Photography News 06

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Camera review IMAGE NEAR RIGHT The intense highlight didn’t upset the camera meter. FAR RIGHT A contrasty scene well handled by the X-T1 and there’s good detail in the shadows.

Focus on focusing As always with mirrorless cameras, one of the biggest questions is how it performs when it comes to focusing. There’s no doubt that Fujifilm has struggled with this in the past, and there have been firmware updates for cameras such as the X-Pro1 specifically to address this, but these problems seem to have been firmly left behind. In good light, the X-T1 was very quick to focus, and it’s certainly mingling amongst the speediest of mirrorless cameras. You can vary the size of the focus area too, and a smaller area gives you more precise control. I have to say, there were a few occasions when autofocus failedunexpectedly, ingood light when there seemed to be enough contrast. This was fixed by adjusting the position of the AF area, which presumably gave it more contrast to lock onto. So it’s not a flawless AF system, but excellent nonetheless. The X-T1’s AF system can also be combined with continuous shooting at a lightning speed of 8fps. This is faster than most DSLRs, and makes the X-T1 practical for sports and action photography. And with UHS-II compatibility, these images can be transferred to the memory card even faster, with the potential for longer shooting bursts – in our tests using a 16GB Toshiba Exceria Pro UHS-II card, it was no trouble to fire off 24 frames shooting Raw+JPEG without any speed loss. Manual focusing is also something of a triumph. For a start, it’s easily accessed with the switch on the front plate, but it’smoreabout theoptions for focusing aids. When manual focusing is activated, you have the option of magnifying a central highlighted area, either on the LCDor in the viewfinder, and this is done by pressing the Focus Assist button, conveniently placed beside your thumb on the back. Combined with this magnification, you can use focus peaking or Fujifilm’s digital split imaging technology. The latter mimics the split image focusing of film SLRs, and horizontally offsets segments of the image where it’s out of focus – aligning them indicates focus, and in many situations this is a fantastic way to get it spot on. Some scenes make the split image difficult to see precisely, and here focus peaking can be a better alternative, although I found my success rate to be about the same. Since the two aids are useful in different situations, it would have been good to have a control to switch between them at a touch of a button, instead of having to go into the main menu. Inside the X-T1 is the same 16-megapixel X-Trans II sensor and EXR II processor as in the X-E2. Because of this, image quality was never in doubt, and it doesn’t disappoint. With the 18-55mm f/2.8-4 Fujinon lens, images are extremely crisp, with plenty of fine detail and strong colours even in standard Provia mode. Perhaps the only disappointment at this stage is that the Raw files are currently not compatible with Adobe software, but this is presumably just a matter of time. In good light, it was very quick to focus, and it’s certainly amongst the speediestmirrorless cameras

FUJIFILMX-T1

ISO 100

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

ISO 12,800

ISO 25,600

ISO 51,200

ISO performance

The X-T1 has a native sensitivity range of 200-6400 but there are expanded settings of 100 and 12,800, 25,600 and 51,200 in JPEG only. Although there are three Hi settings, only two are available on the ISO control dial at any one time. In the absence of any compatible Raw converter at the time of writing, we assessed ISO performance in JPEG files straight out of the camera. Increasing the ISO sensitivity to at least 800 has almost no impact on image quality, although that’s not to say performance drops off hugely above this either, and up to ISO 3200, image quality is excellent. Above this, there’s a noticeable impact – noise is still controlled well, except in the top two extended settings where there’s a lot more grain, but there’s a progressive loss of detail and some banding. Still, this is to be expected at such high sensitivities.

Photography News | Issue 6

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