I thought I'd write what follows as my first impressions of the Fuji X system for pro use in the hope others will find it of use....
I bought my first X system camera back in the spring. That was an X-Pro 2. I'd always wanted a smaller camera for carrying with me when I'm out and about and the X-Pro 2 looked like the ideal camera for me. I've not used it much since I bought it as I've been VERY busy but I did get to Cornwall for a few days back in late May and was pleased with the pictures I got with it.
After a long hard summer I decided that maybe my 8 years with Nikon had run it's course. The main reason was weight and getting fed up waking up the day after a wedding with a stiff neck and aching shoulders. All very well until you do four weddings on the trot! I'd always laughed at guys saying they found the weight of their kit an issue ("bloody wimps" I thought) but I was starting to realise it was a real a factor.
So last Friday I bought an X-T2. It wasn't until Monday that I turned it on and actually took some pictures. I was instantly very impressed with the performance, enough so that I headed off to a camera shop and traded in my Nikon D4s for a bunch of lenses (I'd already had a quote for the D4s and was happy with what they were offering).
Today I used the camera properly for the first time. It wasn't a paid job, I had my nieces for the day so I took them to a local park where we had loads of fun on a pretty decent autumn day. I wasn't there as a photographer, I was there to have fun with my two favourite people. But they were happy to model for me and I got some pretty decent shots. Performance of the camera was superb. I was shooting a mix of AF-S and AF-C and both were great. AF-C is where any camera can struggle but the camera didn't miss as my niece sped towards me on her scooter. The thing that pleased me most was that I was shooting all my lenses wide open and sharpness was spot on. I'd pretty much given up shooting wide open with my Nikons. I figured if I was going to be swapping to a crop-sensor camera then I'd need to be shooting wide open more often. And the X-T2 and lenses didn't disappoint.
Once home it was time to process the images. I won't drone on, so here's my thoughts:-
1) The pictures are sharp. Very sharp! This makes me very happy.
2) The pictures have higher levels of noise. I never used any kind of noise reduction on my D4s files. I'm going to need to with the fuji. ISO 1600 and up and going to worry me I think.
3) I can't push and pull the Raw files around as much as I could my Nikons. Shadow and highlight recovery is not as forgiving so correct exposure is going to be important. Fortunately I always held that belief anyway but I'll not get away with pulling the shadows up in the summer months like a lot of pros have been doing in recent times.
4) I've never looked at any other camera profiles in Lightroom, instead using the adobe profile. And then I've edited from there. With these images I tried the Velvia look which I'd used in camera. A bit too saturated for my liking but I went with it anyway. Skin tones and the biggest factor and in this regard the images are looking good.
So that's some initial thoughts. If I think of anything else I'll add it.
EMM-17 by
Ryan Jarvis, on Flickr
EMM-18 by
Ryan Jarvis, on Flickr
EMM-21 by
Ryan Jarvis, on Flickr