Photography News Issue 29

Camera test 37

Photography News Issue 29 absolutephoto.com

control off the click-stopped C and there was the risk of poor exposures but it had to be moved some distance before it has an effect. Due to this, I preferred using the C position. The tiny scale on the monitor does make accurate setting a challenge and the option of bigger typewould be good. Amenu item available on the X-T1 is a selectable lock feature where you can deactivate controls including the driveandcompensationdials.Sadly,it is not on the X-Pro2 but then it wasn’t on the X-T1 originally and arrived with a firmware update. It would be verywelcome on the X-Pro2. Something else I’d welcome is a higher magnification preview during Raw shooting. As it is, on the X-Pro2 (and other X-cameras), you have to shoot Raw and JPEG if you want to reallywant to properly check shots. The X-Pro2’s menu has six tabs including a MY option where you can place your favourite features in descending order of priority. Menu items are grouped sensibly which makes the X-Pro2 very easy to navigate and saves too much scrolling aswith previous X-cameras. As an example, I.Q. stands for Image Quality so here there is image quality and Raw recording options including lossless compression – typically 24MB against 50MB for uncompressed Raws. Under AF MF are all the focusing options. It’s the best menu yet seen on anX-series. The X-Pro2’s battery is the same as in the X-Pro1 and X-T1 – a benefit Our test camera was subjected to a wide range of conditions to test its mettle including bright sun, dark interiors, night-time, artificial light, moving subjects and heavy rain. The good news is that the camera emerged unscathed and delivered fine results with few failures. The shots here are all straight out of the camera JPEGs with no editing enhancements. Top right Shinjuku street scene shot at twilight. Shot with the 16mm f/1.4 lens, 1/45sec at f/5.6 and ISO 1250. Top far right A very contrasty scene well handled by the X-Pro2’s multi-zone meter. Shot with the 18-55mm at 19mm, 1/300sec at f/16 and ISO 400. Right The X-Pro2 copes well with grab shooting. This was shot with the 16mm f/1.4 lens, 1/1400sec at f/4 and ISO 800. Far right An extreme contrast scene, dealt with capably by the X-Pro2. Shot with the 10-24mm f/4 lens at 10mm, 1/70sec at f/8 and ISO 250. The highlights and shadows there would benefit from some tweaking in post-processing. FujifilmX-Pro2 Gallery

for existing owners but it also means it’s using five-year-old technology. Capacity is decent and in the Power Management menu there are the options of High Performance, Standard and Economy. In standard mode, I was getting 250-320 frames per battery. On productive days, I was on the third battery by day’s end. Although I had a few gripes with some aspects of the body’s design there is no such thing as the perfect camera and there is plenty of great stuff too. The front-placed viewfinder selector is good to use and the push button can be set to give brightline frames showing the field of view for various fixed focal lengths so you can check the view before swapping lenses. It’s a classic LeicaMfeature. I used both optical and EVF finders equally. I liked the magnified live preview in the optical finder and the EVF was good because it gives a bright, contrasty image withminimal image lag when panning. If anything the EVF image appeared cool when shooting in the shade but that wasmy only complaint. One of my favourite controls is the eight-way focus zone select joystick. It’s ideally placed for the thumb and makes it very quick to move the relevant focus zone over the part of the scene you want sharp. This can be turned off or set so that a push is needed before it comes into play. On AF zone selection, I’d prefer it if there was an option to stop ‘wraparound’. Move the AF zone too

far to one side of the screen and it reappears on the opposite side. I think the dual SD card slot is excellent and offers the options of sequential use, backup or having JPEGs andRaws on separate cards. Sofar,Ihaveonlycoveredhandling and design features so perhaps it is time to move onto the key area of camera performance. In all honesty, Iwas impressed. For exposures, I shot almost exclusively in aperture-priority AE, auto white- balance and multi-zone metering. I did try manual, spot metering and program AE too while lighting conditions varied fromnight to sunny days and dim to bright interiors. Looking through my Lightroom catalogue of over 3000 images, I don’t see many outright exposure duffs. The vast majority of JPEGs were well within the boundaries of critical acceptance, while it’s true that some shots would benefit from highlight and shadow control during editing. In some indoor market scenes, I had very deep shadows and beams of full sun lighting up parts of the interior. Not surprisingly, the highlight areas were burnt out – even beyond the realms of Raw recovery – but this is not metering inaccuracy just extreme contrast. In this particular situation, the camera did a fine job of the dark interior whichwas the priority. Overall, I thought the level of competence shown by the exposure system to be very high – in fact I don’t see how it could have done any better

so well done to Fujifilm on this score. A similar high performance level was seen by the focusing department. I shotmostlyAF insingleAF, regularly varying the zone size – five sizes are available. I also used Zone andWide/ Tracking AF modes using 77 and 273 zones and tested the camera’s AF tracking functionality too. Lenses used include the 10-24mm, 16mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4, 18-55mm f/2.8-4 and the 55-200mm f/4-5.6. In bright light, AF was swift, accurate and silent thanks to the linear motor. The Intelligent Hybrid AF system has on-sensor phase- detection AF with Contrast AF and rarely did the system falter, even in dim lighting. In Wide/Tracking AF the system could pick up on the wrong part of the scene to focus on. Using single zone and the thumb- operated AF joystick gave the ultimate control. The joystick is a real joy, perfectlyplacedfor the thumband very welcome. On the X-T1 there isn’t one and to move the AF zone around means dedicating the four-way control to that purpose. This means losing a couple of custom function buttons and its lower position is less handy for the thumb. The X-Pro2 did pretty well in continuous shooting too. With Zone AF and the zone positioned over the subject, the cameramaintained sharp focus at 8fpswhenusing the 18-55mm standard zoom. It’ll be interesting to see how it fares with the new 100- 400mmzoom.

Overall, I thought the level of competence shown by the exposure system to be very high – in fact I don’t see how it could have done any better

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