Am I crazy?!

[JonathanRimmel]

I've been starting to contemplate getting a mirror-less for travel. (Primarily for a planned trip to Ireland 2016)

At first I was very exited by the Fuji Xt1. But every sample image I see looks far too soft. The inaccurate ISO ratings and the inability to completely turn off noise reduction for RAW has me looking in Olympus's direction. (Sony needs to figure out their lenses to be considered - otherwise the A6000 looks nice)

Am I crazy? Or are the images really that soft?

[W.T. Jones]

I do not find my Fuji images soft, I have a couple of different X series cameras including the XT-1. However soft is subjective, what is good to me might not meet your standards.  a lot (not all) of what I see posted, especially on the Fred Miranda alt forums look pretty darn good to me from the sharpness standpoint. I have made some nice 16x20 size prints of birds, usually cropped quite a bit. They retain good feather detail & sharp eyes. (disclaimer, I have made my share of poor photos as well, OOF for one reason or the other, usually due to poor technique on my part)

[Paul2660]

I have used the X-E1, 2 and now the X-T1.  To me the files are not soft, however it you don't have a good raw conversion process, then you might be fooled as many of the raw converters still seem to have issues getting the best from the files.

On the issue of noise reduction, on a raw file I don't believe that you have noise reduction in effect, as it's a raw file.  Yes, 0 is standard but I believe that applies to jpgs.  I may be wrong on that, but it would be the first raw file I have seen that is have any noise reduction applied in camera. 

Raw converters:  From what I have found.

Iridient and Photo Ninja seem to have the best all round detail/raw conversion.  However both have very limited tool sets, Iridient almost nothing.  But these two converters do a great job on pulling the max. from the files. 

LR with version 5.4 is better, but still have a bit of trouble with a lot of green and finer details on rocks i.e. patterns, lichens etc.  I have found in LR to use minimum sharpening in LR and then move to Focus Magic as it does a great job  on the files. 

Capture One at 7.2.1 did get much better, however it's still a bit troublesome in certain images.  Again, I will tend to use nominal sharpening in Capture One, but use the excellent tool set to work on other issues.  Then move to Focus Magic for the final sharpening, or Topaz's deconvolution tool.  Both do great on these files. 

Net, to me the Fuji files can do a great job, and hold a tremendous amount of detail, you just have to work with them a bit and find a raw converter that works for you. 

I don't use jpgs from the camera very often, however I always capture a raw and fine jpg as the capturing a jpg allows you to zoom in to a greater amount on playback.

The Olympus EM Series also get great marks, see the review by K Raber on both of these cameras on this site. 

To me the greatest assest Fuji has are their lenses as all seem to just work great and are a perfect compliment to all the X cameras.

Paul

[JonathanRimmel]

Yes, perhaps it's more of a RAW converter issue. Most images I've seen were before LR 5.4 was out.

I should have mentioned, the personal images I saw did look good. But all the "reviews" showed rather soft images. Take DPreview for example. Any camera compared with the Fuji looks far sharper.

If I can find some good RAW files to play with I may do that. Especially high ISO. I've read that Fuji seems to apply some kind of noise reduction even in the RAW processing. Such that it would carried over no matter what converter you use.

Certainly I am still intrigued by Fuji and their great lenses. That Fuji color! Though seeing the OM-D EM10... Well the power of the EM1 for $700 is hard to ignore.

[JonathanRimmel]

WOW,  ok, I just came across this: Link and played with a RAW file. I am blown away!  Even accounting for the 2/3 stop miscalculation of ISO, this camera rocks at high iso. (In RAW that is - JPEG not so much)

[AFairley]

I am not so impressed with the X-E2 OOC jpegs, but with PhotoNinja what you can get from the RAWs rocks.  I can't get the same results in LR without haloing no matter how I adjust sharpening settings.  I get the image in the ball park with the PN conversion and then fine tune and do local adjustments in LR.

[JV]

Confirming what is said above.

I use Iridient Developer with the X-T1 and I am very pleased with it.  

For all clarity I only expect a raw converter to produce a malleable file that I can further process in PhotoShop.

I tested SilkyPix v5 and C1 as well but in the end I preferred Iridient.

I am not a LR user and so far I have not been impressed what LR does with Fuji files.

[JonathanRimmel]

Looks like I will have to play with a few RAW converter to see what I can get out of these files. Shame LR can't handle them too well yet.  I should grab some m4/3 files to compare.

[AFairley]

Jonathan, I have the Oly E-M5 as well as the E-X2 (planning to sell the Olyand keep the Fuji).  What I am seeing is that resolution wise the two are about the same, but the Fuji has slightly cleaner and more open shadows (comparing OOC jpegs) at base ISO.  I am guessing that there will be little difference between the two once your PP workflow is dialed in.  I don't shoot at high ISOs so have nothing to say about differences there.  I will say that the menu options and button setup options of the Fuji lag behind the Oly.  Both are easy to shoot with, I would give the Oly the nod, but I have a year's more familarity with it than the Fuji.  Bottom line is that you can't go wrong with either one.  Enjoy!

[Eric Brody]

I'd respectfully wonder about the source of your image examples or something else in the image processing stream. Are you looking at prints or screen images? I realize not everyone has access to well made prints from a camera one is considering but when you realize what's between the original image and your viewing eye with images on websites, it's a bit scary.

But I read on.... I have a D800E as well as an X T-1 and an X E-1. All of these cameras produce stunningly sharp images. I have used Lightroom with all of the cameras and attribute the image quality to the absence of an AA filter and to the impressive quality of the Nikon and Fuji prime lenses. I use minimal input sharpening with these cameras. Even the zooms produce excellent quality. One can tell the difference between the primes and zooms but not easily. Being on a tripod helps as well. I rarely use the D800E except with a tripod. The impressive high ISO performance of the Fuji is another factor in ease of use if not absolute image quality. I had an OLY OMD and loved the stabilization and the speed of operation but the quality of the image of the Fuji ultimately prevailed and I sold the OLY.