X-Pro first morning's shooting - thoughts and lots of samples

[Steveh]

So I just got back from a morning in the centre of Cambridge with the X-Pro 1, 35mm and 18mm. Short verdict - not perfect, but very very good indeed, and my M8 will be going up for sale this weekend.

The camera is probably quirkier if you've not used an X series camera before, but coming from an X100 it's pretty intuitive. The slightly larger size suits me as I have quite big hands. Otherwise I found myself using it pretty much like I use the X100 - aperture priority, eye sensor on, and using the screen on the back probably 75% of the time and EVF for most of the rest (sacrilege 😱). The feel of the controls is very good, and I love the sound of the shutter, which is a very soft "thwup" - a bit like a Pentax K5 without the mirror slap. The Quick menu is a huge boost in usability as well - really useful for quickly adjusting things like ISO and film settings.

As everyone has said the 35mm is stellar, the 18mm clearly not as good but seems more than good enough for most of what I need it for - I've added a couple of "torture test" shots below where you can see its flaws but generally I was pretty pleasantly surprised. General image quality is superb - all of the samples below are pretty much straight out of camera with only a tiny bit of sharpening and levels adjustment plus whatever nasties Flickr does to them. The colours look great to me, and exposures were generally spot on, dynamic range is very good too. The detail in the originals goes on and on.

Now to the flaws:

- "aperture chatter" - I was half expecting this to be internet hysteria, but no, it really does it, it's quite noticeable and if you were something like a theatre photographer it would drive you crazy I imagine. I found that just wandering around I got used to it very quickly. The 18 seems less noisy than the 35. And it goes away when you turn the camera off.

- focusing - about the same as the X100 - good enough for 99% of what I do but quite slow and quite noisy - a bit of grinding noise on the 35mm as well but having seen the results I don't really care!

- inaccurate framelines - not a big deal for me as I don't use the OVF that much but there's a LOT of room around the framelines and they seemed less accurate than the X100 to me. I suspect Fuji will tighten them up in firmware if they get enough user feedback (and I'm guessing they will 😀).

Those are the only things I really picked up on in three hours of solid use, and this camera is a definite keeper. Probably the first camera I've ever owned I could actually imagine using for almost everything I do.

 

[Steveh]

35mm first. First shot in Velvia mode, the rest in Standard. The detail in the full size version of the first shot is amazing. I've shot the postboxes with a D700 with 24-70 and an M8 with 28mm Elmarit and this is sharper and more detailed than either of them.

 

[Steveh]

Then the 18mm - on the fulll size version of the last shot you can see some purple fringing and blur in the trees, but this was really bad flarey light, with lots of haze/fog in the air. Otherwise it was better than I'd feared from some of the online comments. I haven't tortured it wide open yet though:

 

[cincyMAT]

Thanks for taking the time to post your photos. I'm still waiting for the camera to be released here in the States. Pictures like these make the wait even harder!

Did you get the 60mm lens too? I thinking I'd get the 35 and the 60 and use the Kipon adapter for wide angle work until Fuji releases their 23mm. However, your 18mm shots look very good to me.

 

[Steveh]

Yes, I got the 60 as well but I haven't opened it yet as the returns policies here are stricter than in the US so I wanted to make sure I was going to keep the rest of the kit first. Will give it a try this afternoon!

The 18mm looks pretty usable to me unless you want to spend your time pixel-peeping in the corners. You can see some purple fringing in branches etc. against the sky in some of the shots I took today but the sky was very bright, white and hazy at times so those were probably as bad as its going to get in terms of practical conditions. I'm certainly going to keep it for now although I might take another look when the zoom(s) come out depending on how they perform. It's clearly a notch or two below the 35mm and the lens on the X100 but those are both really superb.

The sensor seems fantastic so I think Leica/Zeiss lenses on it could be quite an appealing prospect.

Thanks for taking the time to post your photos. I'm still waiting for the camera to be released here in the States. Pictures like these make the wait even harder!

Did you get the 60mm lens too? I thinking I'd get the 35 and the 60 and use the Kipon adapter for wide angle work until Fuji releases their 23mm. However, your 18mm shots look very good to me.

 

[dcsang]

Those look incredibly beautiful.

Specifically, looking at the first 18mm shot - the tonality is very very good imho. I'm no pixel peeper but man, that holds up well against just about any other camera - at least against my D700's at this size at least.

Hmmm... my plan was to wait... maybe I will... maybe I won't.. *LOL*

Thanks for the photos Steve and your brief analysis based on your shooting 🙂

Cheers,
Dave

 

[lynnb]

Steve even with these web size jpegs the image quality looks very good indeed. Thank you for putting them up with your impressions of the camera and lenses. I think this is going to be a very hot thread!

 

[Steveh]

Thanks guys - I don't remember the last time i shot straight Jpegs but yes these look pretty good to me as well, and certainly comparable to what I get out of the D700. The lighting on the shot of the arches is quite tricky and as far as I can see it's spot on in terms of shadow detail. Dave, I agree with you on the colours and tonality as well. This is going to be an exciting voyage of discovery - another couple of weeks and we should have enough critical mass for a proper images thread!

 

[dcsang]

I'm not looking at these on my calibrated monitor but on my laptop but I don't think the blacks are getting "blocked up" as they may in other digital images - not a testament to the lenses but definitely to how Fuji seems to be able to deal with the dynamic range - which is a very good thing as it becomes, in my opinion at least, more "film like".

Then again, I shouldn't be surprised since Fuji's old SLRs (S5 for example) had REALLY good dynamic range for its time/era.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[cincyMAT]

On my calibrated monitor, the next to last 18mm photo looks very "film-like". Smooth transitions from dark to light. Bright greens not overpowering everything else. Very nice.

 

[David_Manning]

Looks terrific. Looks like a great day in Cambridge, too...I think I see a reflecting in the postboxes of a guy in shorts and flip flops!

Congrats on the new kit.

 

[willie_901]

Your photographs are lovely. I enjoyed viewing them over my morning coffee.

Thanks

 

[BobYIL]

Thank you for posting.. The first thing striking to the eye: Saturated but not "exaggerated" colors; even the first one looks more balanced than the Velvia 50. Now I can imagine how you will be able to create some exciting tones during PP.

At a convenience please post some crops (especially corners) out of the frames shot with the 18mm.

 

[Shade]

I agree with you regarding the lens chatter, this also hapens to the olympus and perhaps panasonic line, I wonder why the chattet is neccessary, or why couldnt they find a way to silience it. I have just got mine two days ago, and took it for a stroll yesterday and today. A few pics are up on my blog.

Another thing I hate is Fuji is using their own RAF format instead of the universal dng.

 

[Steve M.]

Ya'll are going to have to stop posting photos from these Fuji digital cameras! I don't even like digital, and I don't shoot color, but wow, maybe I should get one of these and try. The files look as good as what I've seen from an M8.

 

[Shade]

Steve, Im using the x pro 1 as my second body to my m9, and I must tell you that the results are ver pleasing. Moreover.. The Fuji will be a pleasant change too, and perhaps a certain upgrade to the m8 imho..

 

[Steveh]

Bob, you're pushing me to new heights of geekiness - I just had to work out how to do a 100% crop.

Let's start with the good stuff - centre crops from two of the 35mm shots - check out the detail in the stonework two thirds of the way down in the first one:

Now one from the top right corner with the 18 which I think is ok:

And the not so good - side left and top right from the bottom 18mm shot - as I said up thread the lighting was very bright and very hazy so I thnk the auto DR has pulled a lot of detail out of the buildings on the left which makes it worse - to the naked eye they were almost in silhouette.

 

[rasterdogs]

Thanks for the fine photographs.
...and even for the pixel peeping.

As someone else commented, you are making it even harder for those of us in the US to continue waiting...and waiting...and waiting. But do please continue.

🙂

Oh, I ordered the 18 with the camera and later the 35. I concur with your comments about the usability of the 18. I could be wrong but I doubt it.
-Rasterdogs

 

[BobYIL]

Now one from the top right corner with the 18 which I think is ok:

And the not so good - side left and top right from the bottom 18mm shot - as I said up thread the lighting was very bright and very hazy so I thnk the auto DR has pulled a lot of detail out of the buildings on the left which makes it worse - to the naked eye they were almost in silhouette.

Steve, thank you so much!

The 35mm has proven itself to be a great lens ( 😀 not cropping out of the corners, no problem though..).

The 18mm however, I do not think you shot them at full or near-full aperture. Anyway, smearing although obvious is not severe however the CA around the edges is disturbing. (CA should not be a big issue at all, easy to eliminate during PP).

Have you ever met somewhere mentioning about offset microlenses on the RGB erray? I haven't... Perhaps the wide-angle smearing is due to the lack of them whereas one thing is for sure: When they introduce the 23/2 this year it certainly would perform faultless.

Regards,

Bob

 

[Steveh]

My pleasure Bob - think of this as a bit of public service for those of you who have to wait another week or two!

Just been playing around with the 60mm in the fading light here and it looks like a great lens - sharp corner to corner even wide open. Now I know how to do 100% crops, here's one straight out of camera with the 60 wide open at 1600 ISO - I normally don't care much about high ISO performance but this looks pretty impressive to me. It would be sharper without the slight camera shake and that looks to me like a tiny bit of jaggies on the wrinkle under the eye. The full picture is gorgeous - beautiful rendering and colours, really impressive stuff.