FUJIFILM X-H2S GEAR REVIEW.
DRESS DOWN Stick a dead cat on the mic and you’re ready for some run-and-gun shooting (below left)
“ProRes 422 HQ footage is excellent and will mix well with cinema cams”
and an Eterna Cinema look. We particularly liked Eterna Cinema, since it bakes in soft colours and rich shadow tones. All of these provide an easy, straight-out-of-camera option with no extra processing. You could pick internal ProRes or go the whole hog and opt for externally recorded ProRes Raw or BRAW, grading to your heart’s
content. It’s one of the reasons the X-H2S is such a powerful, flexible filmmaking tool. Use with AF lenses for strong, AI-controlled focus, or bolt on an all-manual vintage PL lens for a unique look. Employ for 40fps stills shooting sport, or rig it up with a monitor/recorder for more considered narrative film. The X-H2S does it all, at a great price.
and maximum dynamic range, F-Log is the way to go. F-Log1 sets the minimum ISO to 640, while the flatter F-Log2 puts it at 1250 and gives maximum dynamic range up to 14 stops. Even at this setting, there is a remarkable lack of noise straight out of camera. Noise is barely noticeable in all permutations up to 6400 ISO. Success was found using a Fujifilm LUT for an X-T4 F-Log to Eterna for Rec. 709, and manual colour correction was quite simple. It’s a quality sensor and signal processing pipeline, for sure. We also loved ProRes settings, which produced natural colours straight out of camera, taking up a lot of memory space at the same time. ProRes 422 HQ footage is excellent and will mix well with high-end cinema cameras. Fujifilm loves its Film Simulation colours and these are included here. Options include vivid Velvia, a softer Astia, some mono choices, Bleach Bypass
NATURAL HUES The AF system is excellent and colours are typical of Fujifilm: hyper-accurate
Conclusion It’s easy to see we’re impressed with the Fujifilm X-H2S. It brings all the latest features from flagship full-frame rivals and fits them in a more affordable APS-C body; that brings more compact lenses to the table, too. It’s like a scaled-down Canon EOS R3, Nikon Z 9 or Sony A1 at half the price or less. None of these can match 40fps stills performance with full AE and AF. Of course, it does have a smaller sensor, which has positives – but also some negatives, such as when creating a shallow depth-of-field at wide apertures. But in terms of image quality, you would be very hard pushed to notice any shortcomings at all – even at high ISO settings. Great-quality, high-bit-rate internal 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra codecs, at a massive range of frame rates, more than make up for theoretical drawbacks – and colours are wonderfully natural. The X-H2S might go down in history as one of the best value and most capable mirrorless cameras for shooting data-intensive video.
57. AUGUST 2022
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