Fujifilm has announced the financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2023 (April to June).
Good news for Instax (as to expect) and for the 5th generation X series gear.
Revenue from digital cameras increased significantly, mainly due to solid sales of X-H2, X-H2S and X-T5, which were released in FY2022.
We will continue to offer attractive products by achieving overwhelmingly high image quality with the large format in the GFX series and the best balance between image quality and size in the X series
image courtesy “imaging-resource” – We use this image because the article at PetaPixel was done by Dave Etchells, who previously worked for imaging-resource – check it out here
Manager Interview
David Etchells, formerly at Imaging Resource, and always highly respected for his deep technical knowledge, has now shared his talk with Fujifilm managers at the CP+ earlier this year.
As usual, David knows how to dig deep into technical details and make the right questions.
Here on FujiRumors we will provide just a short summary in bullet points for those of you who are in a hurry and want to give it a quick glance. But for the full talk you have to check out the very interesting article at petapixel.
Deep-learning based AF tracking system
it’s an enormous task to develop it. Tens of thousands of photos of an intended subject must be manually processed by humans
Fujifilm has to constantly add new elements to the training database to improve AF tracking
X-H2S firmware 3.0 improved mainly
– AF tracking with fast moving subjects
– increased the AF frequency during continuous shooting by making the algorithm more efficient and processing faster (double the AF processing speed of previous firmware)
they talk how certain AF improvements might come to X-T5 and X-H2 at some point – which then happened on May 24
Fujifilm might be the first manufacturer, who, with their latest firmware, now tightly couples AI subject recognition with conventional phase-detect-based AF tracking. David says that this is significant because AI subject recognition and conventional AF tracking are two fundamentally different processes. Getting the two to work together in close coordination is a big breakthrough.
I have received a message via the revived anonymous contact form by FujiRumors Boris, pointing me out towards an issue with the focus peaking on the Fujifilm X-T5.
Here is the issue:
When you use manual focus and a manual lens on other Fuji cameras and have some kind of focus help like peaking activated, it will show you the highlighted areas but once you half press the shutter, the focus help goes away and you see the pure image, which is very helpful for composition.
On the X-T5 that sadly doesn’t happen anymore and focus peaking stays on screen all the time and you can’t view your actual image. In some situations that doesn’t make a big difference, but when you for example take a photo in the forest or in busy environments, the entire screen is yellow, or red etc. and you basically have no idea what you are shooting.
And you also can‘t put focus peaking on a function button to quickly turn it off. In other words, manual focusing on the XT-5 became very unpractical for no reason.
I don’t know if that’s like this for all 5th generation Fujifilm cameras (X-H2, X-H2S, X-S20 and X-T5). Please let us know in the comments.
My take?
Well, having focus peaking ON all the time, even when the shutter button is half pressed, could actually make sense for example in macro when an insect for example is slightly moving and you want to make a quick adjustment before fully pressing the button. Or when you shoot handheld macro and you want to have the possibility to make quick micro-adjustment at any time, even with the shutter button half pressed.
However, I can also understand if you want to get the focus assistance out of the way once you half press the button to have a clean view over your composition (for example in landscape photography on a tripod).
The solution is simple: Fujifilm should give us the option to pick whatever solution we prefer.
And just for curiosity, a little survey where you can tell us which solution you prefer.
And here are the June Youtube videos ranked by popularity. The 2nd and 4th video are from the Dolomites… they might be worth to watch just for the scenery ;).
The goal of the survey was to find out how popular the newest 5th generation X series cameras have become among the FujiRumors community.
The results surprised. And not because the Fujifilm X-T5 sold well. That was to expect. But because despite being launched just a few months ago, the Fujifilm X-T5 is already the most owned Fujifilm X series camera among this community.
And more impressively: this is the first time that any Fujifilm X-T camera has some serious internal competition in the higher end Fujifilm segment thanks to the Fujifilm X-H2. But despite this stiff internal competition, the X-T5 made it to the top as your most owned camera in just a few months.
Speaking of X-H2, it is 7th in the ranking, showing the huge popularity of the 40MP X-Trans V sensor.
In the battle X-H2S and X-H2, the X-H2S wins and grabs the 6th spot, but with only a few votes of advantage.
The first non-XT camera in the ranking is the Fujifilm X100V on the 5th spot, slightly ahead of the X-H2S. The next rangefinder camera is the X-Pro2 on the 9th spot
NOTE: The popularity of camera (lines) on FujiRumors is not indicative for the overall popularity on the worldwide market.
Top 10 Cameras
X-T5
X-T3
X-T4
X-T2
X100V
X-H2S
X-H2
X-T1
X-Pro2
X-H1
Popularity of Camera Lines
X-T* line = 38%
X-H line = 14%
X100 line = 11%
X-E line = 11%
X-Pro line = 9%
X-T** line = 7%
X-S line = 4% (X-S20 missing from survey)
all other X series cameras Fujifilm ever made = 6%
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