X-Pro 1's Achilles' Heel

[RealXenuis]

I disagree. It's more expensive than some better performing AF cameras, sure. I find the IQ, handling, lens quality, etc etc, to make it more than worth the price. My experience (I own the 35 and the 18, not exp with the 60 but it's on the way). I do agree that the AF is a weakness, in that it could be both faster and consistent. It's not confusing to us that understood what we were getting and why??

I tried the X-Pro 1 in the camera store and, as I like to do when I go in in the evening and talk to the sales staff, I asked them to dim the lights to check out the low-light performance.

For an AF camera, the AF is not very good. For a very expensive camera, the AF is not very good. In fact, it wasn't very good in better light. Too many shots were a struggle. Used the 35mm lens at various apertures. I tried some manual focus...ugh.

So I took a Nikon D3100 out and tried the same and the D3100 blew the AF of the X-Pro 1 out of the water. No contest, the smaller Nikon DSLR won handily.

They did not have a Ricoh GXR for me to try as comparison. They were sold out of the Fuji X100's.

My conclusion is that the X-Pro 1 is an AF cameras by design, and the AF lags considerably what one would expect for the investment.

It was also bigger and heavier than I thought. Lenses look to be excellent and much cheaper than M-mount. Lens + body may be more compact than a DSLR, but giving up the DSLR's advantages like bang-on PDAF is a serious concern for the price of the X-Pro 1.

Confusing camera.

 

[CopperB]

As an FYI - the Canon 5D was about $3300 for the body only - I can honestly say the AF system was no better on that body.

Not trying to "justify" Fuji's lack of a really good AF system (to be honest, I wish all cameras had the AF system of Nikon.. they seem to have nailed it) but my comment re: 5D is more to compare the fact that there are cameras that can and do cost a lot more which have equally "craptacular" AF systems 🙂

Cheers,
Dave

That's sad. Maybe you should switch to Nikon 😀. AF in low light is always a huge challenge but I've had better performance in club lighting with my D50 and D90 in past years but their hi ISO performance can't touch the xpro1. Don't get me wrong, I really like this camera in many many ways. I just wish that low light focusing was more reliable and I could leave the dSLR at home.

 

[dcsang]

That's sad. Maybe you should switch to Nikon 😀. AF in low light is always a huge challenge but I've had better performance in club lighting with my D50 and D90 in past years but their hi ISO performance can't touch the xpro1. Don't get me wrong, I really like this camera in many many ways. I just wish that low light focusing was more reliable and I could leave the dSLR at home.

I already did switch to Nikon... 3 years ago - with the D700s I own. That's how I know how good and bad AF accuracy can be; even among the big players who "know" what they're doing in the game 🙂

Cheers,
Dave

 

[CopperB]

Inexcusable? Just watch this: Fuji: I excuse you. There. That wasn't so bad, was it? Honestly, AF failure in a coal mine? Doesn't seem like much of an Achilles Heel to me.

Sorry: [/SnarkOFF] I guess if I was a concert-photographer, I would want to know about this limitation so I could plan around it. But isn't that the same as any other camera, regardless of price point?

BTW, I really like the photos you did make, even within the camera's limitations. I wonder if the answer to this isn't to use a fast RF lens like the C/V 35/1.2 and to avoid the autofocus issue altogether. Wouldn't prefocus work better in this situation anyway due to low light?

Even prefocus would be tough at very shallow DOF when band members are moving around a lot. It would be great for performers who are more static onstage. Norah Jones, Ray LaMontagne, Jann Arden and Sarah McLachlan come to mind. Bands, not so much. 😉

 

[Nikon Bob]

I already did switch to Nikon... 3 years ago - with the D700s I own. That's how I know how good and bad AF accuracy can be; even among the big players who "know" what they're doing in the game 🙂

Cheers,
Dave

If you are saying that the AF in a D700 can miss focus in dim light, I'll vouch for that. No AF system I have tried is perfect 100% of the time. On a lot of occasions the fault was mine for not having selected the correct AF configuration. It takes time to get to know a particular camera's AF system and have it properly set for the shooting conditions you are in.

Bob

 

[furcafe]

OK, never mind, then. 😉

Even the D700's vaunted AF has failed to impress me in low-light environments (& even Canonphiles acknowledge the shortcomings of the 5D, Marks I & II), all of which really makes me wish Leica would just get on w/it & put a good modern sensor in the M10.

I rechecked the camera settings and I had remembered to set the AF to area not multi. :0)It was exposure I hadn't changed to spot metering. Apologies for error. I too, use single spot AF for concert photography with my Nikons.

 

[dreilly]

How much does a camera body have to cost to actually work well out of the box? I mean, would it cost two grand a body to work for both Norah Jones AND Anti-flag?

(I know some of you find it working quite well for how you shoot. Good for you. But if Fuji techs are telling people that the "AF issue" will be fixed in future firmware upgrades, then the company is admitting they have released a horse from the starting gate that is simply not fit to race. Now Fuji corporate has to stand behind their tech and admit their charade, or say that the guy misspoke, and try to convince people like the OP that there's no problem at all. Tough position. That they stepped right into.)

 

[dreilly]

I found my D700 was excellent in low light. Perfect? No! But scary good. Just because you can find limitations in that system, doesn't mean that the camera that costs almost as much (X-1) isn't far far behind it.

 

[celluloidprop]

Also, I'll quickly note that the focussing speed will surely be upgraded through the next few firmware updates - the x100 started off as a slow focuser but after a few little updates it's truly quite impressive now. Focusses better than my 5d in most situations.

We don't know that, necessarily. The XP1 already has the benefit of the X100's year of firmware development. The X100 can also have AF optimized for a single, light lens.

 

[celluloidprop]

re: AF vs SLRs, I've never had a SLR with a fast prime that was legitimately slow to focus in low light from near to far using single point middle and recomposing. Not saying it was always dead on in accuracy, but everything from the Elan 7e to 5D to the D700 to my new 645N has been fast.

 

[furcafe]

Well, ideally the body would be free. 😀 I think people just have different expectations/definitions of "good" or acceptable AF. And as the OP or anyone who shoots shows knows, dark performance venues just happen to be 1 of the most demanding environments for autofocus. Per willie_901's post, anyone expecting the AF on these little cameras to perform the same as the AF on a big dSLR is fooling themselves. Size matters because accurate AF requires processing power, which requires space. I haven't been keeping up w/what Fuji has been saying about this, but shame on them if they actually led people to believe that the X-Pro1's AF would be as fast & accurate as a D700.

How much does a camera body have to cost to actually work well out of the box? I mean, would it cost two grand a body to work for both Norah Jones AND Anti-flag?

(I know some of you find it working quite well for how you shoot. Good for you. But if Fuji techs are telling people that the "AF issue" will be fixed in future firmware upgrades, then the company is admitting they have released a horse from the starting gate that is simply not fit to race. Now Fuji corporate has to stand behind their tech and admit their charade, or say that the guy misspoke, and try to convince people like the OP that there's no problem at all. Tough position. That they stepped right into.)

 

[Godfrey]

manual focus is the only way i've ever shot in conditions like that. more accurate, faster, etc. i only use AF with any camera for good light, happy snap conditions.

 

[Shade]

Great shots but I do agree with you regarding its focusing issues. I would hope Fuji would address this in the firmware upgrade.

 

[RealXenuis]

I'm not sure that having slower AF than a lot of cameras some people prefer means it's not "working quite well out of the box". There seems to be a lot more people who don't own the camera complaining that it's not a good camera than those who do. I wouldn't mind the focusing being the best of any camera ever made by human hands. I'd also like it to be a lot faster than it is now. But I can't say I've missed a shot with it. I do think that the motor/lens combo is slower than I'm used to nowadays. But I'd also not expect faster in low light (nor more accurate and decisive) and I'm not missing shots. That doesn't mean you shouldn't, but there are really not a lot of cameras around that handle that well, and I don't believe I've read anything from Fuji claiming as such.

How much does a camera body have to cost to actually work well out of the box? I mean, would it cost two grand a body to work for both Norah Jones AND Anti-flag?

(I know some of you find it working quite well for how you shoot. Good for you. But if Fuji techs are telling people that the "AF issue" will be fixed in future firmware upgrades, then the company is admitting they have released a horse from the starting gate that is simply not fit to race. Now Fuji corporate has to stand behind their tech and admit their charade, or say that the guy misspoke, and try to convince people like the OP that there's no problem at all. Tough position. That they stepped right into.)

 

[jsrockit]

There seems to be a lot more people who don't own the camera complaining that it's not a good camera than those who do.

Welcome to the internet. 😀

 

[jippiejee]

It's funny to observe how criticizing anything Fuji (and look at that price tag) gets so many so defensive of the products, that at best can be called beta. When something that just launched already gets posts about hoped-for firmware updates, there's something not totally right. But it's swearing in church to call it by its name. But the truth is this is an AF camera that doesn't do AF very well. Nor MF. For more than €2000 euro.

 

[gyuribacsi]

I have tested this camera in a shop like the OP did. No chance to get a shot in focus. I´m pretty disappointed because I was to buy it for night shots in clubs and bars where my friends playing music. So I´ll do my "quick and dirty" bar shots with a Leica M3 or a CLE in the future too. Metering the scene first, usually 1/8 sec. with f 4 and HP5, and klick it away.
George

 

[JHutchins]

Last night's Fuji adventure here was trying to photograph dancing. I found it fine for slower dances, not at all fine for lively ones. The only other autofocus system I've used to any extent, though, is a Contax G2 so I really haven't anything to make meaningful comparisons to. For me it's just "not fine" relative to some aspirational system that may or may not exist. It's faster than manual focus but that says little.

It was initially more frustrating since with manual focus you focus & the focus point stays put. With the Fuji it was refocusing every time. My solution: put it in manual focus mode & adjust to using the AF-L button to focus rather than the shutter button. I found that a more useable system. It's possible the time to focus lock is a bit longer that way but I see no reason it should be true and it may be my imagination.

 

[furcafe]

I didn't know you could focus using the AE-L/AF-L button, & definitely not in M(anual?) mode! There's nothing in the instruction manual about this feature (maybe it was lost in translation from the Japanese). Thanks for the discovery.

I was just complaining to a mutual friend how when the camera is set for S (& I think C) mode AF, pressing the AE-L/AF-L button (even when it's set for AF or AF + AE lock) doesn't actually focus the camera, you still have to 1/2-press the shutter release 1st & simultaneously push the AE-L/AF-L button to lock focus. Most inconvenient & counterintuitive compared to the G2 or any dSLR. Using this "autofocus while in ostensibly manual focus mode" method seems the most G2-like solution, though it does appear to be noticeably slower in focusing.

P.S., welcome to RFF.

Last night's Fuji adventure here was trying to photograph dancing. I found it fine for slower dances, not at all fine for lively ones. The only other autofocus system I've used to any extent, though, is a Contax G2 so I really haven't anything to make meaningful comparisons to. For me it's just "not fine" relative to some aspirational system that may or may not exist. It's faster than manual focus but that says little.

It was initially more frustrating since with manual focus you focus & the focus point stays put. With the Fuji it was refocusing every time. My solution: put it in manual focus mode & adjust to using the AF-L button to focus rather than the shutter button. I found that a more useable system. It's possible the time to focus lock is a bit longer that way but I see no reason it should be true and it may be my imagination.

 

[dreilly]

On people complaining about a camera they don't own: for months and months there have been threads littering RFF about a non-RF camera that was greeted as the second coming of Barnack by a bunch of people that had never touched or seen the brick itself. At one apex of the hype, someone even seriously wrote to the effect that "we don't know it doesn't have a mechanical rangefinder". How's that different than the current outcry? Well, now we have actual reports of performance limitations and a tacit admission by Fuji that all is not golden.

If someone wants to give me an X-1 Pro I'd be happy to test it out. I'm sure I would find it charming, like my X100. But until then, the religious overblown hype and the irrational defense of a not-fully-baked product whose AF won't allow the photog to take advantage of its great high ISO potential in critical situations will keep my dollars right where they are (owed to my credit card for other camera purchases, natch!) 🙂