CyclingBen

I had success using florescent lights going straight into the lens and putting some aluminum foil on the other side of the lens to reflect the UV back up through the rear element to remove some light fungus from the inside of a Super Tak,  

I also opened up and cleaned a Rokkor lens that had significant fungus with rubbing alcohol, a week long light treatment and then opening it back up to clean up the dried fungus.

The owner of the camera shop in my town recommended using this cleaner https://www.amazon.com/CleanSmart-Toy-Disinfectant-Spray-Bacteria/dp/B011ANDC78 which is normally used to clean kids toys.  I haven't tried it yet, but he's restored hundreds of lenses.

Some lens observations from the 2.0 obtains which finally coupled the IBIS to OIS.

10-24: wow, this lens is Olympus good now, simply amazing how good the stabilization is. As an extreme test, I followed my toddler around for about 10 minutes, and all of it, besides walking up the stairs, was excellent.

18-55: noticed a big difference in panning quality, no more floating image. Otherwise it’s a slight improvement.

55-200: not listed in the release as an improvement or upgrade. I’d say it improved at least as much as the 18-55.

18-135: got my personal one refurbished, exhchanged or fixed by Fuji USA... whoa. This is like shooting the 12-100 on the EM-1ii. The image quality is still lacking, but if you’re in decent light, handhold this all day long. 

Fuji did a great job on this update, makes the X-H1 a much better camera for video. There is something about this camera that is just more fun or easier to use than my work X-T3, maybe it’s because I like what I’m shooting more. 

@jonpais credit where credit is due. You were right, it’s a Sony sensor AND your ninja comment was great. 

Im surprised on both accounts (sorry for the backhanded compliment). The next Sony Apsc is going to be interesting, damn...

back to Fuji. The X-T3 is technically superior to almost everything out there. We are keeping our X-T3 at (American bicycle corporation based in Wisconsin), but personally I’m sending mine back. The video is excellent as long as your using a stabilized lens for handheld work. I’m not a big fan (enough to spend my own money on) of the Fuji zooms except for the 18-135 and 10-24 so the X-H1 will be my personal video cam along with the Olympus EM10iii for my everyday carry with me and document silly moments with my 1 year old. Both cams vs the XT3 over the past week, the XT3 quality is definietly better, but for personal stuff (travel, going to Chile again in February) I can’t justify the X-T3... yet. 

Back on topic, wow, Fuji basically went from nothing in the X-1 lineup to stellar in 5 years. Their engineers and designers are going to be poached by every camera manufacturer in the next 2 years. Expect them to level off for a year or two while they retool and rehire new talent for their camera division. Maybe that means the Canon wow r-t3 will finally be worth buying.

Fall is a beautiful time to fall in love

Best Buy had an open box Samsung t5 drive in the open box section when I went there Sunday... I bought it and plugged it into the X-T3 tonight for gits and shiggles. The X-T3 asked me how I would like to connect, I tried all the options and each time the camera would switch for a second and then the drive would power off. I’m not good enough with software/firmware coding, but it appears the USB-C is at least capable of connecting to external devices... hmmm

Another tip. If your in the US and even if you haven’t moved and have lived in your house for decades, go to the post office and file a change of address form or do it online for $1, put in your real address (new or not) as the new address. Identity thieves can open up credit card and bank accounts in your name and have the statements and other documents sent to different addresses and then use that address for future crimes.

By doing the change of address form USPS will forward every piece of mail with your name on it to your current address for six months, even those bank statements that were being sent out of state. 

Plus you get a 15% of moving coupon from Best Buy in the mail... who doesn’t need a new SD card or hard drive?

Wife has a security clearance and had info including fingerprints stolen from the OPM breach in 2014. Didn’t find anything until we moved in late 2015 and suddenly got statements for business credit card accounts with huge balances on them that were being sent to Florida.

@Mattias Burling it’s going to turn into “this camera doesn’t check all of the boxes, but I had an exclusive interview with XYZ manager and he/she said that this great feature is coming in the A7iii Xtra! So buy this camera now cause it’s awesome, and then upgrade to the next one too!!!! You’ll have two great cameras!”

Shooting a wedding tomorrow (just for a friend, not paid). I’m going to use the Mark III (mine) and the X-T3 (you know had to take it home and “optimize” it for work) I’ll post the results.

@jonpaisand @Brian Williams Theoria Apophasis / the Angry Photographer might be a bore to listen to, but  he does have 3 videos about setting up the X-T3 on his youtube site. I didn't know about the low contrast LCD setting until watching his setup.  Good info, but if you don't want to give him views there are others as well.

I think I found a better solution for cameras that don't have an audio input. It's compatible with all makes and models.  If you're a preppper or protester it has multiple uses.

Two things.

1) I think I figured it out, the exposure shift at higher ISO can be caused by two things. Peripherial light correct and dynamic range priority. With auto iso on and peripherial light correction on when the camera goes to 8000 iso there is a quick exposure bump that is not smooth. With this setting turned off, it didn’t happen in my little test. You can see this in the viewfinder and EVF as it happens. 

Dynamic range priority messes with exposure a lot, even if you have an iso value set. It pulls and pushes shadows and highlights regardless. I tried it in auto, strong and weak. I wouldn’t recommend using this setting if you’re in anything but continuous controlled lighting. Really, only use it for photos.

2) @Attila Bakos I’ve tried samsung 128gb uhs II cards, Sandisk 128gb cards and Sony 64gb cards that are on the approved list. I haven’t seen a difference in video mode at the highest data and quality settings. If I were shooting something I couldn’t redo on a paid shoot I would stick to the Sony cards for peace of mind but for everything else, just make sure it’s UHS II. For the sports preshot mode in photo, all cards worked but I noticed the buffer cleared significantly faster with the Sony cards. Couldn’t produce a lock up with any of the cards when I tried.

As an aside, the 18-135 did produce something funky the last time I used it. The EVF and LCD would slow way down and the shutter speed dial wouldn’t change. It didn’t stop until I took off the lens and put another one on. I was able to make it happen again by looking through the EVF and then taking my eye away and putting it back quickly. Only happened with my copy of the 18-135mm, no other lenses. I finally got through to Fujifilm USA technical services this morning on the phone and they are going to take a look at my copy of the lens. Hopefully it’s just a problem with my copy and not a widespread issue.

@Attila Bakos I guess I'm an internet celebrity!  Care to be the DP on my new reality series ?

It's smooth at everything but the higher ISOs on my X-T3.  I was messing around the other day in a dark room with only the fireplace and some decorative LEDs for lighting and noticed it when I had it in photo and video modes.  There is a slight jump or twitch between 6400 and 10000, but only seemed to happen when going up, not down. It's almost like 8000 ISO switches something else on, maybe its noise reduction or the flicker reduction (I'll try turning the flicker reduction on and off later to see if that makes a difference)?  I don't know what it is but it has an almost fill flash effect in video and in the EVF / LCD. 

For my use case it's not a big deal at all, but if you're going from a well lit area to a dimly lit area it could mess up a shot (going from the outside of church into a sanctuary, or walking into a cave, etc).  I wish Fuji had a Kaizen submission site of some kind where we could upload examples of things happening to give the software designers better examples.  Their feedback process is quite lacking since contacting customer service has to go through 3 or 4 levels before it ever gets to the right department.

@Attila Bakos  You're quite the investigator...?

There are two issues at hand and you / we are merging both of them. 

1) The X-H1 would make an exposure shift when in Auto ISO or any selected ISO number for no apparent reason, even if the lighting didn't change, apparently it was due to auto focus trying to do some funky contrast detection.

2) The X-H1 had jumpy Auto ISO transitions

The firmware update fixed both of these issues, however auto ISO on the X-T2, X-T3 and X-H1 still isn't 100% super smooth throughout the range.  It's not like slowly turning a variable ND filter or turning the aperture on a cinema lens.  At higher ISO it seems to skip an ISO value or two (bewtween 6400 and 12800).  Lower ISO values it's smooth and doesn't skip.

Issue #1 is not present at all in the X-T3.  I may have been mistaken reading between the lines along with Matthias that this is what you were talking about because you said "it was back". 

5 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

My point is that having these bad ISO transitions looks to be a step back, since this problem was fixed via firmware 1.10 on the X-H1.
It would be great if someone from here tested this though.

They did fix it and it wasn’t iso shifting that was the problem, it was an exposure compensation shift, even if exposure comp was turned off, to help the camera focus. Why Fuji would think that’s a good idea in the first place I have no idea.

In the linked video, that is auto ISO being used. If you set the ISO to a specific value you won’t see that happen. It was one thing I checked right away with the X-T3, it was terrible on the original X-H1 firmware.

@nigelbb The E-M10 Mark III doesn't have a crop in 4k.  I've been messing around with mine for the past two weeks and it's been a good experience. 

There are a few annoyances as far as controls go; No way to zoom in to check focus and have peaking on at the same time, no way to zoom in to check focus while recording, you have to assign peaking to a button and it's not on by default so you have to turn it on each time you turn the camera on, have to use the touch screen to change ISO once recording, no way to do custom white balance in movie mode, there is a splash screen that comes up every time you switch to movie mode and you have to select a mode (HD, 4K, Slow Motion or quick clips).

Otherwise I personally like it a lot, IBIS is great, the autofocus for photos is really good (not great for video) and surprisingly the battery lasts for a quite a while. The 4K that comes out of it is beautiful with some excellent colors.

@jonpais Awesome. Have a good one bud.

@jonpais we get it, you don’t like Fuji, and love Sony. I love Sony too, their broadcast cameras are awesome, if I still worked in broadcast I wouldn’t want anything else. To be fair, if I had your prior poor experience with Fuji I wouldn’t like them either moving forward. I feel the same way about Panasonic for hybrid cameras (really like their broadcast offerings though).

In response:

First, obviously look at both camera bodies. The specs are what I was talking about.

Second, no one thought Panasonic would go full frame, yet here we are. I agree, Fuji will stay with apsc until smartphones catch up and their medium format might always be a niche product, sorry for being hyperbolic.

Sensor wise, it’s different than any other Fuji sensor. So either:

1. Sony completely changed their design

2. Fuji redid their X-trans color array (although the GFX50 R and S don’t have X-trans and are almost the same as the X-H1, X-T2, etc when it comes to colors and expected performance for noise and ISO)

3. Samsung made the sensor and Fuji mirrored the specs of the NX1

4. BSI makes way more of a difference than we (me at least) thought

5. Canon made the sensor and accidentally sent them to Fuji instead of putting it in the R. (Note this is sarcasm)

I’ll leave these frame exports here, from the X-T3, NX1 and A73.

120fps on the X-T3 compared to the NX1 is the difference in three years of development.

Fuji clearly took what Samsung did and said “give me that, but add some whip cream, not a cherry or any nuts or sprinkles though, we will save that for the next one *wink* *wink*”

NX1 is still really really good though and if you have one, you’re still set for 2-3 years. If not, buy an X-T3 and wait until Fuji drops APSC for medium format eventually.

@Emanuel I've used the 35mm, 18-55mm, 18-135 and 55-200mm in face tracking on an actual project.  The 35mm is definitely the fastest and best at tracking, maybe a little too fast, 18-55 and 55-200mm are really good at tracking.  The 18-135mm seems to be the most natural and smoothest at focusing and is just a hair slower than the 35mm, it's too bad the aperture is variable and on the slower side.

@androidlad yep, it’s all face tracking. Any other features I can review for you?

@Anaconda_ yes it is. I was impressed

Screengrab from today’s shoot at Trek with the X-T3. 35mm F2, Acros. If I can share actual video legally, I will. Cyclocross footage competition is simply the best I’ve seen since the first time I shot with the C100 5 or 6 years ago. Auto focus worked really well, not perfect, not canon PDAF, but really really good. 

Here is the exact opposite of a race track... Eterna 400DR

@androidlad no, there really isn’t a reason to unless shooting F-Log.

Here are some samples that I've been able to take in my limited amount of time at home the last few days.  All shot with the 18-55mm. Most of it is in 4k h.265 10 bit the rest is 120fps 10 bit. I did do a touchscreen focus test as requested. I also made sure to put in some annoying stock music ?