Post your x-pro1 FW2.0 impressions

willie_901 said:
The AF just went from a B to an A.
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I'd say from a C+ to an A-. The (+) is for the fact that when it locked, it was at least very accurate. The (-) is because the Olympus 12-60 SWD on an E-3 or an E-5 is still better (faster quieter). But with 2.0 firmware, the X-Pro1 is darned close to that very high standard.
 
Keith said:
Why is it that so many of these cameras these days aren't reaching their potential until a firmware upgrade or two?

What is it in their development/design that puts this part of the device's firmware so far behind it's hardware?

I'm genuinely curious because to me it seems akin to a car manufacurer giving you car with four speeds in a five speed transmission then fitting the fifth at the first service because it wasn't quite ready at sale. :p
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I prefer to drive than walk, even with an incomplete transmission.

I guess the glass just seems half full to me.

Actually, new cars often get firmware updates for improvements as well. Apple, Microsoft, and Android devices obviously add capabilities and significant improvements as well. It's not just camera companies.

I think firmware development is always behind for a coupe of reasons. Assembly language programming is difficult and requires highly skilled employees. Second, most camera makers are not oriented around software development. Corporate cultures change slowly. The optics and sensor groups probably have much more political juice and more resources. I suspect Fuji is too small to quickly grow it's software group. I bet most of them were working on low cost P&S systems. All the camera companies are behind other consumer electronic sectors. Look how long it took to get Bluetooth access to digital cameras compared to other devices.

Your point that it is better to get things right the first time is certainly valid. But I also found both the X100 and XP1 provided me with what I needed from day one. Not having to lug my D200 around for an extra 4 to 9 months everywhere I went more than compensated for using the early X100 firmware. The same goes for the utility of interchangeable lenses on the X100.
 
willie_901 said:
I prefer to drive than walk, even with an incomplete transmission.

I guess the glass just seems half full to me.

Actually, new cars often get firmware updates for improvements as well. Apple, Microsoft, and Android devices obviously add capabilities and significant improvements as well. It's not just camera companies.

I think firmware development is always behind for a coupe of reasons. Assembly language programming is difficult and requires highly skilled employees. Second, most camera makers are not oriented around software development. Corporate cultures change slowly. The optics and sensor groups probably have much more political juice and more resources. I suspect Fuji is too small to quickly grow it's software group. I bet most of them were working on low cost P&S systems. All the camera companies are behind other consumer electronic sectors. Look how long it took to get Bluetooth access to digital cameras compared to other devices.

Your point that it is better to get things right the first time is certainly valid. But I also found both the X100 and XP1 provided me with what I needed from day one. Not having to lug my D200 around for an extra 4 to 9 months everywhere I went more than compensated for using the early X100 firmware. The same goes for the utility of interchangeable lenses on the X100.
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Thanks Willie,

I don't neccessarily think they should be getting it dead right first up if cicumstances don't allow it. I do however think that people need to chill out and wait with these latest offerings instead of adopting the sell it and move on attitude. There was a noticable amount of Xpros for sale in the classifieds very shortly after it's release and I can't help but wonder how many of these sales were related to issues that have now been addressed with this latest firmware update.

It seems that the camera you're buying isn't necessarily the camera you'll have after these inevitable subsequent updates .... this is now definitely something to be considered when getting the latest gizmo.
 
Another difference in FW 2.0: It's my impression that the in-finder depth of field indicators are no longer as preposterously conservative as in v. 1.x -- they are still too conservative for my taste, but actually usable now.

Anyone else? Am I imagining this?
 
semilog said:
I think that in this particular case, Fuji put a HUGE amount of effort into the JPEG engine for the X-Trans sensor. De-mosaicing that pseudorandom array requires new algorithms and I suspect a LOT of processor horsepower.

Under most conditions, in fact, NONE of the stand-alone processors (talking to you, Adobe) does as well as consistently as the in-camera engine, given default presets. What this says is that what Fuji is doing in that RAW engine is DIFFICULT, even for experts, and all the more so in a compact battery-powered computer (even given a lot of VLSIC* optimization). This camera is not like cameras with Beyer arrays, the demosaicing of which involves generallty mature, well-understood, and highly optimized algorithms.
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They have done a great job but could do better with the JPEG output. I only have to open a RAW in RPP (http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html) to see that there can be so much more detail available than appears in the JPEG. A pity really.

Having said that, it's a great camera and this latest update is very good.

I do wish the OVF framelines were more accurate though, especially when compared with the X100.

Lee
 
Sapphie said:
They have done a great job but could do better with the JPEG output. I only have to open a RAW in RPP (http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html) to see that there can be so much more detail available than appears in the JPEG. A pity really.

Having said that, it's a great camera and this latest update is very good.

I do wish the OVF framelines were more accurate though, especially when compared with the X100.

Lee
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Don't know how it compares to the x100, but on the x100 if I turn the noise reduction to 'low' and the sharpening to 'hard' It gets really good detail out of the files. Like as good as RAW detail.
 
Maybe this is just re-phrasing what has been said before, but I think that software development is the kind of task that does not lend itself well to production deadlines. There is always more tweaking that can be done and more elegant ways to solve a problem: kind of like 90% of the value going into the last 10% of effort (or 90% of the results going into the last 10% of the schedule -- (I am just making up numbers, but you get the idea)). Today's crazy product cycles impose their own nutty timing requirements that are not driven by the need to create perfect software. . . just good enough to get the job done.

Combine the above with a new sensor (Fuji's) that has the native ability to do something better than the pack . . . and I think you've got your answer. From the executive's perspective there is no reason to shoot for "better than adequate" by the launch deadline.
 
Shush. You guys are making me want one. Met a guy in Vegas who had one. Bigger than I expected, but a beautiful camera nonetheless...
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Maybe this is just re-phrasing what has been said before, but I think that software development is the kind of task that does not lend itself well to production deadlines. There is always more tweaking that can be done and more elegant ways to solve a problem: kind of like 90% of the value going into the last 10% of effort (or 90% of the results going into the last 10% of the schedule -- (I am just making up numbers, but you get the idea)). Today's crazy product cycles impose their own nutty timing requirements that are not driven by the need to create perfect software. . . just good enough to get the job done.

Combine the above with a new sensor (Fuji's) that has the native ability to do something better than the pack . . . and I think you've got your answer. From the executive's perspective there is no reason to shoot for "better than adequate" by the launch deadline.
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I was going to write "Speed to market" as a response to Keith's question but you've explained it in a much more detailed way Benjamin :)

Cheers,
Dave
 
Well, I am new here, although been a lurker for a while and I am about to be a proud new owner of one said X-Pro 1. And I think my timing is utterly perfect!

Just picked up the camera, + 35mm lens and a 95mb/s 8Gb SD card for $2kAU. So the body was only $1300, compared to everywhere I was looking only a week ago which was around the $1699 mark. Close to what the new XE-1 is coming in at. Which I would say puts the price issue out with the garbage and the rest of the stuff now fixed with the latest FW update.

And now this new firmware update fixing a lot of the issues that were putting me off buying one. But I have now sold my Nikon D300 and some gear and I am getting this. So a whole new world of photographic opportunities I feel are open to me.

Cheers Ollie :)
 
Kieth,

People do tend to over react, be impatient and are swayed by negative posts. The hybrid APS-C Fujis are complicated compared to many people's prior experience. This is even more reason for the firmware to be well developed.

On Fuji forums there are several posts of people who sold their cameras and then 3 to 6 months later repurchased the same camera. The updated firmware changed their view when they used their second camera. So, your point is well-taken.

I may have been very frustrated if I had not used an analog rangefinder extensively before I bought an early X100.
 
Sapphie said:
They have done a great job but could do better with the JPEG output. I only have to open a RAW in RPP (http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html) to see that there can be so much more detail available than appears in the JPEG. A pity really.
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Lee, I disagree. I have used RPP 64 very extensively and it is the best stand-alone RAW processor for X-Pro files. But it has significant limitations.

First, RPP64 is -- by design -- enormously processor-intensive, because it uses floating point rather than integer math. This means that it is slow and that in a portable device (a camera) it would suck down the battery before you could say "Oscar Barnack."

Second, RPP64's auto white balance is lousy.

Third, RPP64 still leaves a lot of edge artifacts, particularly sawtoothing, on horizontal and vertical edges. The Fuji JPEG engine avoids this problem.

I'm a huge RPP64 booster but it is far from perfect and its technical approach should absolutely not be the model for Fuji's in-camera JPEG engine.

I am looking forward to seeing what Capture One's RAW engine for the X-trans sensor can do. Fuji is helping Capture One develop it.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Maybe this is just re-phrasing what has been said before, but I think that software development is the kind of task that does not lend itself well to production deadlines. There is always more tweaking that can be done and more elegant ways to solve a problem: kind of like 90% of the value going into the last 10% of effort (or 90% of the results going into the last 10% of the schedule -- (I am just making up numbers, but you get the idea)). Today's crazy product cycles impose their own nutty timing requirements that are not driven by the need to create perfect software. . . just good enough to get the job done.

Combine the above with a new sensor (Fuji's) that has the native ability to do something better than the pack . . . and I think you've got your answer. From the executive's perspective there is no reason to shoot for "better than adequate" by the launch deadline.
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So true. And "better than adequate" may have been impossible to accomplish by the deadline, regardless of the available programming resources. In software development, adding more people to a project will often actually slow it down.
 
semilog said:
So true. And "better than adequate" may have been impossible to accomplish by the deadline, regardless of the available programming resources. In software development, adding more people to a project will often actually slow it down.
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So true... It's not the number of SW developers but the number of good ones on a project. Also some people expected the fixes from x100 to translate to xp1 from day one but in reality, given the difference in the base hw, a lot of low level drivers had to be created first and if a lot of that is in assembly language, all the more harder..

Gary
 
GaryLH said:
Frame lines are not an issue.. U just need to know the trick.. It turns out that there are two settings for display brightness.

When u are not looking thru the ovf, q menu LCD brightness is for the LCD. after u set this to your liking, the ovf one can be set by placing your eye up to the vf and using the q menu again. The evf brightness follows the ovf in the past. Not sure if new fw changed this behavior (ovf/evf pairing)...

Gary
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Gary, this method of adjusting the OVF framelines works GREAT! Thank you so much! :)
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Maybe this is just re-phrasing what has been said before, but I think that software development is the kind of task that does not lend itself well to production deadlines. There is always more tweaking that can be done and more elegant ways to solve a problem: kind of like 90% of the value going into the last 10% of effort (or 90% of the results going into the last 10% of the schedule -- (I am just making up numbers, but you get the idea)). Today's crazy product cycles impose their own nutty timing requirements that are not driven by the need to create perfect software. . . just good enough to get the job done.

Combine the above with a new sensor (Fuji's) that has the native ability to do something better than the pack . . . and I think you've got your answer. From the executive's perspective there is no reason to shoot for "better than adequate" by the launch deadline.
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I agree. They wanted to get the camera to the market, knowing that their competition had interesting projects up their sleeve too. So they finalized an "acceptable" yet not a great release for product launch, and continuously worked on improvements. The updates we have seen after that showed that Fuji truly was listening to its users. V 2.0 is the proof. I haven't seen a similar succession of FW updates like this from any other large Japanese camera makers.

I was at Fuji's booth on the Photokina show yesterday, and I asked if somebody were interested in hearing my firmware improvement suggestions. One of the Japanese senior firmware developers actually took almost an hour's time to hear my ideas and my user experiences with the camera's firmware. Obviously, Fuji is genuinely interested to base its firmware development on real user experiences and needs - not just on their own vision of how things should be.

I'm very impressed, and I am confident that this wasn't the last firmware update we'll see for the X-Pro1.
 
Arjay said:
I was at Fuji's booth on the Photokina show yesterday, and I asked if somebody were interested in hearing my firmware improvement suggestions. One of the Japanese senior firmware developers actually took almost an hour's time to hear my ideas and my user experiences with the camera's firmware. Obviously, Fuji is genuinely interested to base its firmware development on real user experiences and needs
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thanks for this update... It is good to know that they took the time.

Gary
 
Arjay said:
I was at Fuji's booth on the Photokina show yesterday, and I asked if somebody were interested in hearing my firmware improvement suggestions. One of the Japanese senior firmware developers actually took almost an hour's time to hear my ideas and my user experiences with the camera's firmware. Obviously, Fuji is genuinely interested to base its firmware development on real user experiences and needs - not just on their own vision of how things should be.
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Very cool... based on what I've seen you write on the Fuji forum, it was because you have great ideas from experience and can speak about them in an articulate manner.
 
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