The Practical Impractical - Or Using The Fujifilm X-70

I looked at the Fujifilm X-70 some time ago from a seller's point of view - the sleek appearance, the specifications, etc. Trying to push your urge-to-purchase buttons, but without charging up a battery and seeing if it would actually do the job. Today I took that extra step.

My experience with the Fujifilm system grows as I add new lenses and bodies to the X system...but one thing has remained much the same for a long time. I have an original X-100 camera that is the daily shooter throughout the town and has gone on holiday with me many times. It is the camera du jour for many of my trips to car shows, together with he EF-42 flash from Fujifilm.  The basic reason is that it has a leaf shutter that allows me to use high shutter speeds in sync with the flash in sunny conditions.

The X-70 also has this sort of shutter. It can sync perfectly well all the way up to over 1/1000 of a second with no complicated behaviour on the part of the flash. You can balance ambient lighting with fill flash easily. The only awkward part of it might be the physical size and balance of the EF-42 and X-70 combination

The other two advantages of this camera over others in the X-series lie with the 18.5mm focal length of the lens and the fact that it is a fixed optic. 18.5mm on an APS-C sensor approximates the view of a 28mm lens on a full frame camera. Not too wide as to distort groups unmercifully, and wide enough to get a medium car in frame from a close distance. Remember my propensity to take car shots...

The fact that the lens is fixed on means there are no intervals when the body of the camera is open to ingest dust particles. I do not have to present it to the techs for a swabbing-out every three months.

Note that there is an wider-angle supplementary lens for this camera that widens it to an equivalent of 21mm in full-frame terms. A little wide for me and certainly prone to perceived distortion.

Okay. We know it looks cool and sits cleverly in the palm of the hand, but does it take car pictures? Does it take details? Can it take model car pictures? Can it trigger a studio flash system? Is the lack of a fixed viewfinder a hindrance?

a. Yes. The sensor is 16.2 mega pixels - better than the X-100 and that is plenty good enough. The new processor and new film simulations are all working well. 18.5 mm is wide enough for a crowded car show or a suburban carport.

b. Yes, it takes details. I pushed it into the model plate on the Suzuki and it kept focusing far closer than I imagined. No special programming was necessary to go in there - it just worked.

c. Yes, it is good in the studio. The trick is to set the tiny little on board flash to commander mode and dial the ISO down to 200. Then with the aperture on f:16 and the shutter speed on 1/250, that little flash contributes hardly at all to the scene in front of it, but cheerfully sets off the slave sensors in the studio lights - they do the exposure. You might want to select a manual focus point or just let the machine run the auto focus on a nearby object.

The detail is actually better at a close range than that of the X-100 lens.

d. Is an eye-level viewfinder necessary? I would have said yes before the advent of the tilting LCD screen. Now, whenever I use a camera with one of these, I tilt it out flat and peer down into it as if it were the waist-level finder of a medium-format film SLR. Works for me.

Note that this LCD screen is also touch-sensitive. You can fire the camera by poking it. As yet I can think of no reason to do this, but there are always new situations. I'll suspend judgement on it.

As I have more cameras than arms at present, I will continue using the other cameras, but the ease of operation of this one leads me to hope that the next iteration of the X-100 series will also have a tilting screen. That would be perfect!

A Small Slice Of Reality

Well here are the next with the series of Fujifilm X-series pictures taken of the Tomahawk Cafe. The motorcycles left outside the cafe provide closer detail and the salmon and coral Chevy Nomad that belongs to Miss Marsh the schoolteacher is the final test. All JPEGS, all unsharpened - straight off the cards:

And the Nomad. Chevrolet's answer to a question that hardly anyone ever asked...

I promised you some conclusions in this posting, and they are these - if you are buying a mirrorless camera for photography of studio subjects and the final image needs to be no larger than A4, consider well whether a 50 or 60º angle of view will do most of your shots. If it will, buy the latest variant of the Fujifilm X-100. 

Currently it is the X-100T. In the future there may be a different letter at the end, but it will be a similar fixed-lens camera. It will do the job you need to do flawlessly...at that focal length. People who whoop and dance about more finely divided sensors or higher steam pressure in the flux capacitor can go hang - the Fujifilm X-100 series can really do the job. The new ones run at 16 megapixels if that is something that feels good to you.

If you need to change the angle of view with a series of fixed primes or a zoom, hold onto your hats. The camera to go for is the Fujifilm X-E2s. Same basic flavour as the X-E2 with a few sprinkles on top...and capable of doing all you need in the studio. 

Or you could get hold of an X-T1 or X-Pro1 or 2 and go to town. They do the job very well indeed.

And in the third weblog column of the series I'll tell you why you should buy the new X-T2...

See the Fujifilm range on the Camera Electronic website here

Fujifilm Week Day Four - The Model T

Well, you have to forgive me some whimsy - I have finally reached one of the core cameras of the Fujifilm line and I am going to make the most of it.

Actually, I have been making the most of it for some time - I own the first model of the X -100 series  cameras and have had several years to get used to it and make it do as I wanted. Since that first design there have been two later models released, and I am going compare the new one - the X-100T -  to the X-100.

If it is just a matter of hefting them, I doubt I could tell them apart. There is a little different knurling on the focus ring and speed knob, and they've shuffled the buttons about, but the operation and feel is identical.

You'll note that I have tricked out my X-100 with a cradle grip to match it to a tripod and a flash holder and have opted for a comfortable cloth neck strap, but that's just for my own convenience - the same could be transferred to the new X-100T easily. The Fujifilm LH-100 lens hood is a good idea and I would recommend that everyone buy one for the 100 series. That cradle grip is good protection but heavy - when I travel with the camera I sometimes leave it at home.

Okay - Fujifilm kept the same lens  - 23mm f:2  - on both cameras and sealed the thing tight so that you don't interchange lenses. The X-100 uses a 12 megapixel sensor - the X-100T has 16 megapixels to play with. The new one peaks up higher in ISO settings. It includes a new JPEG film simulation mode - " Classic Chrome". And it has a little secondary screen inside the viewfinder that lets you see what you have in focus if you are doing it manually. That's a bigger and more detailed LCD screen back there.

All good things. I cannot say how helpful other new items inside there are; the intervalometer, the WiFi, and the optional electronic shutter that goes up to 1/32000 sec. I shoot at about 5 minute intervals, I rarely Fi a Wi anywhere in the house, and anything faster than 1/125 of a second makes my hat blow off...but there are those who will find these new capabilities invaluable.

What I can comment on is the sterling performance of that lens on that sensor. I always knew it was detailed and sharp out to the edges because I could see it on the files, but an experiment proved how closely Fujifilm have matched the thing.

My recent computer failure, replacement, and selection of new programs finally brought me to Lightroom 6. While I am still learning, I was guided by a client of the store in how to apply distortion correction to images based upon their pre-recorded profiles. The Adobe people have obviously measured the X-100 and the Fujinon lens and included the data in there program. Well, I opened raw files from a weekend shoot ( Hot Rods, yeah...) and passed them through the correction funnel. While the program did make sure there was no light fall off at the edges, it had very, very little to do with the centre of the images. This same experiment applied to other images taken with other cameras and other lenses showed some massive pixel-shifting needed.

So, with the X-100T, what you see is what you get. It does have the convenient little Q menu at the back so you can specify 16 different criteria that are important to you. You can shift the function of the buttons to your pleasure, rather than learning new ergonomic patterns. You can make videos. The battery life vs shots taken has been increased, while using the same NP-95 battery as the two previous models. You can still clap the same wide-angle or tele supplementary lenses on the front.

And you can still take it on holiday in a retro ever-ready case as your one and only piece of photo  gear and be confident of bringing professional images back.

PS: If you ever fancy going Henri Cartier-Bressoning, this is the camera to do it with.

The People Behind The Cameras

I have just seen a feed from the Fuji Rumors site (Why is it not Fujifilm Rumours...?) that tells of the retirement of Mr. Hiroshi Kawahara - the Fujifilm manager who first conceived the X-100 camera and who has done so much for the design of the X-series. You can google over there and read it yourself - it is quite interesting.

Apart from the fact that I like and use the products of this company, the article was interesting for the fact that it points out how little we know in the consumer world about the designers and technicians who make the products we use. I am sorry to say that up until now I had no idea who would have been the architect of the cameras and lenses - indeed still know little of the rest of the team...and it is the same for each of the manufacturers.

The occasional trade factory trip to Japan or Germany is wonderful, but you can only meet a few people. Just as well - they need to be busy about their designing and manufacturing and have little time for rubbernecking tourists. Yet the tourists want to ask questions and give ideas.

The problem is not so much that the important people are hidden, but that they are anonymous. We have no George Eastman or Victor Hasselblad to communicate with. And it is hard for the people who do not speak or write the Japanese language to interchange meaningfully with those who do.

So? So perhaps the advertising and liaison people in each big manufacturer should encourage websites and interest groups like Fuji Rumors as much as possible, but also find an official factory figure to take over the role of communication as well. We're well served here in Western Australia from Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, and Olympus who send regular visitors but perhaps a factory connection that is direct would also be a good idea.