Big test
1280mm in 35mm format) still meant the bee-eaters were tiny in the frame. This meant that the bird detect AF didn’t consistently pick up, or latched instead onto a pigeon. Get the subject larger in the frame and subject/eye detect did well. With birds at the local lake or feeding in my garden, the eye/subject detect AF box tracked the eyes swiftly. Although testing time with the X-H2S was limited, I definitely got a flavour of its AF skills and would be confident that it could cope with most things once correctly set-up. We’ve seen some incredible moves in AF with the Canon EOS R3/R5, Nikon Z 9 and Sony A1 in the full- frame world and OM System OM-1 in Micro Four Thirds. The X-H2S is probably the most capable APS-C camera I’ve tested. I performed some tests to check out the X-H2S’s IBIS skills with its 7EV claimed benefit. For this, I used the 150-600mm fitted with the 1.4x converter. I took sets of handheld shots with both shutters from 1/60sec down to 1/15sec. I got four out of five very acceptably sharp at 1/30sec and a good hit
for example, the AF point on cloud detail would struggle, so I’d move the point to the sun’s edge or switch to manual focusing, which you can couple with a magnified image or peaking to aid accuracy. A push button – rather than lever – on the front brings up manual, single AF and continuous AF options. I tried bird detect AF and airplane AF, and both these modes worked well. One proviso with these settings, however, was that the subject had to be a reasonable size in the finder. Too small, and it wouldn’t pick up. An example was when I tried the X-H2S/150-600mm/1.4x teleconverter combo on the Norfolk bee-eaters. With the viewing area managed by the RSPB some distance away to protect the birds, this lens/ converter pairing (equivalent to
PERFORMANCE: HIGH ISO IN PRACTICE
rate at 1/15sec, too. The picture of the moon on the first spread was shot at 1/15sec. If you assume that you would need a shutter speed of 1/2000sec with a non-IS system, that’s a 7EV benefit. Speed is a key feature of the X-Trans CMOS 5 HS sensor, and its megapixel count of 26.1 is the same as the fourth-generation version. Fujifilm has just announced a second model with fifth-generation sensor, the X-H2, which boasts an impressive 40 megapixels. Image quality from the X-H2S is excellent. I processed Raws through COOL RUNNING For the ultimate movie shooting performance, invest in the optional Fan-001 that attaches to the X-H2S via two screw holes
No NR
With NR
GOING FOR A SONG There wasn’t much light for this song thrush shot, and ISO 6400 enabled an exposure of 1/125sec at f/8 using the 150-600mm lens. This pair of cropped comparison shots shows what is possible from an X-H2S high ISO shot with noise reduction – Topaz DeNoise AI was used for editing
“I GOT FOUR OUT OF FIVE VERY ACCEPTABLY SHARP AT 1/30SEC”
CARD TRICK The X-H2S has dual card slots, SD and CFexpress Type B – the latter is needed to get the best shooting speed from the X-H2S
PERFORMANCE: ISO
sensor gives very clean images at speeds up to ISO 800, and you only see signs of digital noise beyond this. It’s not too excessive at ISO 1600 or ISO 3200, but visible in the shadows or in areas of even tone. The negative impact on fine details was minimal. The look of ISO 3200 images was remarkable for an APS-C format camera and, of course, there is the benefit of noise reduction editing to come. Generally, the X-H2S’s X-Trans sensor performed to a high level.
To assess the X-H2S’s ISO performance, I shot this scene with the camera on a Leofoto LS-324C carbon-fibre tripod and fitted with a Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 lens. All in-camera noise reduction was set to off or zero, while Raws went through Adobe Lightroom with no additional noise resolution used. ISO performance with previous Fujifilm X-Trans sensors has always rated highly compared with their contemporaries, and that’s the case here also. The fifth-generation
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42 Photography News | Issue 101
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