According to a chart published somewhere, you get 0.05% sharper images using lens x vs lens y
No, wait… that’s not that kind of post… today we fly high… and we fly far… we are going to meet the wonderful diversity on this world.
And who could introduce us better to post like this, than big tech vloggers Michel de Montaigne, my most loved author ever, who once said:
Travel is in my opinion a very profitable exercise; the soul is there continually employed in observing new and unknown things, and I do not know a better school wherein to model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a perpetual variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein, neither idle nor overwrought; and that moderate agitation puts it in breath.
In the spirit of Montaigne’s quote above, I share a Fujifilm X travel images roundup that hopefully inspires you to go out, meet, embrace the wonderful diversity there is on this planet.
You want more of Montaigne? Then what about this one:
It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And even on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own ass.
But since it’s a really fat book (that I have read all), maybe you better start with the wonderful Michel de Montaigne biography by Sarah Backwell, “How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer“.
You might fall in love with Michel’s work, just as Friedrich Nietzsche did, since he said:
That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this Earth.
And now, travel images… of course all taken with Fujifilm cameras.
I would like to send a big hug to those, who have come that far in reading the text. If there is a group of “rumor-readers” that can appreciate such articles, then it’s definitely Fujifilm X/GFX shooters. Thanks for the time you dedicated to this blog post.
It’s done, I made it. An unreal school year is over.
It was A LOT of work for me, to teach online, but I took it also as an opportunity to explore new creative ways of teaching.
And surely it came to my help, that I can use Final Cut Pro X, I have several tripods and cameras etc, as this allowed me to have the tools and skills to translate into video my creative ideas.
But in a part of Italy, where a German minority lives (video of my province). This is why I speak both languages, Italian and German, fluently.
Also, I am a primary school teacher, so I teach German to kids that belong to the Italian language group. Hence German is their second language.
And since my “customers” are kids, I’ve tried to always throw something fun into my lessons, just to put some lightness into a situation that was very hard for them.
For example, in one video, I triplicated myself and made up a fun conversation between three Patrick’s during Grammar lesson, as you can see from the screenshot here.
That’s something I could have never done in the classroom, and only the online teaching allowed me to do.
I started by filming everything with my X-E3, but once I got the X-T4, I switched to it as my main camera, and it has surely served me better than my X-E3, because:
the selfie screen was useful and practical
ETERNA was glorious
longer recording times
better video quality
more creative tools (like super-slow motion)
IBIS for when my wife had to film me handheld for stable footage
solid battery life
So, my first impact with the X-T4 was pure love! Everything I needed, it did it better than my X-E3.
But life is not only video…
X-T4 for my Passion
Last weekend I drove down to Tuscany with my wife (it’s a 4 hours drive only from my home), as a little reward for a frankly extremely busy time.
On that trip, I used the Fujifilm X-T4 only for photography.
Here is what I liked, and what not.
Loves
overall performance… it’s a beast
shutter sound is so buttery smooth
battery life: it just kept running, and running, and running… awesome!
I have my ISO dial back
oh… a D-Pad, how nice is that
Hates
no more one handed operation (on my X-E3 every button and dial is on the right side of the camera and can easily be operated with the right hand only)
bigger and heavier (although with some lenses this is actually better)
for reviewing images on LCD, I always have to flip screen out. On the other hand this helps to review images less, like with the hidden X-Pro3 LCD
And the Selfie Screen?
Well, the selfie screen deserves a special chapter.
I found some unexpected love for it, as well as one hate.
Loves
keep it tilt inwards protects the screen
keep it tilt inwards makes the camera look so wonderful vintage
keep it tilt inwards and you’ll review images way less, like on X-Pro3
keep it tilt inwards and you won’t accidentally activate the touch screen, which happens to me now and then on the X-E3 (I keep the touch LCD always deactivated on my X-E3, but it activates if I accidentally touch the upper right part of the screen)
for my video lessons, I just loved it
unlike the X-T100 screen, the X-T4 can tilt also in portrait mode
Hates
I use the Peak Design Leash camera strap, and when I tilted out the screen, sometimes the strap covered the screen, so I had to move the strap behind the screen. Hence, not only it takes a bit more time to tilt out the screen (as opposed to only flip it out on X-T3), but then also fiddle around with the strap. This was probably the most annoying aspect of the selfie screen. So much so, that I think I am considering to get Peak Design Cuff camera wrist strap and solve the “problem”
Conclusion?
Well, if it wasn’t for the selfie videos I had to do, I’d still consider the X-T3 and X-H1 screen design superior for my needs. But on the other hand the selfie screen has some advantages, that you can’t get with X-T3 screen, especially if you use mostly the EVF and want to keep the LCD tilted inwards.
Hence, I am happy with the X-T4 screen.
Images Anyone?
So, how was my Tuscany mini-trip?
Awesome!
And although we had only one day of good weather, and the other two were rainy and misty, I had lots of fun to be simply out and photograph again.
I shared one image on my Instagram page already, where I tested Classic Negative.
Classic Negative is great. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but when it works, it’s just awesome. In street photography it will surely shine, but also in landscape photography, as you can see below, it can give lovely results.
Now I have to get some paperwork done for the end of the school, and after that, I might share more images of my trip on Instagram… and bring you with me on my summer holidays, where so far I have planed nothing actually, except to climb my beloved Dolomites.
take care and have fun with your photography,
Patrick
Iridient X-Transformer 1.6.6 and Iridient Developer 3.3.13 updates have been released a few days ago.
X-Transformer 1.6.6, for Windows and macOS, includes a bug fix for some Fujifilm cameras that may show a black border pixel or two along the left edge with some lenses, particularly adapted ones. This version also includes an update to the latest Adobe DNG SDK libraries (v1.5.1). The X-Transformer 1.6.6 update can be downloaded here.
Iridient Developer 3.3.13, macOS only, includes additional workarounds for issues introduced by recent macOS Catalina (10.15.4+) updates along with new RAW camera support (non-Fuji), other bug fixes and improvements. The Iridient Developer 3.3.13 update can be downloaded here.
There was some confusion also today, because Tokina just launched the Tokina 11-20mm f/2.8 ATX-I, but the site, reporting about it, says that the ATX-I is for Canon and Nikon only, and the ATX-M (the three above) are for Fujifilm.
So, no Tokina 11-20 for Fujifilm for now.
Now, let’s talk about the ATX-M lenses.
As many of you noticed, they looked like rebranded Viltrox lenses. The optical constructions seems identical, but the body seems build slightly different.
Upon comparing the optical design, Ben saw that the two lenses share a nearly identical composition.
The MTF results looks pretty similar too. Tokina says that they’ve used a “proprietary coating” on the 85mm ATX-M, which could account for the moderate resolution difference, along with normal deviation between each individual lens tested.
pretty noticeable physical similarities as well
Feature wise, there are also quite a few similarities between the two lenses. In fact, the only non-identical spec I found was Tokina’s 0.125x magnification versus the 0.12x magnification listed for the Viltrox. […] It may be that they are indeed identical and that one company simply rounded down from x0.125 and the other rounded up.
both Tokina and the Viltrox 85mm lenses currently display as the Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8 in CaptureOne Pro
Ben reached out to Tokina Japan for an official response
Tokina answered “Tokina lenses does not have a relationship with Viltrox
Tokina and Viltrox apparently have no business relationship whatsoever.
Ben’s best guess would be that Tokina and Viltrox are both working with a well established 3rd party Chinese lens manufacturer that creates prototypes and allows other companies to customize and sell their lenses under their own brand names.
This makes oodles of sense if you think about how fantastically well Viltrox did with releasing their first ever lenses for Sony and Fujifilm last year.
Now another options is about to join, with the FUNLEADER 18mm f/8 Cap Lens for Fujifilm X, which was launched as a kickstarter project for other mounts last year here by the company Artboard in Honk Kong, and they promised an X mount version for January.
Tokina will launch the Tokina 11-20mm f/2.8 ATX-I CF, but according to the German website fotomagazin, this atx-i lens is for Canon and Nikon, and Fujifilm will get the already teased atx-m lenses you can see below. Not a single mention, that also the Tokina 11-20 will come to Fujifilm.
Tokina atx-m 23mm f/1.4
Tokina atx-m 33mm f/1.4
Tokina atx-m 56mm f/1.4
The atx-i series is one of the new series from Tokina such as Opera, atx-m (soon also with Fujifilm X bayonet ) and Firin . The “i” stands for “interactive”. So far, however these include models that it already existed in this light intensities / focal length combination as something kürzerbrennweitige atx-i 2.8 / 11-16 mm CF . The atx-i 2.8 / 11-20 mm CF seems to be similar: Most of the technical data are identical to the predecessor from 2015, be it the lenses in their optical structure and their nature or near limit, filter diameter and aperture blades.
Yesterday Fujifilm updated several Fujinon lenses that have OIS (optical image stabilization).
The only information Fujifilm gave us was “fix of minor bugs“.
According to information we have received, though, it might be a rather important firmware update for those of us, who own either a Fujifilm X-T4 or a Fujifilm X-H1, hence Fuji cameras featuring IBIS (in body image stabilization).
In fact, the new firmware improves stabilization performance of these seven OIS lenses when used with the IBIS on X-T4 and X-H1.
