Fujifilm’s Autofocus Firmware

Fujifilm just released the new firmware for the Fujifilm X-H2, X-H2S and GFX100II. You can read all details here (it did bring also completely new features).

So how does it work?

I will share a few videos on FujiRumors.

First impressions: definitely improved. I’d say enough to end months of sh*tstorm, although we know Fujifilm is the most hated brand, so there will always be those, who’ll attack it no matter what.

Also, people who cirtizied Fujifilm (and whose critics I shared on FR), now say it’s way better and one guy even had the X-H2S listed for sale to buy Sony, but now removed his sale offer and will keep the X-H2S as he says he fell in love with the X-H2S again.

Video 1

The video below shot on GFX100II with latest firmware in low light video AF tracking.

The guy walks around in a huge room, turns around, moves freely and the film guy follows him handhelding the GFX100II. Very low light often.

• the guy filming says: “It’s not missing. It’s literally on you the whole time. It’s dark and it has not missed“

Video 2

Autofocus Bug

In the past few weeks videos showing the bad tracking AF of Fujifilm cameras surfaced all over the web. And sometimes they come with catchy and clickbaity headlines that might grab attention, but in my opinion do not accurately represent what is going on.

So let’s talk about it in FujiRumors style: boring dry and sober ;).

The reported issues are:

• when you are in continuous autofocus (not single autofocus) and you have set the camera to face/eye detection, the camera will track the closest thing it finds within the face detection frame and not the eye
• when you do AF tracking, you get a low hit rate

The headlines that followed were like “Fujifilm AF is a joke” and “this suck” and what not.

But I believe that’s a way too general statement and does not represent the truth. Here is why.

The AF Truth

I have tested it on my X-T5. And yes. The issues are there.

But from here to say “Fuji AF sucks” is just maybe not the most accurate way to describe the issue.

Because the thing is: the issues appeared after the last firmware updates!

So a better headline would be “latest firmware introduces autofocus bugs“.

And also: the issue does not affect all cameras. Probably only X-H2, X-H2S and X-T5.

I have tried to duplicate the issues my X-T5 has with the latest firmware also on my X-E3 and GFX100S, but the X-E3/GFX100S have not the issue at all, and also the Fujifilm X-S20 has not this problem.

So the true realistic headline should be:

“latest firmware updates introduce autofocus bugs to a limited number of Fujifilm cameras“.

But who’d click something with a headline like that, right? ;)

Easy to Fix

All this means just one thing: if Fujifilm is aware of it (and they should be aware of it at least now that we talk about it on FujiRumors), then there should be an easy and quick firmware fix.

An emergency solution could be to offer the previous firmware for download, get the new one right, and once fixed, offer the new firmware for download again.

Thanks for Reporting, but

Don’t get me wrong: if there is an issue, it is great that people on YouTube report about it.

But maybe, in future, try to resist the temptation of clickbait and give a more sober and complete view on the issue.

Because these videos will stay online forever. And once Fujifilm addresses the issue, those older videos that don’t clarify the AF was working much better before and that the problem is limited to the latest firmware will remain online, misleading viewers into thinking that Fuji AF is always bad and there is nothing to do about it.

Also: please do not call out other guys and say they are paid shills if in their past reviews they said the tracking works just fine. They made those statements before the latest firmware update.

Final Word of Fujifilm AF Truth

Final word: besides the bug we have now I also want to say clearly that I believe that, when at its best (hence, not with broken firmware), the Fujifilm AF is not yet on par with the best in class (Sony and Canon).

So I am not saying all is perfect. Fujifilm has to keep working hard to go that little extra step and make its AF just as good if not better than what we get on Sony and Canon cameras.

But from here to say that Fujifilm lags behind 10+ year old cameras in terms of autofocus might be great for views, but it is not true. Bugs can happen, sadly. It happened this time apparently. And I hope Fujifilm is working on a fixing it as soon as possible.

But also in this case: every day the fix is not released, is a day too much. Hurry up Fujifilm!

FujiRumors Independence

And to the guys telling me I ignore such reports because I am paid by Fujifilm: well, here I am, reporting about it.

And not only I report about it, but also tested it on my own cameras and try to give you a more complete report about on which additional cameras might be affected and which ones not.

Look guys: in all these years of blogging about Fujifilm I have received zero money from Fujifilm, zero freebies, zero discounts, zero invitations to events, zero gear rented, zero nothing.

I am 100% free to say what I want and Fujifilm has no power over this blog.

And since I pay full price for my precious gear, I want it to work perfectly. And if there is a potential flaw, I have no problems to report about it, because I want Fujifilm to fix it and my expensive gear to work at its best possible performance.

I am not a Fujifilm employee. I am just like you, a guy shooting with Fujifilm cameras. And I want my X-T5 autofocus to work better than my GFX100S and X-E3, because that is what it is supposed to do.

Videos