Just Getting Along

 
D90, 16-85VR

The D90 was a camera I just never got along with. on paper, it was exactly what I wanted from Nikon when the D300 came out, and I eventually owned one when I went back to DSLR's in 2016. I'm not sure if I was spoiled by the D300 or if it was something else, but I just never clicked with the D90 and that put me off shooting with it. Unless I was really feeling the shooting bug it stayed home, a situation that changed almost immediately when I got the D300 to replace it. These cameras never last long, but the issue may occur for a couple reasons. Either I don't get along with the camera, or I get annoyed with the post-processing workflow or both. The A7II slowly slid into this category because I never could get the colour I wanted from it in post, the X-E1 got there quickly largely due to the X-Trans post issues that were a major barrier back in 2014 and the D600 got there due to my annoyance with the body's handling and reliability.

A camera I click with will make me want to take it out and shoot with it. The D300's definitely been one, and that's one reason why I expect my current D300 will stick around until it eventually expires. Even with just the 16-85VR, it's just a delight to shoot, even if it really is too big & heavy for my uses these days. Other cameras that have been that for me were the GX7, NEX-7, the A700 and the D800.

Sometimes I end up with a camera that I just don't much like for one reason or another, but it's also not getting in my way. They don't make me want to shoot them, but they also don't make me not want to shoot them. The E-M5 and E-M1 both fell into this category for me (as have most of my m43 stuff), and the A7II mostly was as well.

The X-T1, with just shy of 500 shots in the first week of ownership, seems to be falling into the category of 'makes me want to shoot it'. It's also very much a camera that just gets out of my way, largely because it handles like the FE/FM/FA bodies that I've spent so much time shooting over the years, and where it doesn't, the changes make sense. It's fitting very well, although I won't be sure until I'm out of the New Toy zone, which I expect will be in the next couple weeks, and hopefully through the Equivocation zone as well (My 3 zones of camera ownership are defined in the post 1101 Shots In). At the rate I'm shooting I should be well into the Comfort Zone by mid-March.

Fuji Thinks Different

 
 X-T1, XC 16-50 OIS II

I've had a thing for the Fuji X system since they day it was announced. I've shot it twice in the past during my endless cycle of chasing the dragon and it always comes up when I look at mirrorless systems. That's because Fuji's approached the modern camera system with a very different take than anybody else and most of their take speaks directly to what I like and what I've been searching for.

They've done 3 things different. Two of those I very much like, one of them I'm ambivalent about (and used to be quite against). What are they?

1. Camera UI. Fuji, unlike pretty much everybody else, decided to try and combine classic manual focus camera UI with modern needs. A couple other makers have tried this, specifically Leica with their digital M's and Nikon with the Df. Leica succeeded because they basically ignored as much of the modern camera as they could (even in one case dropping the LCD and image/setting review controls). Nikon failed because they just stuck traditional dials on top of their current UI and paid very little attention to the interactions between the two UI's.

Fuji however has largely seamlessly integrated the two sides so they compliment each other rather than fighting like they do on the Df. Additionally their bodies, especially on the X-Pro and X-T series, handle like classic pre-AF cameras, specifically Rangefinders and Manual Focus SLR's. The X-T1 is basically the same size as an FA and handles much like the FA (the FA features a removable foregrip which its FE2/FM2n siblings lack, said grip is actually quite similar to the one which comes with the X-T100).

Since Fuji includes aperture rings on their XF lenses, which are the majority of their lens line, you can actually shoot an X-Tx or X-Txx body just like an FM or FE body. Or you can get all the automation you desire, or anywhere in between. I've already found myself shooting the X-T1 close to how I shoot FM's, but letting Auto-ISO assist.

2. Lens line. One of the enduring failures of most of the APS-C camera lines has been the absolutely terrible native lens lineups. All the old SLR makers in this space (and Samsung's first effort) relied too much on their already existing 35mm lens lines.

Even Pentax, who made the biggest effort here, ended up with a positively strange selection of native lenses and depended far too much on old, often obsolete, FF lenses to make up the difference (Pentax never offered a 35mm-e for example, the only choice was to find a long out of production FA*24/2, which was CA prone, large and expensive).

Fuji on launch day had a 28, 50 and 90mm macro in 35mm equivalents. That's all the basics covered on day one. Contrast to Sony who launched E mount with a 24/2.8 prime, a 27-85 kit lens and a 27-300 do-everything kit lens. Samsung launched the NX mount with a 45/2 and a set of 27-85 and 75-300 kit zooms. Samsung did make a serious effort to round out their line over its short life, but never quite got there.

m43 mount, which is the other really well rounded sub-35mm lens line, didn't have a fast normal for 2+ years (Jun 2011, with the first body in Sept 2008) and didn't get a consumer-priced one for another 3 years. For something Fuji had on day 1.

Fuji came out of the gates with a basic set of lenses ideally suited to their camera, and published a roadmap which at launch had an 21mm UWA, a 43mm f2.8 pancake, a 35mm f1.4 fast prime, a 15-36mm UWA zoom, a 27-85 fastish zoom, and a 85-300mm fastish zoom, all of which were delivered within 18 months. While late to the mirrorless game (beating only Canon to the sub-35mm Mirrorless game), they actually had a fully rounded out system quicker than anybody else, in some cases even before the systems who had beat them to market by years.

And Fuji has continued to build out that line with a consistent focus, providing a complete, consistent and well rounded selection of primes (at this time they have 21/2.8, 24/1.4, 24/2.8, 28/2, 35/1.4, 35/2, 43/2.8 pancake, 50/1.4, 50/2, 75/2, 85/1.2, 85/1.2 APD, 90/2.4 macro, 120/2.8 Macro, 135/2, and 300/2 primes plus zooms from 12mm to 600mm in consumer, prosumer and pro lines). There's still a few holes in the lineup, but they are steadily filling them out.

Given my preference for shooting with a selection of small, mid-speed primes, the 'Fujicron' line of 24/2.8, 35/2, 50/2 and 75/2 primes just fits.

3. The third thing Fuji did different was their X-Trans sensor. This was a mistake and has limited sales from day 1. Out of the box the X-Trans cameras were crippled by the lack of a functional RAW converter and it took a long time before there was a really good workflow for Fuji RAW's. X-Trans uses a different colour matrix over the sensor sites that improves the high ISO data stability (reducing chroma noise) but in turn gives up some colour resolution at base ISO. That's a decent set of tradeoffs, but the RAW converter situation gave the X bodies a reputation for workflow trouble very quickly, and one they've never shed.

I experienced this with the X-E1 and it made me very hesitant to buy back into Fuji for a long time. My experience so far with the X-T1 and CaptureOne 12, as well as the recent availability of CaptureOne Express for Fujifilm, suggest the workflow problems are gone, even for those on a budget, but the reputation remains. The X-A line, with the regular Bayer sensor, proved that Fuji could deliver their signature colour without X-Trans and really show that X-Trans was a net negative for X series sales.

I don't see X-Trans going away anytime soon though, and today the issues are entirely reputational, not technical. It was a great idea, but the lack of RAW conversion options, and most especially Adobe's complete unwillingness to fix the issues in their engine for years (7 years later they finally have a solution, which takes 30-60 seconds per image...) really limited the growth of the system. A lot of folks are significantly more closely tied to their workflow than to their cameras and Fuji did not take that into consideration. The good news is that unlike Sigma's horrifically bad Foveon sensors (which are limited by physics to producing high-resolution messes of bad colour metamarism and circa-2006 noise), Fuji was actually able to deliver competitive IQ in JPEG all the time, and once the RAW converter situation caught up, in RAW as well.

So 2 of these approaches really work for me, and the third has become a non-issue over time. Getting back to shooting Fuji ends up making a lot of sense today.

A Few More Thoughts on the X-T1

D300, 70-300G VR

The image in the last post has hit Explore on Flickr, always a nice bit of recognition.

I'm up to 150 shots on the X-T1 so far, mostly on my walks to and from work. 130 of that has been with the XC 16-50 OIS II.

I'm really digging the dial UI. It does leave the X-T1 with a bit of a split personality in terms of shooting with gloves on. As long as you are interacting with controls on a physical dial, the X-T1 is an outstanding gloves body, surprisingly so for its size. That covers Shutter release, shutter speed, Exposure compensation, ISO, metering, AF mode & drive mode, as well as Aperture with a manual or XF series lens. The control wheels and buttons are the opposite story, they're pretty buried and the buttons are basically unusable with larger gloves. Due to weather I've not really had much experience with gloves off, but the X-T1 is definitely the best camera in its size class that I've shot with for gloves on, I'd have to move up to a D300-size body to get better gloved handling. Note in comparison to the A7II, the X-T1 is definitely better as long as I'm just interacting with the core controls. Both are equally bad in terms of little fiddly buttons both suck, the A7II was a touch better though due to a bit better rear button layout.

One issue I've been having is that I keep hitting the metering switch when changing shutter speeds (I've been using Manual exposure with Auto-ISO as my AE mode, as that reduces the need to tweak auto-ISO settings). It's a touch annoying, but acceptable.

Back Button AF is a real miss here though. Fuji does have the ability to BBAF in a pre-defined mode from Manual Focus mode, but when in S or C, I cannot decouple the AF from the shutter. Normally this would be an issue for me, but given the small, somewhat hard to find AF-L & AE-L buttons (one of which becomes AF-On), it's a mixed blessing, as there's no easy to find by feel BBAF button. I understand things have evolved some on newer bodies (this is a 5 year old body and Fuji's first SLR-style body with any real action shooting capability).

Focus assist in manual focus mode is a little weird. Peaking works right up until you half-press the shutter. I need to get out of the habit of half-pressing the shutter constantly when working with manual focus. The Focus Assist button does magnification, and is well located. Only caveat is MF lenses need the camera to be set to M mode for things to work correctly, you can't just throw them on in S or C mode. The same mostly goes for XC & XF lenses. Will definitely take some getting used to.

A Handful of Musings

 
X-T1, XC 16-50 OIS II

 
Got out for a bit of real photography on my way home from work yesterday. It was refreshing to be looking at the world from the perspective of a lens again and considering how things would look as a picture. Got some good stuff, and I'm finding that CaptureOne 12 is doing a very good job of getting things right, pretty much straight from the camera.

Today's experiment was alternate workflows. I've got the Fujifilm Camera Remote app, which will connect with the X-T1 via WiFi. That functions as a remote release (why I installed the app), but it can also pull JPEG's from the camera in a couple ways (but not RAW files). It really is a lousy app, clunky, takes forever to connect to the camera, requires a mix of inputs on the camera and phone, et al. But it does let me take an arbitrary JPEG, suck it into the phone then post directly to Instagram/Facebook/anything else that can take a picture from Gallery (or Photos on iOS). I've got a couple posts on Instagram already from that, and plan on keeping using it.

On the gear front, Fuji is expected to announce a pair of lenses and a body on Thursday. I've no interest in the body right now (it's the X-T30,  the mid-range SLR-like body) however both lenses are interesting.

The first is a 16-80/4, which is quite compact at 16mm. This weather-sealed, OIS equipped zoom would be ideal as a do-everything lens in my future. It's the right size, the right range and the right aperture. Could totally see replacing the current 16-50 kit lens with this at some point in the future.

The second lens is a 16/2.8 WR prime, similar in form to the Fujicron line of f2 primes (23, 35, 50). It makes an ideal extension of that lineup on the wide end (and frankly, I'd like to own all 4 of those plus the 18/2 and 14/2.8). My preference is for mid-speed compact primes and the Fujicron's are exactly what I like. In a lot of ways Fuji could be listening to my brain (add a 70/2.4 and 135/2.8 and I'd be set).

Getting back to workflows, I'd like to work out a proper mobile workflow, between grabbing a JPEG straight off the camera and shoving it through Instagram and heavy lifting on my desktop. Ideally that would be on the iPad Pro (as I have one on long-term loan right now) and not involving any Adobe software. Will have to think about it, it's really a software question as I have the SD Card to Lightning adapter which is considered to be the best all-round way to get photos onto the iPad. I also need to start looking at what my next-generation desktop workflow will look like, my current desktop is 10 years old and starting to show it's age (it is pretty amazing that it's managed to work well for that long with only the addition of a new GPU and some disk)

101

 
Fujifilm X-T1, XC 16-50 OIS II

Took a quick photowalk around the block before my day started on Sunday, to try the X-T1 in some actual conditions. Came back with a handful of winter detail shots, of this was one of the first.

Ran them through CaptureOne 12 to quickly discover that the core struggles I'd had with the X-E1's files have clearly been solved by CaptureOne at least. There's a couple niggles in the workflow, but nothing that couldn't be solved with the combination of some ICC profiles and different default sharpening. Really, I'm pretty happy with this, although I do want to see results with actual foliage even if that has to wait a few months.

As to the blog, the last post was my 100th post here, over the slightly more than 5 years I've had this blog (Dec 5th, 2018 was the 5 year anniversary). That's really not a lot of posting, and frankly activity has been intermittent given my struggles with motivation around photography. Here's hoping that I can get a handle on regularly posting new content here in 2019, and who knows, we may even see post 200 this year.

Fujifilm X-T1 - Am I Nuts?

 
Fujifilm X-E1, XF 18/2 R


I did NOT get along with X-Trans when I had my X-E1. The X-Trans sensor and the difficulties in processing images from it were the primary reason why I sold the X-E1, which otherwise was a decent but not exceptional camera.

So why would I buy a camera with the same basic sensor 5 years later? The short answer is that while I'm still not sold on the benefits of X-Trans and still think the #1 improvement Fuji could do for its line is to switch to Bayer across the board (right now only the inexpensive X-T100 and X-A5, and the high-end GF medium format bodies are Bayer, everything in between is X-Trans). The reality however is that if you are not using Lightroom, you can get quite good results from X-Trans today as the workflow challenges are largely gone. Yeah, Lightroom/ACR still have issues with the green channel, but CaptureOne and most of the smaller options all support X-Trans pretty well.

On the flip side I was looking for something decidedly smaller than the D7100. I went into the store to return the D7100 and look at 3 different cameras, the D3500, the X-T100 and the E-M10 III. The D3500 was my fallback choice. Smallish viewfinder, cheap build, limited AF, but it would have got me a 35/1.8DX as well as the kit lens in a package I know I could work with. The X-T100 was the camera I was hoping would work, as I generally like Fuji's ergonomics, but was quite ambivalent about the new 15-45 OIS Powerzoom kit lens. I just don't really like power zoom lenses. Finally, the E-M10 III with the non-PZ kit was what I was mostly expecting to settle on, as it would let me also get the excellent little 40-150R telezoom.

A quick handling test confirmed I would be fine with the D3500. It felt cheapish, but has a remarkably good grip and every control was pretty much where I expected it to be. Only real downside is Nikon is still using that ancient 11 point AF unit that originated with the D200 well over a decade ago. Really, just in terms of parts rationalization, this should have been dumped for the 39 point unit from the now 9 year old D7000.

I took a quick pass by the Sony section. They had some cheap NEX-6's and a good deal on the A6000. But nothing that really snagged my attention, and I really did want something a little more SLR-like in terms of handling.

I then tried the X-T100. Nice body, handles much like an FE2 or FM2n. The PZ lens was gimmicky, but I could live with it. No real warts at all.

I briefly tried the E-M10 III, I'm not sure if there was a settings problem or what, but the EVF was unusable in the store due to standing flickering. It actually hurt to look through. Pretty much instantly killed any interest in that body (they did have an E-M1 and an original E-M5 at prices I could work with, but I've owned both and wasn't interested in owning either again for various handling reasons, lets leave it at both have button layout issues in my opinion)

Then I noticed a used XC 16-50 OIS sitting next to a used X-T1. I'd missed this pair in my first pass around the store. I had to try that. I compared the size to the X-T100, and while it's larger, it's not significantly so (mostly it's taller, although the 16-50 is also longer than the 15-45 in powered off condition, the PZ lens extends on power-on to be about the same size as the 16-50). I had to try it. When the X-T1 originally launched I thought is was simply the best laid out digital camera I'd seen, and while time has shown it has a couple issues, it's still very well laid out, fits the hand nicely and has an excellent EVF (a touch better than the A7II IMHO). The downside was the 16MP X-Trans sensor, which I had not gotten along with the last time I'd owned one, 5 years ago. That said, after a few minutes of playing, I made the call that the X-T1+16-50 worked better than the X-T100+15-45 combo. I was really impressed with the X-T100, it is quite good for what it is, and I could easily see myself owning one alongside a higher-end X-T body. I liked the 15-45 much less (the X-T100 is available body-only, but Fuji no longer kits the IMHO better 16-50 lens). The other aspect was the used X-T1 was less than the body-only X-T100, so I could add a spare battery (always a must for mirrorless) and come out ahead on my return credit. Still have $20 in credit which can help pay for a grip or 3rd battery or whatever.

PS, it was the Zeiss 85/1.4 that paid for all of this. Brilliant lens, but big, heavy and a focal length I've just never been entirely in love with (I've come to realize I prefer the 28/50/105 or 21/35/105 combos to the xx/85 combo). Got $25 less in credit than I paid for the lens, so effectively I rented it for about $8/year plus taxes.

The Cursed Camera

 
Nikon D7100, 16-85VR


I've owned two D7100's. Collectively they've spent less than 3 weeks in my bag. Neither time was I ever actually unsatisfied with the camera itself, there simply were other external reasons for returning it.

The first time was due to an unexpected sale allowing me to get a new Open Box D600 at an insanely low price. I returned the D7100 and got the D600, which I later sold due to the combination of problematic handling (it actually caused me cramping issues in my arm) and some problems with the camera (it was behaving oddly in the cold). I really should have kept the D7100 that time (it does not have the grip design that caused me pain on the D600).

The second time, I'd traded a lens last week for the D7100, and after a week realized that what I really needed was a smaller light carry camera, not the larger sized D7100. So back it went today and I came home with the much smaller X-T1 and my third XC 16-50 OIS (I'd previously owned the lens with both X-A1's I'd had).

As to the D7100, it really is an excellent camera as long as you do not need a particularly deep buffer, and don't try and rescue shadows 5-6 stops down. It's responsive, the UI is excellent and the IQ excellent even by current standards. I definitely recommend it for somebody looking for a lower-cost but high performing DX/APS-C crop body.

Oh, and after taking a 6 month break, I'm back shooting. Yes, I did sell my A7II during that period, while it performed decently, I never quite gelled with it.