This (Rare) Fujifilm Bug Drives Me Nuts… and Nobody Talks About it!
This is a rant.
And I can rant on this blog, because FujiRumors is a 100% free and independent space, so I can write whatever I want.
And today I need to let this out.
Because it’s frustrating me.
So, what’s the issue?
Well, I just was in Venice for a day trip with my family.
My weapon of choice: the Fujifilm GFX100S.
So we arrive in Venice, I take out my GFX and start shooting.
And all is nice and good, except for one thing that totally drives me nuts.
Sometimes… or should I say rarely… when I review the image and press the command dial to check its sharpness, the camera, instead of zooming into the detected autofocus point (usually the face/eye), zooms into a completely irrelevant and out-of-focus part of the image. As a result, I have to scroll through the image to reach the eye and finally verify the focus.
That’s weird, because the camera…
- perfectly found the face
- perfectly found the eye
- perfectly placed the AF box on the eye
- perfectly nailed the focus on the eye
… but then…. - randomly throws me to some casual part of the image when reviewing the focus accuracy of the image
This should not happen, because when clicking the command dial, the camera should always automatically zoom into the detected autofocus point.
Look, it happens very rarely. Out of the many images I took in Venice, only 2 images had this problem (the images were sharp, but the wrong AF point is magnified when reviewing the image).
But 2 images out of many is still 2 images too much.
This simply should not happen. Especially in Venice, when I just want to quickly check that the image is sharp before people jump into my frame again, having to scroll for a couple of seconds to verify the camera nailed the focus is very annoying.
I’ll share an example in the video below. You can see that face detection did its job. My wife’s eyes are 100 megapixel sharp. So the camera knew what it had to focus on and placed the AF box perfectly on her eye. And yet, when reviewing the image, it zooms into a 100% out of focus area of the image and I have to scroll back on her eye.
Unless this is some sort of user error I am not aware of (if so, please let me know in the comments), I’d define this is a bug. A very rare one. But a stupid one. And Fujifilm has to fix it.
And it should be the easiest fix in the world, since the camera focuses correctly and all it has to do is to zoom into the focus point, not some random part of the frame.
So I hope Fujifilm, who very likely reads this now, will give us a quick fix for that.
End of my rant.
And btw… Venice was wonderful. And the GFX did a fantastic job there, especially considering the difficult light conditions (we stayed there over the hottest and brightest hours, between 10AM and 4PM. But those GFX files are just the most versatile on the known universe… or shall I say in the known universe without having to pay 30K for a Phase One or so. It just handled the though conditions without problems.
UPDATE: I think I noticed a pattern now. I explain below.
CASE 1 – All Good
I use face detection. Camera detects face. I half press shutter. Recompose. Face detection stays locked on the eye. I can recompose how wildly I want. Once I press the shutter and then review the image, the camera brings me to the eye of the subject, even if I recomposed.
CASE 2 – The Problem
I do the same thing as above. So I use face/eye detection, half press the shutter and then recompose the image. The only difference, when I recompose, the camera loses the face/eye just for a fraction of a second but then very quickly catches the face/eye again. Once the green box is again on the eye, I fully press the shutter. When reviewing, the camera will bring me not to the last known AF point (the green box on the eye), but on the point where the AF box was when it shortly lost the face/eye of the subject.
To me this confirms it is a bug. It should always bring you to the last known AF point.