Focus peaking feelings a few weeks later?

[Avotius]

So we have had the firmware update for focus peaking out now for a few weeks. I and probably many others want to know what people are thinking now that they may have had some time to really use it after the initial feelings had worn off.

A friend of mine with his XE1 in which he never uses the viewfinder says it works ok and is easy to see on back screen and is ok when he is playing around with creative focus but otherwise he doesn't use it because he feels the zoom in to focus is good enough.

Of course we are more interested in it for legacy lenses.

So?

 

[willie_901]

For me, focus peaking provides one significant advantage. I am able to confirm focus subject selection and accuracy much faster than before.

I never, ever use the back screen to make a photograph.

I almost always focus in M mode with the AFL button. I also have audio focus confirmation turned on to low volume. Then I recompose as needed. I prefer to use the OVF and a quick press of the wheel confirms the focus subject is what I think it is. However I will quickly change to other focusing methods as conditions dictate.

I also noticed with the new firmware the focus-by-wire combined with focus peaking seems significantly more attractive with the 35/1.4, 18/2 and 14/2.8 XF lenses. I rarely used focus-by-wire, but this weekend I plan to use it exclusively and see how things go.

 

[Avotius]

Is it possible to just leave focus peaking on all the time no matter if you are using AF or MF, zoom or not?

 

[edge100]

To be honest, I'm not using it as much as I thought I would. It's a definite improvement, but I'd like to be able to adjust the peaking colour (bright yellow would be terrific). I just find that on the X-Pro1 EVF, I can't find the peaking all that easily, especially with wide angle glass...I still end up having to use the 3x zoom, which is what I wanted to avoid.

 

[SaveKodak]

I'm playing with an X-E1 and the Zeiss 32mm. I turned peaking off after a day or so because I can focus just fine without it. If I'm ever not sure I do a click zoom but most of the time I am fine with it. I personally find the OVF in the Pro1 useless until they update it to be more accurate. It misses all the damn time, but rarely in EVF mode. It's basically an SLR for me at the moment. I have an X100S on order so I'm hoping that improves things.

 

[Avotius]

Is no one using peaking with legacy lenses?

 

[GaryLH]

Currently I am using it a lot due to recent acquisition of the Nikon to x mount speedbooster.

While it is not as good as the Sony or the Ricoh implementation, it is more than adequate. I tend to use it along w/ mag mode when I have time to focus deliberately. U can c the plan of focus shift as w/ the Sony or Ricoh implementation.

They need to implement the different colors like Sony did, which is suppose to be next. Compared to what we had before this is still IMHO a good step forward. I leave it on all the time.

Focus peaking aids in speed as Willie mentioned but also helps outline the detail as u get things into focus.

Gary

 

[YYV_146]

Better than nothing, but needs work.

I can't trust it the way I trust the Sony implementation, mainly because of the sensitivity level. More often it's either nonexistent or everywhere, and the white - impossible to see when shooting near light sources after dark.

I still mostly zone focus or use magnification with my X-e1...

 

[SausalitoDog]

I was really excited to use the peaking with legacy lenses... I could hardly wait for it - I even bought my first Leica lens just for this.

But...I played with it for a couple of days and then decided I really don't want to use any legacy lenses with the fuji's. I want the option of manual/auto focus. The fuji auto focus is so good, I really really rarely use manual focus at all - in fact I pretty much only use it when I want to clearly understand what is going it vis a vis my DOF.

Bottom line, it works exactly as advertised and for you folks who have a lot of great glass, you will be able to use it and love it. I just found out that I really am hooked on auto focus that works 🙂

Still trying to decide what to do with my new Emarit 28mm little beauty 🙂

 

[GaryLH]

Put the 28 on a Konica RF..and u will feel like u are shooting the film version of the Fuji xp1 🙄:angel:😀

Gary

 

[romi.gilles]

Is it possible to just leave focus peaking on all the time no matter if you are using AF or MF, zoom or not?

^
this was great on my past nex-7. i still use it on my a77 especially when i focus-assist.

Better than nothing, but needs work.

I can't trust it the way I trust the Sony implementation, mainly because of the sensitivity level. More often it's either nonexistent or everywhere, and the white - impossible to see when shooting near light sources after dark.

I still mostly zone focus or use magnification with my X-e1...

^
for me, it's almost the same as nothing - i'm having a hard time even seeing any faint shims of white.

 

[semilog]

Works fine. But then, I thought the X-E1 worked fine with my MF lenses without peaking. It's a welcome incremental improvement.

I tend to shoot RAW+ black and white JPEG, BTW, so my EVF focusing is usually done in B&W.

 

[GaryLH]

For me it is more noticeable in bright light situations and it depends on the colors of the object u are focusing on vs the background.

In mag view plus peaking, it helps when it comes to things like quickly seeing when the fine detail is now in focus..

That all being said.. It definitely needs to have improvements as I mentioned in the past. While everyone appears to use Sony as the gold reference here, for me it has always been the gxr m module implementation.. I get more keepers w/ the Ricoh implementation then I did w/ the Sony.

Different colors would help a lot as opposed to white.

I have been using focus peeking since I picked up my metabones speedbooster.. Compared to just plain mag view, on the xp1's lower resolution evf it helps a lot. Because of the heavier slr lenses, I prefer to use the xp1 rather than the xe1 because it balances te eavier lenses better. Unless I am zone focusing, I don't tend to use the ovf w/ this setup.

Gary

 

[Avotius]

So its been a little while for me with the XE1 and I have only been using adapted lenses with it.

My thougths:

Focus peaking is not very useful overall as it is implemented in the camera. The Sony peaking is much better. Fuji's peaking turned up to high and using the viewfinder on the XE1 is barely noticeable in most conditions, on the back screen it is much easier to see, I can only imagin how much worse it must be on the Xpro1 with its lower resolution finder. I think it may be the compression of the pixels that is making it hard to see in the finder. Also having white is a poor choice for peaking color. It needs to be red or something else much more noticeable than white. As it seems all the peaking is doing is drastically increasing the sharpness setting in the preview and the white edges blend in too easily with things. In low light its useless. In good light its ok but because you have to have it set to high in order to see it through the viewfinder you have bad accuracy. Many of my shots were back focused because of this. Even at f4 or 5.6 I was missing focus at 10+ meters. You can use the zoom in function and focus that way but then your ability to capture moving things is pretty much gone. If you are trying to do street photography where you are doing more than focusing on a scene and waiting for something to happen or a person to walk through then you are not going to have a lot of luck with focusing.

As it stands now, focus peaking on Fuji cameras. No.

What Fuji needs to do to make focus peaking work is add different colors, different sensitivities, work out the problem where you cannot make out peaking very well in the finder, and maybe add some different patterns to the peaking algorithm like for instance instead of just sharpening things up 20x they could use color blotches or moving zebra patterns.

 

[M4streetshooter]

So its been a little while for me with the XE1 and I have only been using adapted lenses with it.

My thougths:

Focus peaking is not very useful overall as it is implemented in the camera. The Sony peaking is much better. Fuji's peaking turned up to high and using the viewfinder on the XE1 is barely noticeable in most conditions, on the back screen it is much easier to see, I can only imagin how much worse it must be on the Xpro1 with its lower resolution finder. I think it may be the compression of the pixels that is making it hard to see in the finder. Also having white is a poor choice for peaking color. It needs to be red or something else much more noticeable than white. As it seems all the peaking is doing is drastically increasing the sharpness setting in the preview and the white edges blend in too easily with things. In low light its useless. In good light its ok but because you have to have it set to high in order to see it through the viewfinder you have bad accuracy. Many of my shots were back focused because of this. Even at f4 or 5.6 I was missing focus at 10+ meters. You can use the zoom in function and focus that way but then your ability to capture moving things is pretty much gone. If you are trying to do street photography where you are doing more than focusing on a scene and waiting for something to happen or a person to walk through then you are not going to have a lot of luck with focusing.

As it stands now, focus peaking on Fuji cameras. No.

What Fuji needs to do to make focus peaking work is add different colors, different sensitivities, work out the problem where you cannot make out peaking very well in the finder, and maybe add some different patterns to the peaking algorithm like for instance instead of just sharpening things up 20x they could use color blotches or moving zebra patterns.

I pretty much agree. The problem is the way the peaking is working with the sensor without the AA filter. That alone make a sharper image so the peaking, especially in white goes all over the field. I have it set to low and I can't get it sharp where I want it to be.
I also have the Nex6 and none of this is even close to an issue.
Luckily I like using M Mount glass so I have a DOF scale for zone/hyper focal. The peaking is now off the XE-1. I don't think putting yellow is going to solve the problem. The real problem, at least on my camera is the over sharpened look when the peaking is on.

Thank the LORD for making me keep the Nex6. What a great camera.

 

[Spyro]

I tried it with a zuiko 85/2 on my xpro1 and I have a very low hit rate. Never had a problem with this lens on an SLR or FF DSLR.