Treated myself to a Fuji X100T

[Ian R]

I had nothing like this before and on seeing one in mint condition I thought I would give it a try as I am a great fan of the fixed 35mm. Well I am absolutely chuffed to bits with it, but a little sad also as with a camera like this years ago I would have many more photos from my childhood adventures. A fixed focus 110 didn't muster the grade. Never mind, I am enjoying it now and that is a good thing. I got the Fuji leather case, a screen protector and a soft release shutter button along with the JCC inverted cone hood - it seemed a bit naked without a few accessories. I know that the camera has good reputation and those tales are true. The JPEG rendering needs no adjustment (how did they do that) and I have not missed a photo yet. I share a few photos below, but I am still feeling my way around the cam, many more fun times to come I hope!

Anyone else enjoy this Fuji X range? Got any tips to share?

[Andrea B.]

Congratulations on your cool new cam, Ian !! Looks like you are enjoying it. And the jpegs look great.

[Ian R]

Congratulations on your cool new cam, Ian !! Looks like you are enjoying it. And the jpegs look great.

Thanks Andrea.  These photos have not been adjusted at all apart from resising and that is a first for me. They must have spent some time in the design stage.

[Frank Fremerey]

I bought one in January 2015 because I was lost as soon as I touched it. Did you see this thread "churchyard sale"? http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?topic=1541.0

Great camera for sontaneous emotional shooting.

Absolutely love it.

BUT

As soon as I learned RAW-processing these crazy files, I did not go back to JPEG. Sorry, but the difference is bigger that with any other camera I owned to date.

[Gary]

I have the X100S, XP1 and XT1. Love the Fuji images and the Fuji glass.

[pluton]

I have no complaints about the image qualities of the Fuji X files I get from my XE-1. Color is extremely pleasant, even with the supposed "worst" raw processor:  Adobe.  Monochrome is also good, and the Fuji lenses are optically outstanding.
I'm waiting to see if the talked-about XPro-2 will eliminate that thing where the camera doesn't fire exactly when I press the shutter release, while maintaining the left side finder of my XE1 and your X100T.

Fujifilm has placed their higher-end cameras in an interesting place---using computer-age technology (microprocessors, rotary encoders and stepper motors) to deliver a pre-space age shooting experience(where I decide what the shutter speed and aperture are going to be?) 
And, of course, automatic is there if you are lazy.

[Frank Fremerey]

Only practical advice is: switch camera off after every burst.

Beware of camera going to sleep: You will miss many shots.

Switch her on when you need her and she will be right there for you.

[Ian R]

Thank you for the input and the link Frank - no I missed those so have just spent a pleasant time viewing them. Your B&W work gives me a good idea of what I can aim for.

I was out again today with the camera on a woodland walk. Autumn is starting in the UK.

[Sash]

I loved JPEGS from my XT-1 and still do, but having switched to CaptureOne Pro, I realised how much better the result can be with RAW files in C1, especially when it comes to recover highlights and shadows. I have two other other APS-C 16 Mp cameras, but FUJI files are actually best to work with in a top RAW converter, despite all that talk of non-Beyer demosaicing

[Frank Fremerey]

AndreaB and BjørnR taught me to use PhotoNinja properly.  A very powerful RAW converter.

With it I am very impressed of what I can get from the whites.

The best Nikons give us 5 stops recovery from the blacks but less than 1 stop from the whites.

The X100T RAW gives me up to 2.5 stops from the whites so: Do not delete pictures that seem to be blown.

On the other end I have to be more careful. Recovered blacks can get very noisy.

I would not go so far as to say: "expose for the shadows" but this is the tendency.

[Frank Fremerey]

PS. The examples in your opening post show very nicely what in camera processing can do.

The church interiour and the forest show how wonderful Fuji creates HDR files without HDR look.

[Sash]

Agree with Frank re shadows and highlights. And every time I recover a "blown" sky I think, do we really need HDR?

Never tried PhotoNinja, read a lot of good things about it, but was deterred by the interface. C1 is an excellent editor for FUJI and allows cataloging files.  I ran it in parallel with Lightroom for a month and found myself using C1 more and more, since it is better in most aspects. LR catalog is more user friendly but conversion and editing is superior with C1 in my opinion. On top of that it has more editing options. It is a very mature professional program.

Yes, OP photos are quite good btw But I am sure you could recover the sky in upper left part and have a better gradation from blue to sun with RAW conversion and highlight recovery.

[Sash]

I shot it today just for illustration: first one is SOOC JPEG with overexposed sky, second is RAW conveted with CaptureOne Pro 8 with recovered highlights. (BW is slightly off in both pictures)
(Shots of scenes with lower dynamic range come up very, very well in FUJI SOOC JPEG, and it is often difficult to recreate the wonderful FUJI JPEG colors with RAW, but with high dynamiv range RAW come up much better after some quick editing).





 

 

[Frank Fremerey]

Impressive. Good example. Far from extreme.  But you get the idea

[Sash]

My fault, should have overexposed it by a stop