Fuji X-E1 for pano landscapes, first week; thoughts

[ejnewman]

Previous System:
Canon 1Ds Mark II
EF 24-105mm L
EF 70-200mm L (Mark I)

New System:
Fuji X-E1
XF 14mm
XF 35mm
XF 55-200mm

Genre: Landscapes
Shooting style: Tripod using pano rotating head, HDR bracketing using cable release, mirror lockup with 2 sec timer, AF then switched to MF for focus lock
Usual Settings: ISO 100, F8-16, 3 brackets -3, 0, +3 stops

I have owned the Fuji for a week now, here are my thoughts so far...

Focus:
You don't have the ability to auto focus then switch to manual focus as by switching back to manual focus you will not be on the same focus distance that you found with the auto focus, it defaults to the previous manual focus distance that it was last set too. So it's either manual focus or auto focus, not a combination of the two, so for me it's manual focus all the way as I can't shoot auto focus when I rotate the pano head. You don't get an on-screen focus scale in manual mode with the XF14mm.

Manual focus is very easy though thanks to the zoom preview, yet to play with this properly, but confident this will be fine in the field.

Bracketing:
The Fuji is limited to only 3 brackets -1, 0, +1 stops max. This is no where near enough, but I knew this before purchasing... hoping this will be corrected with a firmware update.
Disappointed at the speed of the bracketing... you seem to have to wait for the camera to do some sort of display animation before you can shoot more frames. This is a shame since continuos shooting or even stills mode with manual focus allows you shoot faster. I think this is poor on Fuji's part. The good news is that I don't have to lock up the mirror anymore, so I can get away with having to wait 2 seconds for the mirror lockup like I do on the Canon. Shooting pano HDR landscapes, bracketing speed is paramount. I have also noticed that you cannot set the lens to be set at the same aperture that you shoot at, this means the lens is always having to close down before taking a shot, again this seems to slow down the capture speed. Maybe there is a setting I have not found that can do this? For my style of shooting, I don't really need Live View all the time, being able to turn this off and thus have the lens in a constant state of being ready to shoot would be my preference if it increases speed.

IQ:
Compared a shot with the Canon vs Fuji, ISO 200, F16, 1/125th both cameras shot with equiv 50mm. Converted using DNG Converter 8.1 to linear DNG. I was expecting to see a sharper image from the Fuji, but the Canon did pretty well. The corners are where the 24-105mm lens let down the sharpness of the Canon image, although I did not run any distortion correction and I know the Canon lens has a lot more than the Fuji...

Where the Fuji really beats the Canon is noise - boosting the shadows right up the Fuji doesn't reveal any noise worth worrying about, but the Canon really shows it's age here - very noisy in the shadows... Dynamic range seems slightly better on the Fuji.

I am not overly keen in the demosaic of the Fuji raw file, maybe Adobe need to continue revising the X-trans process but there are areas of detail that look a bit smooth and pixelated... hard to explain in words. You only really see this at 400% though.

Operation:
The aperture ring is a little too easy to accidentally move, harder clicks would have been better, but I like having the aperture on the lens. Exposure compensation dial only works in auto shutter speed mode, which is frustrating and not something I can use for pano shoots. I have not found a way to turn off the auto image review after shooting, again this extra step is perhaps slowing down the shoot speed as the camera is busy working to present a file to display. Maybe I can turn that off but not yet found that option.

Live View/EVF:
On a tripod I don't really think I will miss the OVF of the Canon. For my usage the EVF and live view is fine. Actually having live view at last is nice!

Weight/Size:
Amazingly small and light. This is the biggest factor for me to switch systems. It's tiny compared to the Canon DSLR, it's also much much lighter; I am looking forward to taking it abroad instead of lugging the heavy DSLR.

All in all it's still early days. A few niggling issues but the weight and size savings I make with the Fuji are enough for me to sell my Canon. I was hoping for a more dramatic increase in detail giving no AA filter, but that isn't a deal breaker for me. For the price it's a really nice system, hopefully Fuji will fix some of my issues with firmware updates.

Elliot Newman.

www.elliotnewman.com

[W.T. Jones]

Elliot,

In the set up menu the Blue framed ones (there is three of them), there is a section you can turn off image preview. To gain access to them, push the menu button & then the left arrow. You then scroll down the side of the menu choices to the three blue set up choices & it is in there. In the back of the manual there is a section about what each menu item does. Not the easiest manual to quickly find anything as there is no index. (or at least I do not remember seeing one. I know the Xpro-1 manual is missing an index.  Image preview on a X series is a pain in the ass and uses battery power. I have turned it off on my Ex1 & Xpro-1 cameras. If I need to have a look the image review button is always handy.

[ejnewman]

Ah, great... yes the manual isn't the easiest, no index.

So now the camera shoots slightly faster as it doesn't have to display the image immediately after shooting, which is great. I still get "storing images" message when I shoot brackets - not sure why it has to display that? Also it seems to take a while before allowing me to shoot more brackets, where in stills mode I can shoot faster, constantly... so not sure why bracketing slows things down.

[W.T. Jones]

Not sure why that is. I just shot a bracket for the first time here in my office & I got a brief storage message, perhaps a second. I have not really had any reason yet to bracket nor shoot bursts, so I guess I am no help there. But I for one would be interested in your findings and learn how things work out for you after some field time.

I kept my 5DII & most of my prime lenses for shooting such things as landscapes & things that require a tele lens or the image quality that the 5DII brings to the table. But I did get rid of a 7D that I have hated since it was new & a little used 70-200 f2.8L that I did not like much either to buy the Xpro-1 with a 14 & 35mm lens.

But the little Fuji's are so light & compact. I can carry two body's & a couple lenses in a small shoulder bag to shoot an event & not get bogged down by the bulk or weight. And the image quality is really better than good enough for most things I do & sizes that I print. You also blend in better at an event without a big 70-200 or 24-105 sticking out there. People will ask you if you are shooting a film camera...I like that!

I did have to adjust the way I approach things like focus & using flash, but in reality it was not that big of a deal. But I think I will hang on to my Canon system for the foreseeable future as I still use it enough to justify it's existence. There are just some things a DSLR will do way better than a compact. Despite their limitations & odd little quirks, there is a lot to like about these Fuji's

[feethea]

Elliott,

In automatic mode the Fuji is, as you state, limited to only three bracketed shots. However there is a simple way to extend this in conjunction with the exposure compensation dial - provided you have a firm tripod and a soft manual touch.

For a series of seven shots, say, with exposures of -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, and +3 EV, complete the following steps:
1. Press the DRIVE button and select AE BKT with the option +/-1.
2. Take the first three exposures of your subject.
3. Now set the exposure compensation dial to +2 EV.
4. Take the next three exposures of your subject.
5. Now set the exposure compensation dial to -2 EV.
6. Take the last three exposures of your subject.
You now have nine exposures stored away at seven different levels of exposure. The images that were corrected by -1 EV and +1 EV were snapped twice, so you can select whichever version turned out better.

The above method is taken from the excellent book by Rico Pfirstinger, 'Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro 1' at page 106, and albeit is aimed at that camera is equally applicable to the XE-1 (or you could wait until November when his book combining both cameras is published.

Hope this assists a little.

Barry

[Alan Smallbone]

Elliot,

The write speed of your SD card makes a big difference, I use only the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards with a 95mb/s write rate, it helps to reduce the storage time after bracketing. I find that for a lot of shots the 3 shot bracket it enough, I seem to get a larger dynamic range with the Fuji raws. I would love it if Fuji would increase the number of images in a bracket.

The 14mm does not show the manual focus distance because it is on the barrel of the lens when it is manual focus mode. There are quirks with the camera but I like it and use it more than my Canon dslrs. I also find that the output of Capture One is a bit sharper than the Adobe software.

Alan

[W.T. Jones]

Barry,

It has been so long since I did an bracketed exposure I forgot about that trick. That is exactly how I did it with the 5DII. Thanks for the reminder. You just have to have the camera set AV or TV so the exposure comp dial works.

[ejnewman]

Barry - yes I am aware of that functionality, I will be certain to try it. The issue though is that I wanted to save time since I am capturing pano brackets, so sometimes 20x3 frames for a single pano, sometimes even more. With the Canon I had to set it to mirror lockup, with a 2 second timer - the whole point in the mirrorless was to save time and not have to shoot mirror lock-up!

Also the problem with using the exposure compensation dial with panoramics is that you cannot work with the camera in manual mode, which again is no good for pano HDR work - you need to be able to lock the exposure for all angles of the pano.

I will probably stick with -1,0,+1 brackets for now, and just hope fuji one day update the firmware, or magic lantern release a hack!