7III and Zeiss 55mm.)

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Ernest Zarate: "I've been fortunate enough (or cursed enough) to have largish hands. Little things have never felt 'right' in my hands, including cameras. When I've used smaller cameras, my hands have felt cramped as they try to conform to ergonomics not designed for them. When I read people raving about the joy of their small camera and its light weight, tiny dimensions, ease-of-carry, etc., I am very happy for them, but I know that would not be me. I've held and used enough of these mini-marvels to validate that belief as well.

"Long way of getting around to say I've always found the dimensions of FF cameras comfortable in my hands. The added benefits of the FF format (including those your article points out) have increased the pleasure of these cameras. I also find a certain level of reassurance with the heft of this format (or, as Boris the Blade says, 'Heavy is good. Heavy is reliable'). Of course, like all things, one does reach a point of diminishing returns, and camera size is the same for me. I find FF cameras have that very nice balance, the Goldilocks balance of 'just right.' For me, FF works on many levels."

Dennis: "I really like that way of looking at sensor size. I think I'm going to remember it and let it guide me going forward. (Of course, knowing it doesn't lead to a decision—we still have to choose the compromise!) One thing that's kind of interesting is that smaller sensors are ridiculously capable (I now shoot with two Sony RX models with 1" sensors), the cameras that let them sing are pretty pricey, and at the other extreme, FF kits that give you those malleable files are within reach—more or less, depending on what you need for lenses, but certainly more than most of us ever felt medium format was. So what we have today is a set of harder choices, I think—a wider range of compromises that are more acceptable than in film days, from crazy capable fixed lens cameras offer 24–600mm equivalent range with an ƒ/4 lens that you can shoot at ISOs that beat slide film up to FF that lets you print bigger than you'll ever print, but is more reasonable to buy and carry than medium format ever was."

Eric Rose: "I sold my Nikon FF pro series camera over a year ago and went to Panasonic Micro 4/3. I have not regretted it one little bit. The only camera that might interest me in the future will be a Nikon mirrorless."

David Raboin: "I'm enjoying these last few posts about FF files vs. smaller cameras. After shooting exclusively FF and cell phones for a decade I bought a Micro 4/3 last November. Between my phone, aging Canon 5D Mark III, and my new Panasonic GX85, I shoot somewhere north of 3,000 pictures a month and edit (with the intent to display) about 100 of those photos each month. Here are my observations.

"The phone inspires the most creative and powerful compositions of any of my cameras. Part of that is because I don't think about settings with the phone, but I think I get better compositions with the phone mostly because of its superior screen. I love getting the camera away from my face and forcing unique perspectives. With the phone that's super easy. I can see the screen in the harshest light. The problem with my phone is the files fall apart in post. With many of my phone pics I must embrace the gritty, over-processed look.

"I've found that my Micro 4/3 Panasonic GX85 produces acceptable files, but not especially lovely files. The photos have ample detail and stand up to moderate to major edits. And, like a phone, I can get the GX85 away from my face and take pictures from the best angles, but unlike a phone, the GX85's screen stinks, especially in bright sun.

"And then there's my well-worn Canon 5D Mark III. That camera is old, I got it two days before my son was born. That means I've been shooting with it for five and a half years now. The 5D Mark III is hands-down still my best camera. The files are head and shoulders above my Panasonic Micro 4/3. There's more dynamic range, more editing latitude, better colors, and better realism. What a treat it is to view a card full of Canon images after spending time with the smaller cameras. I can only imagine how pleasing it must be to work with a newer Sony sensor.

"I don't know the science behind it to explain my findings, but FF photos look nicer. I dream of a mirrorless FF camera with a large cellphone-sized display."

Marcelo Guarini: "The camera is sharp (and the lens) indeed, and it has tons of dynamic range. I think it's superb for photographers who want to reproduce reality as much as possible, which is not my case. I seek more of a subtle graphic results, mostly B&W. To me, even the iPhone is OK, although just one lens is not enough.

"Micro 4/3 is my choice because of size, weight and excellent small lenses (12mm ƒ/2, 35mm ƒ/1.8, 50mm ƒ/1.8, 45mm ƒ/1.8, 75mm ƒ/1.8) and then the beautiful ƒ/0.95 Voigtländers that produce that dream look at ƒ/0.95. I can walk for hours with a couple cameras and four or five lenses. Micro 4/3 is just so fun for me.

"I agree, we have arrived to the point that all cameras are good enough, and you can choose whichever is up to your wealth and meets your taste and style."

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Delighted to see you taking that loaner Sony A7III for a walk, Mike. I’ve not used one myself but I did end up adopting the Sony A7 line as my primary platform shortly after the first A7R was introduced. (Not an easy decision after being a Canon man since college days.) Having used the A7RIII for about a year I cannot imagine wanting or needing anything more in a 35mm-class camera. That sensor combined with Sony’s finest FE lenses is simply unbeatable in most dimensions for producing the (technically) best imagery. Yes, I use other cameras but my Sony A7RIII is the 'big gun' in this format.

"As an aside, illustrating the relative quality of that Sony on any Internet venue is nearly impossible. We reached the level of presentable sufficiency for this medium quite some years ago. It’s really in print where the men get separated from the boys, so to speak. I spent much of this past winter making reference proof prints of a decade-long body of work that employed many cameras in many situations. The A7R[x] images were, indeed, usually the most robust and easiest to tune."

Mike replies: Re "illustrating the relative quality of that Sony on any Internet venue is nearly impossible," true dat. As for the A7RIII, I couldn't afford one even if I could afford one. But I'm happy to take your word for it (and John Lehet's, although I think his is an A7RII).

Image Quality (My Updated Opinion) (Sony A7III)

Mike Johnston, Excusado, 2018. Like a lot of my pictures this one's a little photo-historical joke. The reference is to Edward Weston's Excusado, his famous faux-abstract exploration of form from 1925. (The title means "excused," slang for toilet.) Sony A7III.

I've just updated my personal experience of the ever-changing state of the tech. I compared, directly, images from four solidly good-quality mainstream cameras: a 24-MP full-frame camera (the Sony A7III), a 24-MP ASP-C camera (albeit one with the still-controversial X-Trans sensor, the Fuji X-T2), a Micro 4/3 camera with the latest 20 MP sensor (the Panasonic GX8), and the dual-module 12-MP camera in the iPhone 7+.

You'll have to accept that the Sony A7III picture up top isn't proof, it's just an illustration. You'll have to take my word for my conclusion below, as it's based on looking at a lot of full files in ACR at 100%. (As Ctein used to say—I'm paraphrasing—believe what I say, not what you see in the magazine.)

I've said before that I'm pretty much "over" full-frame cameras, having satisfied myself that they don't really offer that much advantage in return for their disadvantages (such as shallower depth-of-field and larger lenses, and greater expense). In this recent round of comparisons I "expected" to find myself relatively unimpressed with FF vs. APS-C, and personally I remain able to be completely satisfied with Micro 4/3.

Christian Cross. iPhone 7+. That little bright dot on the right-hand edge is Venus in the Western sky.

And I will say in my own defense that the differences between these four cameras are pretty impressively compressed, bunched together, as it were, on the graph: they're differences not of kind but of degree. Only the phone has much separation from the others, lagging behind in both image quality when "stressed" and in flexibility of operation as a camera. But it doesn't do badly at all, for instance in "Christian Cross." None are obviously inferior and none instantly recognizable as "better" in all cases, and all four (even the smartphone) are capable of impressive results that are potentially more than acceptable for various kinds of work. I can't envision any of the interchangeable-lens cameras holding anyone back from realizing their accomplishments.

However. The pictures don't lie, and if I'm honest I have to admit that the Sony A7III is a cut above the others. To me, the GX8 is the most flexible and fun to use and shoot with, the X-T2 offers the best all-around balance between all the opposing and conflicting parameters, while the Sony doesn't make you take too much of a size or convenience hit but convinces mainly with its results. The beautiful clarity of detail, the naturalness of the dynamic range, and the ease with which it renders a sense of real light, a feeling of atmosphere, and of the volume of real spaces is gratifying. It's only my third favorite of the cameras (although I like it), but as far as the results are concerned, in this comparison, it does win. The image files are beautiful, and have an effortlessness, elegance and sense of real light that the other cameras come close to but can't equal.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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David L.: "Your descriptions of the Sony A7III results mirror my feelings about my A7II. I went from DX and CX Nikons to the Sony A7II full frame and it was a big step ahead. Processing the raw files is such a joy. And some of my old manual focus Leica lenses and Nikkors (with adapters and with IBIS) sing beautifully on the Sony sensor. And the B&W mode produces great photos with excellent lenses. It's caused me to look for a bag for the camera, with another lens or two, so as to carry it everywhere."

brian: "I think that I understand what you are saying. Although I ordered a Sony A7RIII minutes after it became available, I’m still coming to terms with it. After decades with more approachable cameras from Contax, Pentax, and Mamiya, the Sony was something of a challenge—but the results are worth it. I think that the files that camera can produce, like the smaller files from the similar A7III, are beautiful, and now, after investing the months necessary to get to know it, the Sony is a real pleasure to use."

The Fuji X-T2 Is 'Essence de Caméra'

The Fuji X-T2 departed here yesterday for a new owner. Which is strange in a way, because it's close to the best camera in the history of ever.

By my lights—that is, for someone who uses a camera the way I do (without too much fuss), wants to shoot the kinds of things I shoot (anything that catches my fancy, but nothing too specific), and prefers the kind of knobs 'n' dials-oriented controls I prefer (so you can look at the camera and see visually how it's set)—maybe even someone who is within shouting distance of my age, meaning someone who used, or remembers, relatively simple mechanical film cameras—the X-T2 is a firing-on-all-cylinders, smack-the-bullseye wonderment.

I didn't really realize this until I compared it directly with a Sony A7III...and with the older X-T1.

I was curious about the real-world differences between a 24-MP FF sensor and a 24-MP APS-C sensor, so I took both the Sony and the new Fuji around the yard and took the same picture with both cameras about 45 times. (More about that in a future post.) Both were set on ƒ/5.6 and ISO 400, both had a ~50mm ƒ/2 lens mounted (the close-to-perfect Zeiss 55mm ƒ/1.8 ZA for the Sony, the Fujinon 35mm [52.5mm-e] ƒ/2 "Fujicron" for the Fuji. Note that the Fuji has a little advantage in depth-of-field with both lenses set at ƒ/5.6). I already felt like I had a good handle on ergonomics and basic controls with both cameras, so I was just going to look at image quality.

But (as has often happened over the years with real trials as opposed to on-paper or in-my-head consideration) I discovered something I didn't expect to. Mind you, I have no problems with the Sony—I rather like it. It's a little heavy even with the smallish prime lens, and it's not the most comfortable camera to hold (though not bad), and the shutter is a little on the loud side—well, maybe more than a little. But it's pleasant to use and doesn't seem to get in my way much. It doesn't have any weak spots. I like it, is what I'm saying.

But switching off and using one after the other again and again, the X-T2 just seemed so much more fluid, easeful, pleasant, responsive, clear, and smooth. The Sony's finder "felt" bigger...but it's not, much, when you compare them directly. It seemed "clearer"—but that's just because I had the Fuji finder set to the parameters I like (colors more muted, less contrasty) and the Sony was still at its defaults. The Sony seemed faster and more responsive...but nope again: that was a trick of the louder, crisper shutter sound. You can even make the X-T2 into a sports beast, by adding the Vertical Power Booster Grip.

In fact, I was pretty amazed at just how great the X-T2 felt in nearly every intangible parameter. Size and weight are not just tolerable, they're well-nigh ideal. The shutter sound is a thing of beauty, soft and smooth and silken. The responsiveness is like an eagle-eyed French waiter, who just takes care of everything immédiatement with a complete absence of fuss. The camera with the perfectly-proportioned Fujicron just feels flat wonderful in the hand and to the eye.

Everything about it seems better.

Now, you might say that this is so because I'm already so used to my old X-T1 (I bought the review sample not long after it appeared and it's been my main camera for several years now) and that's a valid point. So then I brought out the X-T1 and compared that to the X-T2. And you know what? The X-T2 also won that comparison. The X-T1 is a singularly successful first-generation camera—very well thought out from a user's perspective, ergonomic, beautifully designed. You might not care for the design choices, but I doubt anyone would argue that the design isn't sensible and well-implemented of its type.

Yet...the X-T2 is better in many small but significant ways. It's easily faster; performance virtually all around is improved. The small changes in operability are improvements. It's even a subtly different shape—like a car that looks quite similar to its predecessor but on which every single part and body panel is new—and I was surprised to discover that it's noticeably more comfortable in my hand. It fits better. If you use them one after the other, switching back and forth, they feel different. The whole thing overall just feels better—more coherent, more comfortable, smoother, more "together."

That surprised me too.

I will add that if you shoot Fuji and you don't have a so-called "Fujicron"—one of the smaller ƒ/2 lenses (the 23mm [35mm-e] ƒ/2, the 35mm [~50mm-e] ƒ/2, or the 50mm [75mm-e] ƒ/2—or buy all three), you need to get yourself one. Just as a treat for yourself. They handle superbly on the camera, and match its perfection stride for stride. Body and lens in combination are synergistic, and deeply satisfying. Just try it. You will see.

I'm keeping the older X-T1, plus I'm buying a new system camera which should arrive in a few days. But the X-T2 for me hits all of a camera's design parameters in the sweet spot. It has everything most people need. It does everything most people want to do. But it's more than the sum of its parts, more than the feature list, more than the spec sheet. It's just a camera that's fun to use and gratifying to use. It's what a camera should be. It's got balance. It's graceful. Capable in every way. Just superb.

Most cameras will meet their owner's approval. Assuming their want-list (and "like-list") is similar to mine, though, I'll bet an X-T2 with a "Fujicron" will make its owner happy.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Anthony Shaughnessy: "The obvious question being—why did you sell it?"

Mike replies: Because it doesn't have IBIS, which I want. I've written about "why" often enough that I sound like a broken record (to myself at least), but here's the executive summary:

I handhold much better with a camera that has image stabilization (IS)—but I'm reasonably convinced...that this is partly because knowing it's there helps me to relax.

In other words, with some sort of IS present and functioning, I don't get the yips. Knowing it's all up to me to hold the camera steady makes me anxious, and I do worse than I would do otherwise.

I can't be positive of any of this, of course, but I've been convinced for some time that IS makes more of a difference for me than it does for other people, and that part of its advantage for me is not technical—well, not actual—but psychological.

Here's the post about it, called "The Yips."

I wanted to keep one of the two Fujis, because (for some reason I can't quantify) I really like the Fuji X-Trans files when converted to B&W using Silver Efex Pro 2. I made the decision to keep the X-T1 because I could get a lot more selling the X-T2. All of this is just personal, naturally, and shouldn't be seen as having any significance for anyone else.

Rob L.: "All of this is true.  :-)  I traded a D750 for an X-T2 and have yet to regret it—despite the D750 being capable of creating technically better files, with its larger sensor and generally better autofocus. The Fuji feels better. The numerous small improvements made to the X-T2 over its predecessor add up to be rather large—the only lack, and what I surmise is your reason for selling, is in IBIS. I miss that—I'd very much like to get the performance I'm getting with the 50–140mm with a 23mm or 35mm in the dark, but I'll accept that lack for now as every other thing just works.

"There's a directness to the Fujis that's matched in my M6, and, swapping between both on the rare day when I'm taking pictures for me and not as part of something else, the sheer joy of using devices that fit perfectly to hand is a big part of my fun. In a world of power tools, it's closer to the perfection of a Japanese hand plane than most anything else."

Steve Jacob: "So you are getting an X-H1 then?

"Kidding aside, I concur with the general appreciation of Fuji's approach. My X-Pro2 is a deeply-refined second-generation camera in which most of the fundamentals are just right.

"I like it not because it is perfect—it isn't in any qualitative way—but because its imperfections, such as they are, are more quirks than annoyances. If anything, they are endearing, like a favourite aunt who sings out of tune when she's busy in the kitchen baking amazing cakes.

"Previously, the nearest thing I came to a camera I really liked using was my Pentax K-7. It had a near perfect grip and controls, but its character flaws including wayward IBIS, poor focusing and a shutter button that kept sticking in the down position. Not being able to get any image without motion blur at certain shutter speeds is like having an aunt who can sing like an opera star but occasionally gives you food poisoning.

"Which is to say, the X-Pro2 really is the first camera I ever owned for which there is real pleasure to be derived simply from picking it up and using it. I can't really think of anything to criticise, because I just don't care enough to rack my brains over it."

Barry Braunstein: "I have two personalities—my go-to camera/system is Nikon (D850) with their zoom lineup. For travel and a backup system (or when I'm shooting video on the Nikon but also need some stills during a live performance) I reach for my X-T2. For travel, the X-T2 is lightweight, very capable, and I've been very pleased with the images even under terrible lighting conditions. Have shot live performances and made prints up to 17x22 and they look amazing. I moved up from an X-E2 which I never really liked ergonomically—the X-T2 feels so much better. But—I still love my Nikon as it's a workhorse, it still 'feels better,' and I can always rely on the results. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but despite its size and increased weight (especially with zooms attached) I'd still take the Nikon over the Fuji (except for travel where weight is key)."

Panasonic G9. Close? Yes. Cigar? No.

User Report and First Impressions by Andrew Johnston

Background
My Panasonic GX8 arrived pretty much on the day of official availability and has been my primary camera for almost three years, including two major photographic trips, and innumerable other opportunities in between. It improved on the already good GX7 with "just right" sizing, a better sensor, and higher speeds. Like many other owners and fans I was looking forward to a fairly straight replacement—all Panasonic had to do was fix the awkward exposure compensation control and improve the action autofocus and it would be pretty much perfect.

Fat chance. Instead, and not for the first time, Panasonic have shaken up the Lumix G range, with the GX9 effectively moving down the range, and all the new goodness going into a new "stills flagship," the G9, which sits at the top of the company's line alongside the video-centric GH5 and its variants.

After a bit of hesitation, I decided that I was due an upgrade, and plumped for the G9. My new camera arrived a few days ago. This report is based on the first few days' moderately heavy use. It's not meant to be a comprehensive, or a dispassionate blow-by-blow review, but a set of personal impressions from a long-standing Panasonic user and fan.  

GX8 vs. G9, courtesy CameraSize.com.

Body style
At first the G9 looks like quite a different camera, larger and more expensive, with more of a "DSLR ethos" than the rangefinder-style GX8. I'll come back to cost, but the size issue is deceptive: put the two cameras side by side and it's clear that the only real difference is the G9's DSLR "hump" and a slightly deeper grip, which is academic unless you use a very small pancake lens. Given that similarity, it's surprising that the G9 is a significant 171g (about 6 oz.) heavier. The camera offers better weatherproofing and a bigger battery, and does feel a bit more rugged, so that's acceptable. Unlike its predecessor, but like my old Canon 7D, it feels like it might take the odd knock without problems. In practice, you get used to the weight quite quickly.

Like every new flagship camera the G9 is initially priced high, but this gives Panasonic and their dealers some room for maneuver with discounts, trade-ins, and freebies. Depending on how you look at it, my G9 cost me only about 2/3 of the advertised price; or, the five-year lifetime cost of my old GX7 net after trade-in was about £250. I can live with that.  

Back in early 2016 I wrote an open letter to Panasonic regarding the GX8, acknowledging its good points, but identifying opportunities to improve the ergonomics and usefully extend its stills capability. They clearly ignored the letter for the GX9, but either great minds think alike or it did influence the G9.  

Controls
Ergonomically, I am a fan of "electronic" control, by which I mean the ability to set camera functions fluidly between on-camera buttons and wheels including your choice of programmable controls, the menu system, and stored custom values. By contrast, "fixed switches" break this free control model and cannot be included in stored settings for custom shooting modes. In addition, I am nearsighted, and when I'm wearing my "distance" glasses the tiny markings on such controls are effectively invisible.

The GX8's exposure compensation control is a good (or should that be bad?) example of the latter. Apart from breaking my preferred control model it is also badly placed—I found that to operate it I either have to take my right hand off the camera and reach in from above, or somehow slide my thumb behind the camera, which usually results in both adjusted exposure and smeared glasses! No such problem with the G9—you can quickly set up the camera so that the rear wheel, under the right thumb, controls the primary exposure value (aperture or shutter speed as appropriate), while the front wheel, easily in reach of the shutter finger, controls compensation. Vice-versa if you prefer. Perfect.

Unfortunately, however, Panasonic have perpetuated, and even aggravated one of the GX8's other ergonomic failings, and arguably introduced a new one! The perpetual horror is focus mode. The G9, like most of the G series, has four main modes: manual focus ('nuff said), autofocus "single" (half press the shutter button to focus, then full press to expose with that focus), "follow" (another single shot mode, but if the primary subject moves while the shutter button is half pressed, the camera refocuses), and "continuous" (aligned to the high-speed shooting modes, refocuses for each exposure). The ideal solution would be a button which toggles between the modes. That's good enough for a lot of very good cameras. However, the G9 has a switch.  

If you must have a switch, then surely it should have all four modes? Nope. You select manual, continuous or single/follow on a three position switch, then have to dive into the menus to choose between single and follow, or the several variants of continuous. To add insult to injury, at least in the GX8 you could set the button in the middle of the focus switch to toggle between single and follow. Not on the G9, at least not with its initial firmware—this is set to AE/AF lock (which I personally never, ever use) and is not programmable. The obvious fix is to make that button programmable so that when in the single/follow position it toggles between the two, when in the continuous position it toggles between the various variants of that mode, and when in the manual position it does something equivalently useful like turning focus peaking (highlighting) on and off. This could be fixed in a firmware update—I will just have to write to Panasonic and cross my fingers.

The other fixed switch on the G9 is for the drive mode (single, high speed, timer etc.) On the GX8 this is on a button, which is much better as you can include infrequent or situation-specific settings (like high speed mode) in appropriate custom shooting modes, and just leave the main aperture-priority settings or equivalent on single-shot, with a much reduced risk of going to take a shot and being in the wrong mode. The G9's arrangement seems like a retrograde step, but it's liveable.

Beware, bears! Russian strongman and former commando Mikhail Shivlyakov “psychs up”  friend and fellow competitor Konstantina Janashia from Georgia, ready for a successful 480kg deadlift. Panasonic G9 with Lumix G Vario 100–300mm ƒ/4–5.6 @ 300mm, 1/250s, ƒ/5.6, ISO 640.

Strengths
That brings us from some arguable weaknesses of the G9 onto its real strengths. It's fast—so fast it has three high-speed modes: High (about 5 FPS), Super-high 1 (about 15 FPS) and Super-high 2 (about 20FPS). The two Super-high modes also have a very useful feature for sports and wildlife photography: hold the shutter half pressed and they will continuously store a few frames (about 0.4s worth) in the buffer, and write these to the card when you press the shutter, so if you are fractionally late clicking, you don't lose the event. The downside is that you need to use the super-high settings with caution: if you are saving RAW + large JPEG files, Super-high 2 will chew up your memory cards at a rate of roughly 1 GB every 1.5 seconds. Another reason why I'd prefer to lock this to a custom mode!

Autofocus is much improved over the GX8, although I have to admit that my first sporting event with the new camera didn't give it that much of a workout: in absolute terms, strongmen don't move fast. it's impressive to see a 150kg (330 lbs.) man jogging with the same weight in each hand, but it's not the harshest test of autofocus! However I can report that the G9 seems to adjust focus very quickly in continuous mode and seems to have missed few shots. I'll have to try and find something involving horses or fast cars for a better check.

Sensor readout also appears to have been improved, with a bit less banding on pictures of LED displays, and no obvious rolling shutter effects so far, although a higher-speed subject will really be required to confirm that.  

The other area where Panasonic seem to have listened to my prior pleas is in support for bracketed and multi-shot images. In addition to the established support for exposure bracketing (for HDR), the new camera now does focus bracketing/scanning, as well as bracketing for aperture and white balance. Intelligently, even in single-shot drive mode you can choose to have the bracket shot at high speed to minimize the effect of subject or camera movement. The focus bracketing capability is something I have been seeking for a long time, and records full RAW files, a completely separate capability from the camera's other ability to do in-camera focus stacking or post-shot focus selection from within a 6K movie file. Bracketed photos are clearly marked in their metadata, which makes it quite easy to build a script to sort them out from the rest of a day's shooting.  

Battery life is excellent—at the aforementioned strongman competition the camera was on for most of the five hours of competition and took about 600 shots. It used one battery and was about 30% into the second, much better than the GX8 would manage. I can also confirm that the two card slot arrangement works fine, effectively doubling the memory capacity, so I wasn't fiddling with cards.

Two other ergonomic points are worth making. The rear display can be manually set to a nice bright setting for outdoors, but it's automatic setting is far too dim. The EVF is large, detailed and bright, but as adjusted for my glasses has an odd pincushion distortion, with noticeably curved edges. This is nothing to do with the lens, which the camera corrects as required, but the way the EVF display is presented to the eyepiece. It's not a major problem, but annoying to an inveterate picture-straightener like myself, especially as I haven’t had that problem with any of the predecessors.  

Otherwise it's pretty much business as usual. Image quality appears to be just the same as the GX8, much as expected given the common sensor, and the camera has a nicely familiar feel even if some of the controls are different and it's definitely a bit heavier. Stabilization is at least as good as the predecessor, with no noticeable penalty from the increased weight, but it's clear that the full multi-second goodness of "Dual I.S. 2" will have to wait until I can afford to start replacing my lenses with the new Mark II versions.

Conclusion
Would I recommend it? If you're a committed Panasonic user, or have no existing mirrorless camera affiliation, and you want a very high capability, stills-centric camera, then absolutely. However if video is your thing, the GH5 may be better, and if you really don't need the high speed or new advanced stills features, then a GX-series camera will save you weight and money. This is a very good camera, but not perfect. Panasonic still has room for improvement....

Andrew

Andrew (no relation to Mike) is a full-time IT consultant and keen writer and photographer from Leatherhead, Surrey, in the UK. He spends much of his spare time finding images to fill his memory cards, and most of the rest writing about it, or developing yet more software to help process the photos! For more on Andrew’s interests, thoughts, work, and photography please visit www.andrewj.com.

©2018 by Andrew K. Johnston, all rights reserved

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raizans: "You know, I'm not that disappointed with the GX9. The EVF might be smaller than the GX8's, but at least it's very sharp, clear (bright with good contrast), and smooth (fast refresh rate, not much color tearing). Definitely a nicer image than the EVF in the Fujifilm X-E3 (needs a bit more resolution, tends to have dark shadows, looks a bit jittery), despite being smaller. And the complaints online about the rear dials are particular to some but not all people. The exposure compensation dial is much stiffer than the rear control dial, and you have to use the tip of your thumb to move it. It's recessed enough that I don't touch it while turning the rear control dial, which I can move with the heel of my thumb. It isn't an issue for me. So try before you buy! I'm 5'8'' with small hands for comparison's sake. The grip feels better than the X-E3's to me, and it isn't disappointing even with the Olympus 75mm mounted. All that said, I'll probably go with Fuji for the lenses."

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been... (Sony A7III)

...That's what it says on one of my friend Dan's many T-shirts. (Another has a picture of a bone with the words "I find that humerus.")

But as I get to know the Sony A7III, I can't help but think of the first digital camera I ever used, the Agfa ePhoto 1280. That was about exactly 20 years ago, and the Agfa was still new, having started shipping a few months earlier. It had a sensor that was 6mm on the diagonal and almost (not quite) .8 of a megapixel. (That's not eight megapixels, that's point-eight of a megapixel, a million pixels in a digicam being a Shangri-la that was still over the horizon at the time.)

Same thing, over and over
At the time I was still in the habit of standing at my kitchen sink in Woodstock (where I used to live and where Groundhog Day was filmed) developing 105 frames of 35mm Tri-X by hand two or three times a week, a process that took just a little over two hours from prep to cleanup. I remember thinking, using the Agfa, gee, this is really fun! Too bad I can never use it, because the image quality will never be good enough. (I do think I thought "never," as human beings tend to be absolutist about things, and I, like many of you, am a human being.)

Some time after that, the urban myth that 6 megapixels would finally match 35mm image quality entered a short period of currency. Michael Reichmann (R.I.P.) created the greatest sensation of his distinguished Internet career by claiming that the 3-megapixel Canon D30 (note: not 30D) turned that trick. My thought at the time? We all just really want that to be true. 

I remember when I wrote that "I'm a Sony Man" because of a space-age new camera called the F-707 (5 megapixels, but a small sensor), the color accuracy of digital sensors was wildly off; the F-707 exaggerated and oversaturated reds. I really wanted small sensors to be good enough, too. They kind of almost were. Not quite. (I'm still at that.)

I shot with a Nikon D100 that had 6 megapixels. DPReview wrote, "It's still pretty amazing to think that you can now pick up a six megapixel D-SLR for around $2,000." The D100's image quality? Rah-rah forumers put the bravest possible face on it when it was new, but my opinion was that, well, 35mm wasn't really that great either.

The best thing about my first DSLR, the Konica-Minolta 7D—which also had the holy grail 6 megapixels—was its color accuracy—greatly better than that of the F-707 and better than most other DSLRs of the time. I still like that camera. Wish it hadn't broken. Wish the company that made it hadn't exited the field. But then as we know now, nothing is forever in digital-land.

It's possible to argue that the A7III is the K-M 7D's descendant, many generations removed.

I notice DPReview is still publishing "Image Samples" of new cameras and lenses. Hmm. I do remember, back in the antediluvian aughts, that I used to anxiously pore over DPR's image samples thinking is this one good enough? Does this one have that special something? I haven't done that for years. (Does anyone?) Now, I think, the challenge for camera and lens reviewers is to detect the differences in image samples, not that the samples really tell us anything of much importance.

This picture shows—or would show, if you could see and play with the whole file—several things the Sony A7III is really good at: preserving the subtle sense of real light; preserving the delicacy of accurate colors; and allowing as much correction in post as you're probably going to need.

Now, of course, the A7III's 24 megapixels isn't adequate for many enthusiasts. They pine instead for the A7rIII, which has mo' bettah. The A7III's color accuracy is fantastico, and it's one of the great things about a big sensor—that, and the file's deep responsiveness to Photoshop massagings. The land-and-lakescape you can see here is one of my favorites among the photographs I've taken recently, but the tiny-sensor-having iPhone just plain missed the subtle turquoisiness of the water that was actually the reason I tried to take the picture in the first place. The A7III would have preserved it, I'm pretty sure.

The A7III's IBIS is better than the K-M 7D's.

Remarkably unremarkable
It's possible that the most remarkable thing about the A7III is that it isn't remarkable. It's a great camera, but it's Sony's bread-and-butter A7-series model, the one in the middle. It's not even the slightest bit amazing, to paraphrase what DPR said of the D100, that we can pick up a 24-megapixel D-SLR [sic] for around $2,000. And full frame to boot. Ho-hum.

So anyway, the A7III is one of the best cameras I've ever used. I can almost not imagine a generalist shooter not being happy with it, although, as with those image samples, I suppose h8ers could find something to h8 if they worked at it. Really worked.

But what I keep coming back to is how far we've come over the past 20 years, and what a long strange trip Dan's been on. Just kidding, Dan.

The only thing that Agfa 1280 did better twenty years ago was that the Agfa was amazing, exciting and fun, and the A7III ain't.

But that's not anybody's fault. That's just how far we've come; it's the measure of how good good is now expected to be.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stephanie Luke: "Love the egg picture. Just had to be color, that's for sure. Hmm, that reminds me of something else, but I can't quite remember what....  :-)  "

Rob de Loe: "I confess to looking for a hidden message in the arrangement of those eggs!"

Mike replies: I didn't even rearrange them before I shot that. So if there's a message, it's from the Cosmos, not me.

Bill Wheeler: "This relates to your amazing and fun comment above, Mike. Earlier today after developing a roll of Tri-X film (holy, holy, holy), I was reminded that for me (now and forever) there is nothing more magical than film. Amen."

Dillan: "Every article should start with a Grateful Dead reference."

David Evans: "Those eggs make me want an A7III. Again. But I can really only afford one or two lenses for it. And I just know I wouldn't be happy until I had acquired two or three more lenses and the whole thing was too heavy to carry. I'll stick with my GX8. I think."

John Holmes: "With the newer sensors I think that the differences in colors, ISO capability, etc., are more the result of the in-camera processing of the signals from the sensor."

Sony A7III: IS

Ken Tanaka said the other day, "The Sony A7III is already one of the most 'reviewed' cameras in amateur photo history," and Dan Bracaglia at DPReview rather famously declared that it might become his new-go-to recommendation for enthusiasts and semi-professionals, taking over from the excellent Nikon D750 (currently on sale).

The first thing I wanted to try was the image stabilization (IS), so I wandered around the house snapping this 'n' that with the ISO set to 800 and the aperture set to ƒ/8, which gave me exposures between 1/4th sec. and 1/8th sec.

And...wow. No complaints so far. Time after time I got solid-as-a-rock images with no sign of camera shake. I took dozens of trials, naturally. Here's one example at 1/5th of a second:

Deathless art photograph of my kitchen, as good as Walker Evans (uh, not).
Lens is the FE 55mm ƒ/1.8 Zeiss.

Detail (should render at 100% for you after you double-click on it).
Note that those are grains of salt on the stove. And
that the blog software softens images somewhat.
I can live with that kind of quality at 1/5th sec.

B'cause, y'see, I gotta see for myself. And since IS is the only reason I'd switch away from the X-T1/X-T2, I needed to find out about that first. Because if it wasn't what I wanted, back into the box and back to B&H Photo it would go.

So now, with that out of the way, I can start learning the menus and how to set up the camera. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.

I have to admit that whenever I go around making "test" exposures, I feel like a geek/dweeb/propellerhead/dork/dope. Always have, as long as I've been doing it. But y'know, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

And after I realized how well the system worked, then I had to go around and do it some more, just because it was making me happy. And that really made me feel like a dork.

Own it, Mike!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Rob de Loe: "Ah, the kitchen stove shot. I confess to having a bunch of those in my 'test' catalogue too. There isn't another place in the house where I get that much shine, bright light and colour. It's my go-to location for comparing lenses if I'm trying to decide one over the other!"

Stephen Scharf: "I've been obtaining similar results with the Fujifilm X-H1. Here is a photograph of my EAR 324 phono stage taken at 1/10 second with the Fuji 18–55mm racked out to 55mm (83mm in 35mm-e).

"The image above is small due to TypePad's image posting size limitations, so here's a link to the original-size photo.

"As can be seen, it's tack.

"The UK-based YouTube video review guys, The Photography Team, have photographs using the Fuji 90mm (135mm-equivalent) taken at 1/4 of a second.

"So, be mindful, Mike, that you have also have a choice in the Fuji ecosystem, and you wouldn't have to sell off those sweet Fuji lenses."

Mike replies: You have an EAR 324? Do you mind if I, um, hate you?

kirk tuck: "The writer at DPReview did not give his final approval on the Sony versus Nikon recommendation. He stated that he'd wait for the tests to decide if the Sony was truly the camera that he would recommend going forward. Let's not jump the gun...."

Mike replies: Granted. Fixed now.

Moose: "It seems your standards may be low for this. Robin Wong reports, 'I can confidently hand-hold the Panasonic G9 with the 12–60mm ƒ/2.8–4 IS lens down to about 5 seconds, with a 50% hit rate. Yes, you heard that right—5 seconds! I thought I could only do that with the Olympus E-M1 Mark II.' He shows examples.

"I don't recall at the moment who, but others testing the E-M1 II reported similar 4–5 sec. results. Your example @ 55mm-e and Stephen Scharf's @ 82mm-e are fine, but already with the E-M5 II's older IBIS, here's an example from me of 1/20 sec. @ 600mm-e.

"This example also points out why multi-second IBIS doesn't mean much to me. Pretty much everything I shoot handheld (other than tests) moves; people, flowers, critters, trees, clouds, water all move. In my practical experience, subject motion is much more of a problem than insufficient IBIS, even on the last generation of Micro 4/3 IBIS. So, the IBIS you report is indeed very useful, although possibly not quite enough for me, with my interest in macro and telephoto, but far from the best available. It makes sense, really. The distance the sensor has to move is twice as great for FF, and the weight to be moved goes up with volume. Making some assumptions with insufficient hard data, it seems an A7III sensor is something over twice as large in volume as a Micro 4/3 sensor. To move over twice the weight over twice the distance and stop it to half the precision in the same amount of time is a considerable challenge."

Mike replies: My ulterior motive in trying out the Sony is that I'm giving it a chance to pull me away from my attraction to Micro 4/3. If it doesn't, there's probably a Panasonic in my future. Maybe the G9, but I just can't help but keep holding out hope for a GX8 II, even though I know full well the futility of waiting for imaginary cameras...as I've been doing it for decades.... :-)

Sony A7 Mark III In Da House

The TP (theoretically perfect) or PoP (perfect on paper) Sony A7III arrived last evening!

This is petty—I'm griping, and I admit that—but here are the first two things I noticed.

1. No charger. It's one of those deals where you get a cable and a USB adapter for charging the battery in-camera. Granted, Sony's pricing on this model is aggressive, and maybe this is a smart way of cutting costs. But it's faintly annoying that I had to wait for this box to arrive for three weeks and the very first thing I discover is that I'm going to have to order a charger and an extra battery and wait for those things too. (Or that's what I would have to do, if I were keeping the camera.) To add insult to injury, the bleedin' BC-QZ1 charger is corded (I hate that—I much prefer chargers that plug right into the wall), and it costs EIGHTY-EIGHT dollars. Really? That's [x]% of the value of the whole camera, where x is a number Ctein could figure out but I can't. [UPDATE: Frank Gorga says it's 4.4%. Thanks Frank.] And the extra NP-FZ100 battery is another $78. The aggressive pricing just got a little less attractive.
2. The engineering of the box. Yeah, this is probably because I have to repack this and send it back to B&H a month from now, and also because I've unpacked and repacked way too many cameras in the last 30 years or so. But all the little cardboard puzzle-pieces fell to bits when I was removing the stuff from the box, and I already know I'm going to be irritated trying to get it all back together. I always am, but I'm going to be again. With all the talented engineers the camera companies have at their disposal, can no one come up with a competently engineered box that's logical and easy to repack? It's not asking the moon.

I know I'm sounding like a grouchy graybeard, but that's only because I'm a grouchy graybeard. (Only sometimes grouchy. Mostly pretty dang cheerful, to be honest. Once you're past that pesky midlife crisis, it's really pretty great to be alive.)

Anyway I'm waiting for the battery to charge, and then I get to try the TPoP A7III! Which is a good thing, and I'm not losing sight of that. Also on the good side is the fact that the Sony A7III's battery life is claimed to be the best of any mirrorless camera.

And away we go!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

01af: "Oh dear...so from now on, four weeks of frowning skies and downpours in upstate New York."

Mike replies: EXACTLY. You understand!  :-)

Earl Dunbar: "Sony should have Apple make their packaging."

Apple duckhead

Joe Boris: "To put one of your curmudgeon-ings to rest, if you've ever owned an Apple laptop or other device that came with one of the (I can't find a way to attach the pic I just shot of it to this post) small, white, 'folding 2-pronged outlet adapters' [called a 'duckhead' —Ed.], they will insert perfectly into the cord port of this Sony charger, the Fuji X charger, and most other similar devices. This tiny thing replaces the long cord entirely. It is only 1x1.5x.75", so it almost fits in a pill bottle. I bought five of them on eBay several years ago for a few dollars, and now every charger I use that came with a cord, now wears one of these."

Fred: "Thank you Joe Boris for that very useful tip about the Apple charger outlet adapter [duckhead]. I've had a handful of these laying around from my Apple purchases over the years and now they have a use, a very good use at that."

robert e: "Hi Mike! Great to see you back in full stride. Interesting that Richard Butler of DPReview awarded the NP-FZ100 battery a 'Gear of the Year' award last year, for its role in sufficiently eliminating the usability gap between mirrorless and mirrored ILCs. Could it be that its value is actually greater than the 4.4% of cost? There seem to be plenty of off-brand chargers, not so much batteries—yet. Looking forward to the review!"

Terry Burnes on Phone Photography

Guest Post by Terry Burnes

Mike and I recently had a bit of an offline exchange about the question of whether a phone camera is or can be a “real” camera. As this seems a current topic, perhaps even a debate, in photography, and occasionally here on TOP, Mike asked me to put a few thoughts together.

Let me say right up front that my answer is yes. But at the same time I understand that there are significant differences between my iPhone 8’s camera and my OM-D E-M5 Mark II, not to mention some newer full-frame cameras.

My main point is that I think we should be open to all forms of photography and whatever any photographer uses to make good photographs, from wet plate to the phone. I also think phone cameras are among those evolving most rapidly right now and thus bear watching and perhaps keeping up with, especially as regards photography by the young (in other words, the future of photography).

Finally, I wonder if those judging phone photography harshly are personally familiar with the latest technology. It really came into its own for me with my iPhone 7 and now 8 [6+ and 7+ for me —MJ]. Prior to that I tend to agree that the tech was limiting. I’m confident an iPhone X or Google Pixel 2 would be even better. And we clearly have more to come.

Mike asked me to send him an example of a recent photograph taken with my iPhone. Let me be clear here that I do not consider myself an especially accomplished photographer. I’m an amateur always striving to improve, as I suspect many TOP readers are. This post isn’t about my photography, it’s about phone cameras.

So below is the photograph I sent to Mike. It’s a simple one taken a few days ago on a walkabout in the historic section of my town of Gardnerville, Nevada, with my iPhone 8 with the Sirui add-on telephoto lens (60mm-e) attached. I picked this because it’s a common sort of composition, such as many of TOP readers might take; it has considerable detail and tonal variation; and it shows the use of a phone camera much as we might use our ILCs, for “artistic” photography and with a lens different from the “kit” lens.

Like many of you I have several cameras, all from the Olympus system and targeted at different uses. My “main” camera is my OM-D E-M5 Mark II. I consider the others secondary. But what has happened for me personally is that my iPhone has slowly taken over as my secondary camera. And having done that I now find it slowly taking over my photography in general, edging out my OM-D bit by bit.

That is for reasons that are both obvious (availability and convenience) and mysterious (the effect it seems to have on my limited creativity). One clear advantage my iPhone has over my OM-D is that it almost completely eliminates the need to deal with the technical aspects of photography, thus putting more emphasis on the artistic side. That may be a disturbing statement to some of you, but I believe there are two fundamental aspects of photography, the technical component and the creative component. I struggle with both. But to focus on the latter I’m inclined to let the camera do as much of the former as possible, leaving me with more time to think about the photograph I’m trying to produce.

I’m not trying to convince anyone about the merits of phone photography. That’s up to each of you. But to help you decide, let’s play a little game.

I maintain a website of my photography, called Catch and Release Photography, which I normally share just with family and friends. It’s organized chronologically for the most part. The best examples of my iPhone photography are my 2017 albums. The one titled Along the Way contains 199 photographs that I personally feel are my best of last year (I know, too many, but that’s as far as I could go with the always-excruciating culling exercise).

Here is a link to that album.

Sixty percent of the photos in that album were taken with my iPhones, a 7 then an 8. The other photos were taken with my OM-D E-M5 Mark II or my Olympus E-PM2. All received the same sort of post processing in Apple Photos. Can you tell which are which, phone or “real” camera? Maybe you could share your thoughts in the comments, picking one of each.

In a few days Mike will post a list of the phone photographs and you can check your conclusions.

Remember, this is not about my photography. Compliments are welcome. Share your criticisms with your dog. And yes, I know on-screen display is not the “real” test—printing is. But I think most photography is viewed on a screen these days. And my iPhone photos that look good on the screen seem to print as well as the others, though I don’t use fancy printing options.

And I’m not making a case for the phone being your only camera—just maybe your second camera. If you need a big beautiful print, by all means get out your full-frame camera and best lens and have at it.

With that said, as my iPhone has slowly intruded on my “real” photography I have worked to improve its capability. Few of us stick with an ILC and its kit lens. Well, why not augment the phone camera too? So below is a photograph of the kit I’ve assembled.

I don’t usually have this with me. I take it along when I want something more than just my phone but less than my OMD kit.

From upper left, a small bag from Waterfield Designs in SF that is specifically designed for carrying a phone kit. Then an auxiliary battery for charging the phone if necessary. A Joby Gorillapod. A LensPen and a microfiber cleaning cloth. And four auxiliary lenses: Moment “Superish” 170-degree fisheye, Moment wide angle, Sirui telephoto, and Moment macro. Finally, in the center, a clever phone camera grip from Just Mobile, the Shuttergrip, with lanyard.

Moment lenses: I use their basic phone case, which contains a mount for their lenses. That mount also works for the Sirui lenses, which have the same mounting system as Moment. It’s a good case for protecting my phone and makes attaching and removing the lenses easy and accurate.

Sirui lenses

Just Mobile

Waterfield Designs

A few comments. All the lenses are quite good, far from toys, but I didn’t like the Moment telephoto (too soft on the edges. Moment says that’s because it is a portrait lens), so I substituted the Sirui, which is much better for my purposes. I think the Sirui wide angle would probably be the equal of the Moment wide. Sirui are about two-thirds the prices of Moment.

The wide and telephoto lenses are very useful, the wide being about an 18mm-e and the tele about 60mm. With the 28mm-e native phone lens, that makes a pretty good spread. The Superfish and macro are less useful but nice to have along in case.

The Shuttergrip allows one-handed operation of the phone camera, or much more stable two-handed operation. It contains a bluetooth shutter release that can be detached for remote shutter operation. It has a tripod mount.

With this little kit I feel I have the operational equivalent of my Olympus E-PM2 interchangeable-lens camera. The major difference then becomes the sensor, MFT vs. whatever small sensor is in the phone. But that’s only a liability in low light, where the phone still can do pretty well:

In the end I’d say the two big weaknesses of the phone are low light and long telephoto (the twin-camera phones are slowly solving the bokeh problem). But I think that stuff is coming, somehow. Huawei seems to be coming out with a three-camera phone and as sensor tech progresses I think low light will become less of a limitation for most phone photography.

But the phone camera has some major advantages too. Size, and convenience—and of course it’s the camera most of us always have with us. But it is also very inconspicuous, leaving the user something other than a photographer in the eyes of those nearby.

Most of us have our phone with us, so why not make use of the camera? At least us amateurs. The pros will still want the larger-sensor cameras, but I think will make greater and greater use of the phone for ancillary photography.

I don’t do video so phone videography would be a topic for others, but there is a lot about video on the Moment website (Moment has just announced development of a cinema anamorphic lens). I think video or hybrid photography is another area where the phones and their young customers are making rapid progress. I get the feeling that in the future, still photography is going to have its hands full competing with that.

Once again, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. Do what you want. But you probably have a camera in your pocket. Why not make it the best one you can afford and then use it, especially when lugging a “real” camera around is not in the cards. I think if you get a current Apple iPhone or Google Pixel and learn to use it well you’ll find it slowly creeping into more and more of your photography.

As for me, I’m not sure yet another ILC is in my future. The one I have is pretty good. But I’m sure more phones, and their cameras, will be coming. And I’m looking forward to learning what they will be able to do.

Terry

TOP reader Terry Burnes, 71, is from Gardnerville, Nevada, USA.

Words and pictures © 2018 by Terry Burnes, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Fred: "This is a very interesting post. As Terry states there is a real virtue in having a camera that is with you all the time and that all you need to do is point and shoot. Also with a phone camera you can easily inflict...er...show your pictures to others. (I find backing people into a corner useful.) Also I have never been that concerned about pictures in low light. The quality of the image is what it is and that usually works for me, after all the picture is in low light.

"What I wonder about is if you are going to have some extra lenses and other things to carry around with you would you do just as well to have a little soap bar Micro 4/3 interchangeable-lens camera with a touch screen on the back? I'm sure it just comes down to personal preference. Good post."

hugh crawford: "I remember photographers carrying 35mm film cameras for when they didn't have their 'real camera.'"

Lenya: "Obviously, a good photographer can take great pictures with whatever they have at hand. A great skier can ski on any pair of skis. It is the unwashed masses who need all the help they can get out of their equipment. Apart from that, what if you wonder outside of your house with your puny phone in hand, and then suddenly you stumble upon a running cheetah, a motorcycle race, or a diving kingfisher? Not to mention a beautiful model that you must photograph at ƒ/1.4 and 105mm? Or it suddenly gets dark and the Milky Way shines like, well, like a Milky Way shines? Nah, security is security is security, and without a serious camera one would always be paranoid about what might have been."

Curt Gerston: "I teach a middle school photography class...great fun. A few years ago, I insisted my students use the drawer full of Canon Powershots I had for their assignments. Some wanted to use their phones, but I insisted they use 'real' cameras...this was Photography after all. I carried an iPhone myself, but refused to take pictures with it (it was at best an emergency camera).

"About four years ago, some students (ignoring my 'real camera' admonishments) began turning in portfolios of work from their phones. Some of it was truly great...I was amazed: these were photos with genuine and unique vision, and much better than most of what I was seeing from my students using the Powershots. In fact, when I started letting more of my students use their phones, the overall quality of the work improved: I’m speaking of the creative aspects of their photographs, though the technical parts clearly were improving each year too. It reminded me of a truism we hear, but sometimes forget: the importance of the comfort the artist has with his/her tools. My students use their phone cameras all the time, all day long. When the time comes to do 'work' with them, many of my students are much more adept at 'seeing' with a phone. It just fits for them, and the work shows it.

"So, I'm much less snooty about it now, and even use my own phone camera much more often (got an iPhone X...that’s a pretty good camera). I use my Fuji much more still. And I have a bunch of used Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras for my student who want to start to take more control of their shutter speeds, D-o-F, etc. But, there is no doubt in my mind that for this new generation of photographers, it’s going to be the phone that does most of the work. Maybe not if they become pro fashion or sports photographers, but who knows? I still can’t believe what phones can do already. Ten to twenty years from now, phones might be all anyone needs."

More On Video Reviews of Camera Equipment

Text vs. video is probably just generational, as Michael Mejia vividly explains. (Many values, beliefs, and cultural verities people think are eternal and unchanging are actually just generational, or shared by several generations but not necessarily by those before and after.) I haven't seen very many video reviews of cameras. I don't like watching them, therefore I'm not very familiar with the genre. I'm sure there are many good ones out there. I do appreciate David Thorpe. (He's probably closer to my generation!)

Also bear in mind that I'm a creature of the printed word, so what you're about to read comes from the standpoint my own bias. (That bias is dear to me, so I certainly don't apologize for it. The written word is fabulously rich and has given me great pleasure throughout my life, in many, many ways.)

The shortcomings of video reviews were stated succinctly by nextSibling:

The problem with video in general is it has very low information density and poor reference mechanisms, as information designers would say.

Bingo. A commenter also named Michael extolled the video Fuji X-H1 review by Palle Schultz (who, Roman points out, is not a fully independent reviewer, but, like Jonas Rask, is an official "Fuji X Photographer." Here's the list).

And actually, for me, Palle's video is a perfect illustration of what nextSibling complains about: it's mainly about the videography aspects of the X-H1, something that doesn't interest me because I shoot only stills. So I get 1/5th of the way into the video, and it starts to waste my time with details about what it's like to shoot video with, and then I get more and more impatient as I wait for the video-shooting segment of the review to end...which it never does, because the reviewer has shot a doc with it and it's almost entirely a discussion of his thoughts about the X-H1's video capabilities. Would I have watched the whole thing through if there was some way of knowing that in advance? No. But nowhere is the review labeled as what it is, and I have no way of knowing that most of the information I happen to want is not even there. I'm just following along blind, going wherever the guy who's talking wants to take me.

Upshot, for Michael: "No reason to view or read anything else." Upshot for me: almost entirely a waste of my time. (Nothing against Palle; his information seems good for what it is.)

Quick, find that
Reviews such as those on DPReview have very good "reference mechanisms" (the table of contents and the index in a printed book are reference mechanisms) in the form of a dropdown menu where pages are labeled with different topics. So if you want to find out about stabilization, say, you can go directly to where that is discussed. Great, except that a technical review has another large failing, which is that it repeats a great deal of the information provided by the manufacturer. I consider most of that to be redundant. I'm fully capable of finding the press release and going to the manufacturer's website (or B&H) and reading the manufacturer's claims for the product, all by myself. A review should contain judgements and opinions. I don't want it to be a substitute for, or a rehash of, the manual. So the only bits of a technical review that interest me are the little nuggets where the reviewer evaluates or critiques the manufacturer's claims or approaches those claims from the standpoint of actual use or experience. And those are sparse.

In that way, even a review that's "dense" with information actually has low information density, which has always been my problem with technical reviews. (I really don't even want all the nitty-gritty spec-sheet details on a product until I've 90% decided to buy it.)

And you are...?
A basic problem of many video reviews these days is that unless they're an established content provider and you're an established fan, you often have little idea of the qualifications and skill level of the reviewer. Take this to the bank when I say it: many people can talk a great game without having the skills to shoot their way out of a wet paper bag. When I write reviews, I take a lot of pains to let people know where I'm coming from and what my skill levels are—and I take pains not to lie about it. If I don't shoot video, say, or long lenses, or fast action, you'll know it, so you can evaluate the information you're getting from me accordingly.

Another obvious problem with reviews these days is that they are posted immediately, and they function mostly like company PR. Hey, look at this exciting new product, here's everything the manufacturer wants me to say about it, go buy it from my links! Right, we're all guilty of the latter, including me, because that's how sites survive these days. But that only excuses the practice, it doesn't make it a desirable trait in a reviewer. By far the most valuable reviews come from people who have used the product for weeks or months and have gotten thoroughly familiar with it through actual experience. (And who have gotten over the glow of "new toy" pride.) Not somebody who shot with it for an hour or just handled it at the company's booth at a show.

Unbeholden
This would seem to vindicate the practice of "beta testers" who receive pre-production samples and use them for weeks before the official rollout date. Except that's not a good practice either, because the best reviews are firmly independent and no beta tester can be truly independent, by definition, for the simple reason that they are dependent (note the word) on the manufacturer for the testing sample. So they're all "making nice." They know full well if they don't, they won't be getting the next new camera in advance. No matter how free they pretend to be, they are not free, because they always have to be mindful of their relationship with the manufacturer. They become de facto extensions of the company PR departments.

Another way this subverts impartiality is that the companies have learned to only give equipment to people that they know for sure are dyed-in-the-wool fanboys and highly unlikely to let slip a negative word. Leica is particularly guilty of this, but most of them do it. Why wouldn't they? They want PR. They do not actually want critical, fully independent reviews.

And ideally?
The best reviews, I think, would:

• Be fully independent*;
• Be the result of using the product over time;
• Be subjective, with the reviewer being completely forthright and forthcoming about his or her skills, affiliations, and biases;
• Keep fully in mind each reader's likely desire to skip over certain parts that don't concern, or pertain to, him or her;
• Keep the information you can get directly from the manufacturer and the manual to a practical minimum, instead reporting on independent experience and use and the results of independent testing, and things like look and feel and ergonomics**; and
• Mix text and very short videos (and other media, for instance graphs or sound files)—all well crafted, and each tailored to the information most suited to each specific media...
• ...With each of the separate video segments clearly labeled and short—of two minutes or less in duration. As the reference mechanism.

Is anyone doing ideal camera reviews these days, taking full advantage of the felicities of the Web but not falling prey to its commonplace idiocies? Not in my opinion***.

That's probably because no one can afford to. The competition from amateur reviewers and forum discussions is just too diffuse and widespread, and the pressure to provide fodder for peoples' initial curiosity is just too great, to focus sufficient attention on a professional, thorough, fully independent review that comes out weeks or months after the release date. Note that this is a situation that other industries exploit to the max; for instance, big ticket movies are now promoted specifically to minimize word-of-mouth publicity. Ad campaigns stir up interest in advance of the films' release in order to help make back the film's investment in the first days and weeks after release—even if the film actually sucks and the eventual consensus is that people don't like it. (That's why films' "first weekend" box office takes are reported so breathlessly, as if any moviegoer cares about that.) The parallel in our field is that people want to be first with the news—and the first owners of new products—because they get attention that way.

But here's the point relative to the post title: the best video review would probably be a string of separate very short video segments, each part labelled separately. That each part should be competently done and maximize video-specific forms of content, things that video is actually useful for conveying, while minimizing the annoying "talking head" stretches, should probably go without saying. Except that it does need to be said. (Have you ever watched a video review where the talking head is waving a new camera around and you just want to have a decent look at the darned thing? Like the guy who was waving around a GX9 for minutes on end while I still didn't know if the viewfinder was fixed or tilting, or whether the viewing screen was the flip-up type or the side-articulated type. That drives me nuts.)

I should add that I've been reviewing cameras since the 1980s and I'm a former editor-in-chief of a technical photography magazine. Just saying that so you know I know my way around the subject, even though I only infrequently write full, formal reviews any more.

Mike
(Thanks to many commenters from Saturday)

*For instance, I get review samples only from B&H Photo and LensRentals; I can be beholden to both those organizations without being the least bit prejudiced in favor of, or against, any particular brand of camera or lens. When I reviewed the Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 Art I had two of them here, one for the Sony A900 and one for the Nikon D750, but I didn't have any connection to Sigma or, in fact, any contact with them at all. All you saw was some nice words about LensRentals, which were not prejudicial.

**I always tried to keep in mind the interests of the person who would like to use the camera but couldn't. What would I want to know about it myself if someone else were telling me of his experience with it? It's very hard for inexperienced and amateur reviewers not to take things for granted.

***Roger Cicala comes closest, for this writer. Thom Hogan's and Kirk Tuck's are very good. I don't actually look at a lot of other peoples' reviews.

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Ferdie: "tl;dr. ROFL!"

beuler: "Generally, text reviews are more informative than video (think of the typical spec table). Video reviews are more entertaining than text (think of ex-DigitalRev TV presenter Kai). Do I seek gear reviews to be entertained? Absolutely! Sue me.  :-) 

"Most video gear reviews will fall between the two extremes of production value. On one end of the spectrum there is just a guy sitting in front of the camera talking. Here is an example à propos. On the opposite end of the spectrum there is the voice over a multitude of imagery that helps to make the point. Here is an example of a one-man-show with high production value. And here is a video review of video review channels. [That last is excellent; thanks. —MJ.]

"In the end what really counts and keeps viewers coming back is engagement. The guy just talking to the camera can be engaging if he is a naturally gifted public speaker and the high production value video will engage if the eye candy is sweet enough—this is independent of the content/substance. In a similar way, the most expert gear connoisseur will not have a single reader for a blog post if he is a lousy writer. Any of you who are regular readers of the LensRentals blog can consider if you keep coming back because of the deep technical insights or because of the wit and lighthearted penmanship of Roger Cicala. Many of the readers here will no doubt watch videos occasionally if they are posted in the middle of a web page article. Just be aware that a huge chunk of Internet users will occasionally read a blog post if it is linked from a YouTube video."

Bill La Via: "I would say that Jonas does a pretty good job of making his biases known (see the second paragraph in his review). Not all sponsored photographers (from any of the brands) do so but I have always found him to be pretty transparent. I also find some genuine nuggets in his 'reviews.' I have found that one needs to read many reviews to triangulate a completely balanced view of a product, and that even then it’s only an approximation of reality; biased reviews are the norm rather than the exception."

Gordon Lewis: "For what it's worth, I tend to look at the video vs. text issue from the perspective of being a professional instructional designer for roughly 20 years. In my profession, video is perfect for showing how to do a procedure, or showing something that would take a lot of words to clearly describe. A procedure can be as complex as a total ankle replacement surgery to something as mundane as clearing a clog out of a dishwasher, but if the steps are visually clear enough, the need for verbal description is minimal.

"Even so, it's good practice to add time coded steps or sections, so that if I want to go directly to Step Three or some other important topic, I know exactly where to find it. Where video really sucks is when you have a talking head or disembodied voice that is simply explaining instead of showing. This is almost as idiotic as having a voiceover narrator read the exact text that's already printed on screen. Why do I need to look at you if all you're doing is talking while holding a camera?"

Keith: "Print vs video. Maybe it's because I'm old school, but video as a way of giving actual information is terrible. With text one can skim along thinking, 'I know this, know this, know this, aha! that's what I'm looking for,' and then start reading closely. It's easy to go back to step 2, and make sure you really do cut the red wire before attaching the blue wire to something. One can skim over the introductory text and dive right into chapter 6, because the table of contents says that's where to find what you're interested in. That can't be done on video unless someone has already posted a comment (if you read the comments) that says the review actually starts at 2:18. Plus,and this is a personal thing, I can't stand the way most videos start. 'Hey what's up, blah blah here for xyz, click on the like button,' and other such blither. Most of them have no idea how to get to the point, and once there, stay on it. Give me text any day."

Terry Letton: "This just reminds me the Chevy Vega was once Motor Trend Car of the Year. I bet MT would have liked that one back."

Wes Cosand: "Just a note to say thank you for your reviews. On the basis of your reviews of the Panasonic cameras and those of David Thorpe, I rented the Panasonic GX8 and its Olympus competitor and used them for a couple weeks. Then I gave my children all my full frame gear and ordered GX8 bodies and lenses, and have never derived more joy from photography."

Nicholas Condon: "As a 43 year old, I'm middling-young for a (now somewhat lapsed) hobbyist photographer. As an Internet content consumer, though, I'm ancient. And I just absolutely can't stand to acquire information (as opposed to entertainment) from videos. 'Hi, I'm Bob. Today, I'll be showing you how to use the <$FEATURE> of <$PRODUCT>. First, turn on <$PRODUCT>...' ...And with 30 seconds wasted without one single quantum of useful information conveyed, I'm done. In that amount of time, there's a good chance that, on a text-and-graphics instruction page, I could have already found the one small bit of information I was looking to obtain from the silly video to begin with. Meanwhile, my girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter would rather sit through a 45-minute video to obtain one sentence of useful information than find that one sentence in a well-written text-and-graphics article. There is either a severe generational divide here, or that particular 12-year-old has substantially more patience than this particular, grumpy 43-year-old."

Mike replies: Yes, it's somewhat interesting and ironic how common it is to say that kids today don't have any attention span, when actually they have a protean patience for videos that many older people don't have. I do wonder how they spend time to watch all that...but then, they would wonder how I have the time to read a book each week. I guess it's all a matter of priorities and preferences.

Rene Theberge: "The best review of a camera I've read in a long time is Kirk Tuck's recent review of the Panasonic GH5. It told me everything I needed to know about this camera in actual use."

Eolake: "Correction: MY generational ideas are wise and correct. Earlier ones are stuffy. Newer ones are silly and ephemeral."

Jim (partial comment): "I second your comments re video vs. written reviews or whatever, and that from someone who has created over 100 highly technical videos, mostly lectures, that have over 2.5 million views. I have two 30-something techie kids and know other age groups and I think the deal with video is 'CPA'— continuous partial attention. You cannot read an article and do much else, but you can watch a video with some attention and do other things. The bane of our existence is the CPA on phone calls when you can hear the clicking of a keyboard in the background."

Mark Roberts: "I greatly prefer written reviews to video, but so many video reviews fall far short of what they could be. Here's a checklist that far too many YouTube video makers have no idea they need. How to make a video:

1 — Write a script Write out exactly what you're going to say (verbatim) and what you're going to show. Then re-write it.

2 — Rehearse the script For crying out loud, practice a few times before you press Record.

3 — Edit Trim all the fat.

4 — Add voiceover narration in post Don't describe doing what you're doing while you do it. Adding narration in post lets you concentrate at one thing at a time and do it well.

5 — Edit again After you think you've trimmed as much as you can, watch your video again and see if you can cut any more. If you're honest with yourself you'll find more. I've given up on many videos because they were too long but never one because it was too short.

"Also: Keep the intro brief. I've seen some that go one for almost a minute with animation and music. Check out B&H Photo's videos for comparison. Their intro is five seconds long and contains little more than their logo."

Mike replies: I will add to your Number 5, Mark, that I'm more engaged with videos that move quickly. When my son did his videos when he was in high school, he researched the top video presenters and developed a fast and clear method of speaking (which he was very good at). One of my favorite video producers, Doug DeMuro, speaks very quickly and actually edits out many pauses. It's not that everything he says is essential, as that the video keeps moving quickly. I can stick with him for 18 minutes where I will leave other presenters much sooner simply because they talk slower and don't fill the time as well.

Also, your Numbers 2 and 3 go together somewhat...as you rehearse, edits will be suggested as you actually hear what's natural to say and what's not.

Ken Tanaka (partial comment): "Honestly, whether you’re researching a camera or a lens, renting/test-driving is THE best way to make the best-infomed decision about something costly."

Roger Cicala: "Another well thought out piece, Mike, that I enjoyed. I work with around a hundred 25–35 year olds and have this conversation with them a lot. I find video reviews inefficient and a waste of time; they find written reviews not very entertaining.

"Personally, I think video avoids constructive criticism. When I see someone writes something I think is wrong or incomplete, I send them an email, they can correct their article if they think it's appropriate in a few keystrokes. When the video is incorrect at the 15:33 mark, well, they aren't going to make a new video. And I've always wondered, if everyone is there to watch video because they don't like to read, who reads the 312 comments on the video page? What's the proper protocol, anyway? Shouldn't I make a video comment instead of writing?

"In this business, the one thing that has amazed me is how little investment from the manufacturer is required to get PR reviews. A few lenses, a trip or chance to lecture, being named an 'Ambassador,' and they have a friend for life. It's got to be the best return on investment they can get.

"I'm very lucky, I don't have to make my living doing this. I want to believe I'd write the same stuff if my livelihood depended on it. But I doubt that's really true; I'd certainly be more 'damn with faint praise' and less 'they really screwed this up.'

"You, Thom, Kirk, Dave Etchells and a few others are opinions I search out. I think, perhaps, what we all have in common is we're old enough to not care what the manufacturers think (very much)."

The Olympus E-M5 Mark II Torture Test, Part II

Introduction: You probably remember the last time our friend John Lehet abused his Olympus E-M5 Mark II...by losing it in a snowbank in the dead of Winter in Vermont and finding it four and a half months later. And discovering to his amazement that it still worked fine.

Well, he obviously wasn't done torture-testing the Olympus...read on.

Words and picture by John Lehet

I've walked along rivers and brooks in the Winter here in Vermont since the early '80s, back then with a big tripod and a view camera in a backpack. I've fallen in boot- or knee-deep many times over the years. Frequently I keep working and walking even if I have filled my boot with Winter water. I shrug it off.

This time was much more serious. I was walking along a little brook last week to photograph ice and water. Here's a photo of a little waterfall upstream from where I fell through, an exposure from early December:

I fell through ice into a fast-running brook at about 15°F air temperature, which I often do—but this time I was chest deep. I had a lot of gear on me: three cameras and a lot of lenses, some of them quite expensive. My first thought when I fell through was, "OK, I guess I'm done for the day." Second thought was, "Oh my god, my gear!" Third thought was: "Nothing matters except I have to climb out of this. I'm not dead yet, and that's lucky."

This time I was probably even more laden than in the view camera days. I had my Tenba DNA 13 bag, which I love a lot, as a side bag. It was bobbing on the water, floating. It was lucky I had zipped the top zipper, as I often work from it open. I also had on a Mindshift 180 Pro backpack, fully loaded. If you don't know those bags, they have a regular interior backpack compartment, but then also a sliding belt pack on the bottom that rotates; it can snug into the bottom of the pack then slide around to the front for quick access. I had that snugged into the backpack as I stepped onto the bad ice.

After I climbed out I found the bottom part of the Mindshift bag dangling from its safety strap, and unzipped. I don't know how the main strap got unbuckled from my waist, but I know it was buckled before. It doesn't unbuckle any more easily than any backpack waist band. However the fastener to keep the belt back inside its compartment had not been latched.

On the shore I did a quick inventory. Inside the Tenba bag looked pretty dry, if not impeccably so. The dangling bottom of the Mindshift pack was also pretty dry. I guess it hadn't opened up underwater, but had stayed in its compartment. I started climbing the long way up the bank to the car and did a quick inventory while I was walking. There was an empty spot in the Mindshift bag. Something missing. I went back to the stream and looked down into the flowing water to see the Olympus E-M5 Mark II with the 12–40mm ƒ/2.8 Pro lens on it. Maybe silver cameras are better than black ones in cases like this—very visible! I fished it out, and pulled the battery.

My car is an 18-year-old turbodiesel VW, which has been having reliability issues since about October. I've had to walk home from some photo outings since then. As I climbed up through the snow toward the car, dripping and freezing cold, I was not 100% sure the car was going to start. All the attachment that's been keeping me from moving on from that car melted away that morning. Sometimes it's not OK if the car might not start.

At home, still hypothermic, I inventoried all the other lenses, and the A7RII, and the infrared Micro 4/3 camera—many had a few drops on them but everything was perfectly fine and functional.

I took the lens off the E-M5 Mark II that I fished out of the stream. The body looked OK, but the lens had actually taken on water—there was water inside it. Not good.

After a day in a jar with desiccant, I tried the E-M5 Mark II with a different lens, and...

Perfect. No issues.

I'm bummed out about my 12–40mm lens. I'm attempting to dry it using desiccant and a warm-ish oven. It does seem to be slowly drying out. Not sure if it will ever work again, or what I'll do with it if it doesn't.

The Sony body and all my vintage and Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses were only protected by the bags and would not have lasted a second in the stream. The Olympus body survived being submerged in a rushing stream at a depth of a couple of feet for, I guess, a full minute or more. My sense of time was quite broken by the time I pulled it out.

The Olympus is not my main camera, but it's easy enough to carry, and tough enough for anything, versatile enough to bring home the best photos of all the gear sometimes.

And it's definitely waterproof.

John

Here's John's website.

©2018 by John Lehet, all rights reserved

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Jack Stivers: "Enough already! I was quite convinced about the Olympus's water resistance with the lost-in-a-snowbank experiment. This latest baptism by liquid ice was unneeded additional proof. I think we all get it. You've been quite fortunate to date to survive these mishaps, but to continue on this way could amount to treading on thin ice. Again."

Kate [John's wife]: "John's wife strongly agrees!"

Sony A6500 vs. Fuji X-T2

I got this note from Bob Travaglione:

Dear Mike, I have been putting off deciding on which camera to order and commit to a system. I have not seen your long promised review "Sony a6500 vs. Fuji X-T2: since your discussion on lenses available for these cameras. The prices are low right now and I want to click on your B&H link soon to buy one of them.

Oops, and sorry. All I can do at this point is give you my impressions and conclusions—not a full review, but it will probably serve as my input into your decision, Bob, for what that's worth.

First let me remind people of my old joke: When someone asks "should I get a Nikon or a Canon?" the proper answer is "yes." That is, yes, buy yourself a camera...then get to work using it. In the same spirit, both of these picture-takers from Sony and Fuji are highly evolved, highly competent, wonderful devices, and, while there is plenty of basis on which to distinguish them, they're both great cameras that are likely to serve their owners well. If you like one of them, don't worry too much about it. (Another thing I used to say all the time is that the degree to which you master the camera you choose is significantly more important than which camera you choose. That's still true.)

But enough meta-nonsense: which one's better? That's what you want to know.

For me, it was no contest. I'm fairly used to the old "NEX" form-factor, because I used a NEX-6 for two years when that camera was new. But having been treated to a number of newer designs such as the fine Panasonic GX8, which is several levels better as a "rangefinder-type" design layout*, the Sony doesn't quite cut it for me in terms of form-factor. It's not that it's bad; far from it. It's absolutely fine. I could get used to it, and I'm sure after a while it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

And, quite possibly, the fact that I've been using the Fuji X-T1 for the last three years or so might account for most of what swayed me immediately in the direction of the X-T2. I know some people don't like the X-T[x]'s knobs 'n' dials layout, preferring a less intuitive but more customizable electronically-oriented controls—but I do. The X-T2 is different in a great many ways compared to the X-T1, but almost all the changes, taken one by one, are small and subtle—to any X-T1 shooter, the X-T2 feels, if not exactly the same, immediately familiar and comfortable in a general sense.

As far as the IBIS is concerned, I didn't do the work, so I'm going to cop out by quoting something a Leica publicist once told me, quoting a Leica lens designer—"the best way to test a lens is to use it for a year. Everything else is just a shortcut." The IBIS seemed to work with the 24mm (with the 16–70mm, the camera deferred to the IS in the lens). But as to how well...I'd have to use it for a year to render a verdict. Let's move on quickly....

One thing I should emphasize is that there's certainly nothing wrong with the A6500's image quality. It's exemplary, with plenty of DR, excellent color, detail, and sharpness. High ISOs are very useful and even the JPEGs are highly correctable.

Amusing myself during a layover in Atlanta with the A6500

Using a good lens with it, it's almost a poster child for how far good digital has come. No bad habits anywhere that I could detect.

But despite my longing for IBIS, despite my liking for Sony cameras in general, and despite my great affection for the Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA (provided this time by LensRentals), I picked up the X-T2 almost every time I went out to shoot.

The X-T2 is a poster child too—it's the paragon of how much a good design can be improved with careful attention to detail...and a demonstration of how a lot of such relatively small changes can add up to a markedly better camera. Compared to the X-T1—which wasn't, and still isn't, a bad camera by any means—the X-T2 is distinctly better. What they've done to it is almost the opposite of using the same basic camera and changing a few bits for the sake of change—it seems like there's very little from the parts bin. It's a slightly different size and shape (which means, unfortunately, that the X-T1 handgrip and battery pack won't fit), the knobs and buttons have been rearranged and refined, and the flip-up screen now works vertically as well as horizontally, something I didn't think I'd care bout, but in actual use find that I like a lot.

Forced to pick, I'd say the Sony's file quality is a little higher than the Fuji's, but below the threshold of the differences in raw converters and not at the level that would allow you to pick one from the other when looking at pictures.

The new Fuji is much faster than the older one, in every way that I could figure out to compare. The difference is most apparent when shooting brackets, which used to be a steady beat and now is a quick zipzipzip.

I can't say the Fuji is my absolute favorite camera from a usage standpoint. And I haven't tried to shoot action with it yet (something I seldom shoot anyway, but even less now that I live in the Lake country)—that was a relative weakness of the X-T1. But it's got to be very close to the best it can be for the kind of camera it is.

Relative sizes, courtesy CameraSize.com

Most of all, the X-T2 is so good in almost every way that it's just a pleasure to use. It's quick, intuitive to set once you've got everything settled, yields excellent files, and is very configurable. But that doesn't really get to the soul of the machine. It simply seems like every  feature has been contemplated and refined and improved, and, coupled with the camera's very high build quality, it makes the X-T2 a pleasure to use. I enjoy it every time I pick it up. To give you just an indication of Fuji's attention to detail, I could swear that not only is the shutter-button feel slightly better, the shutter sound has been improved, and so has the feel of the on-off switch. At least it seems that way when comparing my X-T1 and X-T2 side-by-side. All the little things—the main knobs having "on-off" locks, the vertically-flipping screen, the slight overhang of the EC dial allowing you to turn it quickly with your thumb, the new joystick, the socket for a mechanical cable release in the shutter button, even the larger area where your right thumb rests when you grip it—almost unnoticeable in pictures, but much more comfortable to me when I grip the camera—the new design of the eyecup—all those things add up to greater pleasure when shooting. The X-T2 gets out of your way even more than its predecessor, and seems even more at your service.

As to whether you should get one if you already have an X-T1, I can only say that I wasn't going to upgrade. The lightly-used X-T2 was a gift from a kind friend—he bought several mirrorless cameras to try them out, but after a number of months found himself usually preferring his Canon DSLR. Thanks again, G.!

Conclusion
I want to emphasize again that both the Sony A6500 and the X-T1 are excellent cameras. I you have either one I can't see a reason to want to run out and pick up anything else, unless you have some very specific shooting conditions in mind and you're convinced by specs and tests that another camera will serve you better. But faced with the two cameras at hand, it didn't take me long to make up my own mind—the Fuji X-T2 is one of the most capable and satisfying all-around cameras of any kind I've ever used. Maybe Josh Hawkins, the former manager of my neighborhood camera store back in Oak Park, will chime in to confirm just how very many cameras that is! Heh.

As they might say in horse racing, win for Fuji, pulling away at the wire, with daylight between 'em**.

Mike
(Thanks to G., LensRentals, and B&H Photo for the loan of the A6500)

*And really good—I sincerely hope Panasonic doesn't orphan the body style and the nifty tilting viewfinder, although I wish they'd switch to a flip-up viewing screen for the non-video-oriented GX8 successor rather than the video-type swing-out one.

**But come Spring, the Fuji will have to do battle with an A7II.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Gordon Reynolds: I own a Sony A6000 with your preferred lense, the 24mm. I used it a lot when I first got it because, well, it was the only camera I owned at the time. It felt great in my hand, very portable, and made images I could rarely complain about. All was well and good until....

"The XT-2 came along and it has been my take-out camera since I got it. The main difference for me between the two cameras is that the Fuji is so easy to manage. Of all the settings I’m likely to fiddle with the ones I most often change are on a dial that clearly marks the setting, ISO, aperture, shutter, along with +/- exposure. I used to frequently make unintended changes on the Sony, which annoyed me no end. That rarely happens with the Fuji and it’s easy to rectify when it does.

"I don’t often find I wish I had IBIS, so that doesn’t figure into the equation for me. The EVF on the Fuji is stunning, but maybe the EVF on the Sony A6500 is now as good. I wish battery life on both cameras was better, but I've adapted—I keep extra batteries with me no matter the camera (though I pine for the days when I could use a DSLR for days without recharging the battery).

"I did prefer the image quality from the Sony, and under certain circumstances that’s still true to a small degree, but since incorporating Iridient X-Transformer into my work flow I’m very happy with what the Fuji provides. Somehow that bit of software makes, for me, a whole lot of difference."

Fujifilm GFX Review, Part III

The Fujifilm X-T2 (APS-C) and GFX 50S (medium format)

-

Reviewed by Stephen Scharf

Part I
Part II

I rented a Fujifilm GFX 50S and the GF 32-64mm ƒ/4 zoom lens for a few days over a long weekend, including at my last professional motor race of the year, the Go Pro Grand Prix of Sonoma Indy Car race. To get a feel for the camera in a real-world setting, I used the GFX at the race for atmosphere, paddock, and pit lane photos at the race. I also used it for some landscape and architectural photography.

This is the third part of this review and is comprised of final impression and conclusions.

Final impressions
As far as I am concerned, when it comes to photography, it's all about the print. Per many of the comments from TOP readers in Parts I and II, one cannot really get a sense of this capabilities of the Fuji GFX from simply viewing small, low-res images on a computer display. So I spent the last few weeks making, viewing and reflecting on (no pun intended) prints made from the GFX to serve as a context for my final impressions. [Stephen, who I know to be a skilled printmaker, is sending me some prints, and I'll write a separate post giving you my impressions of them. —MJ]

For one thing, most displays have a pretty limited bit depth (most don't even have a 10-bit native LUT) and as such, can't really display all the information present in a printed 16-bit file. For another, it's really only with larger prints that one can start to get a sense of what GFX 50S is really capable of. Given that I have an Epson 3880, the largest prints I could make were 16x20 inches, but it was at least a starting point for reference and represented an improvement over viewing the photographs on a computer screen. Just to put things in perspective, though, it's when you start to print at 24x36 or larger that you really start to see the benefits that a medium format camera brings compared to APS-C or full-frame.

The other points where medium format cameras such as the GFX have advantages are in tonal gradation, acuity, and lens performance. While the Fuji GFX 50S doesn’t have an absolute resolution higher than some FF cameras, with a pixel area of 5.3 μm the area per pixel is approximately 30% larger than, for example, a Canon 5DSR, which means that for a given exposure the Fuji is going to capture more signal relative to noise. And more signal translates to more exposure latitude and a broader tonal range as well as potentially higher color accuracy. As mentioned in Part II, the ability of medium format to capture luminance variation across a broader range means, as Ming Thein has insightfully pointed out, greater control over how the highlights roll off in medium format.

Additionally, lenses designed for larger-format sensors have to make fewer optical compromises than lenses for smaller sensors, and generally suffer from less distortion and field curvature. These lenses also provide a finer degree of control over the range of depth-of-field and greater separation or distinction between the plane of focus and the out-of-focus areas of an image.

This provides us with more editing headroom, more control over the tonal range and depth-of-field, and as such, impacts how "natural" an image looks, particularly in a print. I liken this sense of naturalness to audio reproduction, where a first-class turntable playing a well-mastered and pressed LP or a high-resolution (e.g., 24/192) D/A converter renders a sonic presentation that sounds considerably more natural and musical than most 16/44 Redbook CDs played on a consumer-grade CD player. It can be tough to put into words, but you definitely know it when you hear or see it.

All this adds up to more "information" in an image, as well as more control by the photographer of how that information is edited or displayed, particularly in the print.

I wasn't able to compare prints from a Canon 5DSR or comparable FF cameras to a Fuji GFX, but I've spent quite a bit of time making and examining prints of the photographs presented in Part II. Black-and-white conversions were made using the Fujifilm Acros film preset from the RAW image in Lightroom, and printed on Epson Premium Luster paper using the Epson 3880's Advanced Black and White mode rather an ICC paper profile. "Norris Canyon Road" was the first photograph I took with the GFX that really started to give me a sense of what was medium format was all about. When printed, the tonal range—and, importantly, the camera’s ability to hold subtle gradations of tonality from the whites to the blacks—is impressive. The clouds have a soft, natural, look; the hills, fencing and pasture reveal midtones with highlights, midtones, and detail with subtlety yet clarity, and the quarter-tones and shadow regions of the trees and barn still reveal detail, texture and pattern.

The San Jose City Hall photographs possibly represent even more of a challenge, as the luminosity ranges from specular highlights that print near paper-white to blacks that are close to the Dmax of the printer's inkset. The photographs encompass quite a broad tonal range and, in some areas, a large amount of high-frequency detail, but, in viewing prints, one can see that the camera holds detail from the very brightest non-specular whites to down into the shadows towards the deep blacks. Gradations of tonality, surface, pattern, and texture are finely resolved, and the prints have the "silvery" quality of a silver gelatin print. Areas of windows, walls and doors that upon initial viewing appear to have no detail clearly show shadow detail and texture upon close examination under good lighting. I've sent three of the black-and-white prints to Mike, and hope that he will provide his insights and comments about them for the gang. [I will. —MJ]

The default color profile for the GFX, like the Fuji X-cams, is based on Provia, a film well-known for its accuracy and neutrality. I didn't make many color prints from the Indy Car race, but those I made were very accurate with respect to color, accuracy, saturation, and contrast, with gobs of detail—very Provia-like in color (even though Provia is a slide film).

Conclusions
The Fuji GFX is well-designed, beautifully made, and easy and intuitive to use. Its light weight and excellent ergonomics made it easy to shoot handheld, and, as I mentioned in Part I, the camera just gets out of the way of the photographer and lets you concentrate on your work rather than fiddling with the camera. The camera's operation and functionality just "falls to hand," so to speak, and, for a medium format camera, I found it to be responsive and snappy in use. Any camera that can lock focus and capture a racing car at speed is responsive enough for almost any real-world application in which one would use a medium format camera. The viewfinder and LCD viewing systems are just gorgeous in use, with accurate color and very fast refresh rates. An added plus is that, like the X-Pro2/X-T2, when shooting using the black-and-white film presets, you see your image and exposure in black and white as well. Most importantly, I literally never thought about the fact that I was using an EVF or, more to the point, that I was missing an OVF, when photographing with the GFX. In my opinion, EVFs have advanced to the point where they are more practical and useful than OVFs.

At the end of the day, medium format cameras all about image quality, or the attributes commonly regarded as image quality, and the GFX delivers those attributes in spades, with exceptional resolution, dynamic range, color and white balance accuracy, tonal range and gradation, editing headroom, and the control over distortion and the planes of D-o-F that medium format lenses bring.

An added plus using the GFX is that the metering and white balance is so good, so accurate, and the dynamic range so broad, that very little editing was required. Ninety-five percent of the time, if I had to do any editing, it was simply to tweak the black and white points of the histograms—and that, folks, was pretty much it. Standard sharpening and printing at 240 DPI for these photos yielded prints with very high level of detail without pushing either the image or printer to their full capabilities.

When the GFX 50S was announced at Photokina in 2016, there were a lot of expectations for this camera. Fujifilm was sending a message to the rest of the industry that it was fully committed to mirrorless and that it was "gettin' serious." Since its advent in the market, the GFX system has seen both rapid and widespread adoption by professionals and advanced amateurs as well as support from a surprisingly large number of third-party manufacturers.

Based on the camera's design, functionality, amazing image quality, flexibility and ease of use, and its continual development into a fully-fledged system with new lenses, accessories and recently, lighting systems (e.g. Profoto), I think it's destined to become a reference standard for many photographers as well as for the industry as whole. At a price of $6,499, it's difficult to think of this camera as an excellent value for money, but, if you get what you pay for, a camera with the capabilities of this one is an off-the-charts value proposition. The GFX delivers what it promises.

For me personally, I loved using and shooting with this camera. It immediately felt right at home. It was light, snappy, and fun to use. If you can afford to buy one, or have the opportunity to rent one, do so, and enjoy—but be mindful, as this camera has absolutely ruined me compared to anything else I've shot with when it comes to image quality.

I look forward to using the GFX again, and encourage anyone interested to do so as well.

Stephen

A scientist by profession and a photographer by avocation, Stephen Scharf has been a professionally accredited motorsports photojournalist since 2003. He’s currently one of the track photographers for Sonoma Raceway, covering all their professional motorsports and racing events for photojournalism, PR, and media purposes. His photographs have been published in numerous newspapers in the SF Bay Area, including the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as various motorsports websites and magazines. His work also includes landscape, architectural, urban exploration, fine art and documentary street photography.

©2017 by Stephen Scharf, all rights reserved

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Fujifilm GFX 50S

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Sony vs. Fuji: A Slight Change in Protocol

Lake Keuka shoreline near Penn Yan. Sony A6500
and Sony/Zeiss 16–70mm zoom.

I get grumpy easily when it comes to zoom lenses. To explain why, I'll just mention that when I bought a small used Mercedes in 2010*, it was the first car I ever owned that had an automatic transmission...

...And it drove me crazy because I never knew what gear it was in.

I realize that this is a simple failure on my part to get with the program: everybody in the world knows the whole point of automatic transmissions is that you just forget about gears and let the car take care of it.

But I wanted to know, and couldn't let go.

Anyway, right out of the gate I experienced some, er, disappointments with the Sony/Zeiss 16–70mm ƒ/4 lens on the Sony A6500. The picture above, for instance, is dead sharp in the middle of the shoreline and a bit unsharp on the edges, both north and south.

Since the point (for me) of the A6500 is the in-body image stabilization (IBIS), and the 16–70mm has in-lens IS to which the camera defers with that lens attached, I've decided to bring the sailboat about and take a different tack. Rather than take the time to figure out what if anything is wrong with the zoom—a potentially long process with a high probability of triggering grumpiness—I've decided to just get a Sony/Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA Sonnar and use that on the Sony, comparing it to the Fuji X-T2 with my XF 23mm ƒ/1.4. That way I'll be using the IBIS in the Sony and also be spared the obligation of testing a zoom lens to find out how it behaves, which can be a bit like describing the color of a chameleon. (The 16–70mm is known to be an excellent lens with a rather high occurrence of bad samples. The 93 reviews at Amazon include 55 five-star reviews and 11 one- and two-star reviews, for example. That's 11.83%, which is a little on the high side.)

I just want to know how my lenses behave and why, that's all. And that's much harder to figure out with a zoom than a prime ("prime" being a colloquial term for a fixed-focal-length lens).

Anyway, the nice folks at LensRentals are zooming a 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA Sonnar to me which should arrive today, and the 16–70mm is going back to B&H Photo, which kindly loaned me the A6500. LensRentals doesn't rent bad samples, and they test their rental returns to make sure of that. (The 16–70mm was new in the box.) I'm very familiar with the Zeiss 24mm, having owned one for a couple of years a few years back.

I'm not saying there was anything wrong with the 16–70mm, by the way. I'm saying I might have gotten a bad sample and didn't want to take the time to find out. I'm trying out the cameras, not the lenses.

The nice 2014 Acura ILX 2.4 I drive now, based on a Civic and built in Indiana, has the same drivetrain as the '14 Civic Si, including the same 2.4 liter motor and the same sweet, smooth stick shift. And soon I'll be shooting primes with both of this Autumn's test cameras. All shall soon be well in Mikey-land once more.

Mike

*It cost $24k, and magically convinced everyone that I had suddenly become rich. A friend who had just bought a brand-new $48,000 SUV exclaimed, "Ooh, fancy! I could never afford a Mercedes!" It did lose $9,000 of value in a mere three years even though it was already a used car to start with, so maybe I should have been rich to buy the thing, I don't know.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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Juan Buhler: "My Leica M9's sensor cracked (!) a couple of months ago. So I used the A6000 with Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 exclusively during Peter Turnley's workshop in San Francisco last week. Peter already uploaded the workshop's photos (scroll down to see my images). BTW, this was Peter Turnley's first workshop in San Francisco, and it was excellent. I was privileged to assist Peter with the organization a little bit. It was a fantastic experience!"

Mike replies: Juan is a gifted street shooter who I've featured on TOP several times. Juan taking a workshop from Peter is a bit like Raphael taking a painting course from Michelangelo, but then again why not?

John Camp: "Maybe you should confine your lens testing to newspapers taped to the wall. That is a very nice shot and screw the softness, it's a very nice shot."

Mike replies: It is, and thank you, and I wouldn't hesitate to show it—the post was merely to explain why zooms can make me grumpy if I have to learn what they're doing and why they're doing it at every focal length and every aperture. It just takes a long time and a lot of shooting and a lot of looking to get to know a zoom well, that's all.

Sony vs. Fuji: Battle of the Diminutive Titans

No Goliath anywhere: just David vs. David.

Thanks to a loan from B&H Photo (the Sony) and the generosity of a friend (the Fuji), I have Fujifilm's top APS-C mirrorless camera, the X-T2, and Sony's top APS-C mirrorless camera, the A6500, sitting, as you can see, on the light table at TOP World Headquarters (AKA the windowsill in my family room). (Actually the Fuji is the co-top-of-the-line, with the X-Pro2). I'll be using both over the next month, and no doubt will have a few comments to post as I go along.

I'm reasonably familiar with both cameras, as I owned and used a NEX-6 for two and a half years and have been using my X-T1 for almost the past three.

What do you think of the lens choices? Fair fight?

I won't be starting to post until B&H gets back up and running after the Succos holiday closing. They supplied the Sony to me, so it's only fair that my links should go to their pages.

Looking forward to getting to know these guys!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
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Ken Tanaka: "You’re in for lots of fun this Fall. I’ve used both for quite some time. While they're both 'diminutive' they feel very different in practice. My preference? The Sony for its all-around performance and versatility, as well as its touch screen. But the Fuji is wonderful for the 'classic' photographer."

Fujifilm GFX Review Part I

Reviewed by Stephen Scharf

I recently rented a Fujifilm GFX 50S and the GF 32–64mm ƒ/4 zoom lens for a few days over a long weekend, a weekend that included my last professional motor race of the year, the Go Pro Grand Prix of Sonoma Indy Car race. To get a feel the camera in real-world settings, I thought it would be fun to use the GFX at the race for atmosphere, paddock and pit lane photos, as well as doing some landscape and architectural photography. This user review will be comprised of three parts: Part I, operation and first impressions; Part II, photographic use and image quality; and Part III, final impressions and conclusions.

Operation and first impressions
The GFX has the solid, robust feeling of a professional body, with all-magnesium construction and a grippy rubber covering. A deep front grip and extruded thumb rest ensure excellent purchase when holding the camera. The fit, finish, and overall build quality are excellent, as we’ve come to expect from Fujifilm.

As a Fuji X-T2 user, it was very easy to get up to speed with the GFX: the lens aperture rings and control knobs for setting ISO and shutter speed, the camera back with D-pad and function buttons and menu system are effectively identical to the X-T2. On the right side of the top cover there's an LCD in place of the exposure compensation knob that displays at a glance key camera settings, frames remaining, etc.

The 32–64mm ƒ/4 lens (25–51mm-e) is also very high-quality and well-made, the aperture ring having just the right amount of resistance to prevent accidental changes. The large rubber grip for the zoom ring makes holding the camera and lens very nicely balanced in-hand.

On both camera and lens, there are nicely thought-out design details. For example, the top surface of the ISO and shutter speed knobs are concave for improved ergonomics, a better feel turning the knobs and a more positive engagement of the locking buttons. The LCD articulates to the same positions as the X-T2, and also has a touch-screen to select both AF lock or position. In addition to the artificial horizon there is a set of half-rings with markings that can be displayed that show the degrees of pitch and roll of the camera.

Very cool.

There's also a framing outline that can be invoked on the LCD making it easier to see the frame borders when shooting against dark backgrounds, such as black seamless. Nice. Another big win is the self-timer can be set to remain invoked even if the camera is shut off.

The GF-series lenses have a "C" position in addition to the "A" setting on the aperture ring that allows setting of lens aperture with the command dial instead of the aperture ring if desired. There is also an interlock on the aperture ring of the lens that prevents selecting the C and A modes accidentally.

All these design details shows how well Fuji thinks things through regarding design, ergonomics, and functionality, providing photographers with the flexibility to configure the camera in a way that's best suited to their preferred style of operation.

Mounting the lens, the GFX is compact for a medium-format camera, but the most surprising thing is just how light it is. I don't know how Fuji made a camera and lens that are so well-made and robust, yet so light. Every photographer I showed the camera to remarked on its lightness.

Here’s a photo showing the GFX and 32–64mm next to my X-T2 for scale. The camera, with the 32–64mm attached, fits very easily into a Think Tank Retro 7 with room for an X-T2 and another lens or two.

Powering up, the camera starts up quickly and the electronic viewfinder is beautiful: big, bright, clear, and fast, with excellent resolution. The LCD is also very high-resolution and looks gorgeous. With the 32–64mm zoom lens mounted, I found the autofocus to be quite fast; likely faster than my X-T1, and plenty fast enough for the type of photography for which this camera was designed.

After taking a photo, there is a blackout of ~½ second, which is the time the Sony sensor takes to read out the data from the sensor. I noticed the blackout for the first five or six frames. The GFX is very much a "think about what you are doing before you take the photograph" kind of camera, and with that mentality in mind, after those first few frames, the blackout was something I never noticed when using the camera.

Pardon the cat photos, but these happen to be the very first shots I made with the GFX. I tried a to do a bit of product photography the night the camera arrived but my newly adopted little kitten, Aga, took over proceedings, so I took a few informal portraits of her.

This is a straight out-of-camera JPEG with virtually no editing.

The image below is a 100% crop (once you open it by double-clicking on it) of Aga’s cute little face. TOP's blog template unavoidably softens and blurs images somewhat, but take my word for it: the color, naturalness of tones, and detail, particularly on a 5K Retina display, are very impressive.

Overall, my first impressions are that the GFX is a very well-made and well-designed camera that is easy to pick up straightaway and start shooting with. Straight out-of-camera JPEGs show very accurate color and skin tones and impressive detail. They require little to no editing. The camera's compact size and light weight make it very easy to shoot with effectively hand-held.

More soon. In Part II I'll concentrate on using the GFX in a real-world photographic setting, and an evaluation of image quality.

Stephen

A scientist by profession and a photographer by avocation, Stephen Scharf has been a professionally accredited motorsports photojournalist since 2003. He’s currently one of the track photographers for Sonoma Raceway, covering all their professional motorsports and racing events for photojournalism, PR, and media purposes. His photographs have been published in numerous newspapers in the SF Bay Area, including the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as various motorsports websites and magazines. His work also includes landscape, architectural, urban exploration, fine art and documentary street photography.

©2017 by Stephen Scharf, all rights reserved

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