FR-reader Gerben’s wrote me an email that haunted me for several weeks and finally motivated me to do something that I hardly have time to do anymore for the reasons I’ve explained on my birthday: an image roundup.

So what did Gerben write me? Well, in short, he left Fujifilm for Nikon Z but then switched back to Fujifilm for one main reason: colors!

Dear Patrick,

I have been using the xpro3 for some time, i quite liked it except the small grip, and rear LCD (I noticed i take quite a few quick shots of my daughter via the rear LCD) and some other things. Therefore I decided to look around and try Nikon. I read color rendition was about the same and face detect was better.

So i traded in my X-Pro3 and bought a Nikon Z6 and the 50 1.8s. Almost everything i liked: comfy grip, nice buttons, highly detailed EVF and LCD, top LCD, fast AF and face AF, great high ISO and so on.

But to my horror I noticed one thing was off quite often, the colors.

This was probably due to WB, but i shoot mostly family and JPEG and the skin tones either looked greenish in low light or to saturated red in good light.

Then i picked up the original X100 and shot a few scenes. BOOM, the colors and WB were right without any tweaking. Just sooc provia jpeg. Wow. I always thought fuji jpegs were great but that Canon and Nikon have good jpegs to.

It seems Fuji is still better. I really wanted to like the Z6, but if all factors are awesome but the colors are meh then its a no go for me. So i turned back the lens and body. Now waiting for my refund. Luckily my trusty 35 1.4 wasn’t sold yet. I am probably getting the X70 and X-T1 as i like the colors an X-H1 for low light and video. Ow yeah i also have the old D700. This older sensor renders sooc jpeg colors much nicer then the Z6 and are quite similar to my X100.

So i had a quick flirt with Nikon mirrorless but am back now at the Fuji camp. Guess ill be reading your post more often.

And in order to help to make non-Fuji-shooters understand what Fuji colors mean, I looked at the images shared at our Film Simulation group and picked a few of them for all of you to enjoy.

One important note: some images ARE edited.

Editing is allowed in our group. But it’s allowed, as long as one does not start to fiddle around with the colors in post. So you can add/recover shadows/highlights, sharpen, edit out disturbing elements from your image, add some contrast and whatever you want to do. But the colors must be Fujifilm colors, hence the film simulation profile must be selected in post. No other filters applied and don’t play around with the color tools in the RAW converter of your choice.

We have this rule, because SOOC is great, but here on FujiRumors we believe that also RAW shooters profit from great Fuji colors, as it shortens their editing time.

And I know what I talk about, because when I edited the tons of images I took at the wedding I photographed, just scrolling over the film sim profiles in Capture One and in a matter of seconds see which film simulation gave me the best mood for that particular picture, was a true time saver! I just focused on editing other aspects of the images, as Fuji took care of the colors for me.

Final note: members of our group also often fine tune their film simulation and make recipes out of them. If you are curious to know more details about the specific recipe just ask them in the comments of their post about it.

• Meet Minami-San, Fujifilm’s Color Guru Since 50 Years and Now Bringing Fuji’s Color Science from Film to Digital

Images

Tony and Chelsea Norhtrup posted a video about the biggest error the various camera manufacturers do.

• they don’t offer full frame. You have to jump to medium format
• they need better autofocus
• Fujiiflm saw youtube channels comparing their APS-C cameras against FF cameras
• as a consequence, Fujifilm became too obsessed about sensor size and launched a medium format system
• but Fujifilm launched their MF system in a time when the whole camera market was going down due to the rise of smartphones
• by launching a new mount, they split all their R&D and marketing
• their mounts are not compatible
• they should have just stick with APS-C at this point and focus all their R&D for their APS-C system, giving us more X mount cameras and lenses
• Fuji wanted to become a big contender, but they ended up being a niche (a niche the Northrup’s appreciate)
• but to get work done, they pick a full frame Sony, Canon or Nikon
• he’d shoot Fuji if they’d offer an XF50-100mmF1.8, as he’d get similar results to a full frame 70-200mmF2.8
• he wants focusing speed of Sony and Canon, background blur, low light capability
• all that does not need a bigger sensor, just bigger and faster lenses
• Fujifilm misunderstood reviewers, and gave us medium format sensor instead of faster APS-C lenses
• instead of making huge lenses for medium format they should have made huge lenses for APS-C

My own two cents?

GFX – a Distraction?

Offering medium format was a brilliant long term move and I have elaborated why here.

But yeah, I can’t see the future. Nobody can. So Tony’s opinion is just as valid as mine. The future will tell.

Two System, Less Cameras and Lenses for APS-C due to limited R&D

Maybe I am not so much into other brands, but I don’t feel like Fujifilm is releasing less gear than other brands.

The real issue was more that so far not many third party brands released AF lenses for Fujifilm, but that has been solved in the meantime.

But in some way it is true. No GFX system could potentially mean more resources for X mount. But I think this is also why Fujifilm waited so long before offering a second sensor option. They did want to wait that their APS-C lineup is rich in lenses and once well covered, they can free up resources for other projects.

Lack of Fast Lenses

First off, let me say that there are many fast Fujinon XF lenses such as the XF200mmF2, XF8-16mmF2.8, XF50mmF1.0 as well as all the nice f/1.2 and f/1.4 primes.

But what about the f/1.8 zooms he’d wish for the X system? Well, that brings us to the next point.

High ISO

In the past, pushing your digital cameras to high ISO was something we absolutely wanted to avoid, as the performance was so bad. To avoid to go too high with ISO, we did indeed need fast glass for low light photography.

But that was the past. Today, ISO performance on digital cameras is vastly improved, which means you don’t need to try to desperately avoid high ISO with super fast and expensive glass. Nope, you can also push ISO up much higher than you ever could in the past.

What this means is that you can put smaller, lighter and more affordable lenses on your camera, as you can compensate the slower aperture with a higher ISO value.

Down below I will share a video of an extreme low light recovery I made of my wife overlooking the hills of Ronda in Andalusia, Spain (we made our honeymoon there). She basically went from almost invisible black to nicely visible in clean colors (thank you X-Trans for that high color fidelity) and in my eyes also very contained levels of noise, which make the image pleasing and usable.

But what about Bokeh? Let’s talk about it.

Bokeh

Not enough background blur? Well, this one is easy to answer. I’ll just share an image down below. And it’s not even the fastest lens Fujifilm has to offer (you can get even more radical with this one).

Autofocus (and Computational Photography)

True, Sony and Canon have better autofocus. But the point with autofocus is, that once it is near perfect, there is not much to improve anymore. Fujifilm just needs to catch up with Sony and Canon, and then the “autofocus war” will be basically over, since there will be little room for further enhancements.

Where there is much more room for improvement, is computational photography. And this is an area where smaller sensors simply are superior to bigger sensors. In fact, if done wisely, it could be even lead to a Renaissance of the M43 system (as the Panasonic GH6 shows with its terrific high res handheld mode). And certainly APS-C has a potential advantage here over full frame or medium format.

• Fujifilm X-H2 Coming 2022 with Huge Computational Photography Boost?
•  7 advantages of APS-C over Full frame
• Fujifilm manager: “If sensor and processor are very fast, then you can do lots of things with computational photography”

 

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Ein Beitrag geteilt von Fuji_Rumors (@fuji_rumors)