X-H1 &MKX LENSES
“Perhaps the ideal camera for stills photographers whowant to get serious aboutmaking movies for their clients”
shooting 4K or 20 minutes in HD to around half an hour for both. That makes it pretty essential for any serious filmmaker. But it vastly changes the form factor and overall size of the camera. Lots of stills shooters use battery grips, but very few filmmakers do. It adds bulk and size and changes how it fits in rigs so it’s not a great solution. In fact, the camera does suffer knurled aluminium knobs on the top-plate to change things like ISO is a definite nod to old-school photographers. You soon get used to it, and if you are moving to movies then it all feels very natural. The screen itself is three- way tiltable, rather than fully articulating which would be of benefit to filmmakers to get the screen out of the way of gimbals, for example. The build quality is beefed up from Fujifilm’s older mirrorless cameras with improved weather sealing as well as strengthening around the lens mount, specifically to improve it for use with the MKX cine lenses. The 18-55mm and 50-135mm T2.9 optics are redesigned from the E-mount versions to communicate with the X-H1 electronically, so are slightly more expensive than the all-manual Sony-fit versions. On both versions, there is an adjustable back focus button so you can tailor the lenses to your specific camera. And the lenses do retain the macro switch which you push, so you can focus the lenses much closer than normal. Both lenses come with a zoom lever for fast adjustment of focal length, a high-quality rectangular lens hood and a screw-in lens support so you can mount the lens to a tripod or other rig. The lenses have a constant T-stop of 2.9, to guarantee constant light transmission as you zoom in. And shooting the lenses at the longer focal lengths wide open gives some very nice out-of-focus a little from Fujifilm’s design philosophy of cool-looking, retro-styled cameras. Having
perhaps the ideal camera for stills photographers who want to get serious about making movies for their clients. After all, most photographers moving to video don’t want or need loads of different Log options, Raw video or super, super slowmotion. A camera they can understand and get great results fromwith as little fuss as possible is what’s really important and in this way, the X-H1 delivers. Especially when teamed up with the latest MK cinema lenses, now available in X-mount. These MKX lenses turn the X-H1 into a serious filmmaking tool that’s not daunting to photographers branching out into moving images, but help to boost creativity with the unique advantages of real cinema glass such as a lack of focus breathing. That’s not to say the spec of the camera is lacking. The X-H1, which uses the same APS-C size sensor as the X-T2, has significantly improved video features thanks to an increase in processing power and speed which has allowed Fujifilm’s
engineers to squeeze out every last bit of quality. The X-H1 can shoot DCI 4K to an internal SDmemory card at up to 200Mbps in F-log, but only at 24 or 23.98p. The bit rate can be selected at 100 or 50Mbps to save memory , but there is a small drop in quality. If you want the usual range of 23.98/24/25/23.97/30p choices then it’s normal 4K size only but you still have the three bit rate options. Drop to HD and you get an increase to 60p, but the bit rate tops out at 100Mbps. HD is the only option for super slowmotion, with 100 or 120fps available. Despite all that spec for making socket. To get around this, Fujifilm has gone to the unusual lengths of making you buy the add-on battery grip which costs £319/$329, plus two more batteries to go in it at £59/$67, so a total of £437/$463. This grip obviously triples the battery power but also increases the maximum recording time from around 15 minutes if you’re movies, there are certain odd omissions like no headphone
ABOVE Team the Fujifilm X-H1 flagship with one of the MKX lenses and you’ve got a serious filmmaking tool.
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SUMMER 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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