Among some photographers there is a certain pride in delivering pictures right out of the box – referred to as SOOC, meaning straight out of camera. But for many reasons I think the SOOC concept is quite silly and in my mind, is an illusion.
The most important thing to get right and straight out of your camera is exposure and framing.. (and shutter speed, ISO and aperture).

If you get that right, you have the best possible material to work with because you don’t have to crop your image or push your files too much in the exposure department. If you have the basics nailed, then there is less work to do afterwards.

If you on top of that, have a camera that produces very nice JPG images, that are processed with the cameras internal computer, then you have even lesser work to do. And if your camera have superior image processing and even allows you to edit your pictures in the camera, then you only need a computer to transfer the images to a printer or to post them online.

My point is that, even in analog photography, SOOC is an illusion. There is so much processing going on from choosing film or film simulation to developing, that processing your pictures is an integral part of photography. It just is!

Lets embrace that picture processing or color grading, as it is called in the world of cinema, is a natural part of photography. How should we use color grading and why?

Why color grade?

When we experience a scene in real life, we experience it with all our senses.  As a photographer we make a choice of what to leave out of the scene by framing what the camera and lens allows us to, while the restrictions of the photographic media leaves out anything but a 2 dimensional reproduction of our experience.

As the photographer we have the power to enhance the emotions we had when we were there. If the sky was bright blue, it certainly felt more blue, than we see on the raw file from the camera. So we push the blue colours a bit to make the sky feel as we felt, when we think of the situation. If it was a positive experience, we might enhance the warm colours, the reds and oranges, even if it makes peoples skin way more tanned than they actually were. If it was a gruesome scene, we might go for harsh contrast and maybe even black and white. We use color grading to enhance the emotions we want to communicate. We make the choice of colours support the story.

The LED Nightmare

Quite often you run into situations where whatever you have to shoot, is lid up by first generation LED lights, which is a nightmare. It is possible to land the colours correctly by using a custom white balance when a simple Kelvin setting won’t cut it.

But if you are a videographer and you have a camera that isn’t suited to difficult situations like that, you are basically screwed. Then you REALLY have to rely on your color correction skills.

These pictures are a before and after shoot of a dance performance, where the group was lid up by LED’s that basically made them all look purple. It was shot with a DJI Osmo. Setting the Kelvin on that device just didn’t do anything remotely to help the crappy lighting conditions. It was a worst case of Bad LED’s, horrific colors and not much light at all. It was shot at ISO 1600 at 1/50 SS and F/2.8

So, I had to dig up all the  tricks to make it work. When the footage was corrected I chose to use a LUT (Color Look Up Table), that resembles the Hollywoody teal and orange look, to bring back something that looked a bit like skin color. The end result was much better than I could’ve hoped for.

Without colour grading/correction, it would have been a lost cause…

The different looks

The “natural” look

There are different approaches to image processing. Some photographers prefer to go for a very “natural” look, which means that the picture have to look as non processed as possible. The thing I’ve noticed about that, is that “natural” means with a dynamic range that their camera sees, not what the human eye sees.  So those pictures, that you often see in the sports section of magazines are quite contrasty. The colours are vivid but the darks are way darker than the human eye and brain perceives the image in real life.

The Black and Whites

Choosing black and white is a huge “processing” choice. Not only have we left out anything but a crop framed, 2 dimensional, frozen in time moment. We’ve also chosen to leave out colour. We’ve left out anything that we didn’t want to interfere with our intention with the image.

The hipstermatics

Embracing toy camera faults, faded colors, light streaks and anything “wrong” with photography, you get the very popular look of the internet today. I think that people likes it, because even the most boring picture will get an injection of visual pleasure, when you add a lot of color effects to it. And why not? If it makes you stare at the picture, it has done its job well.

The High Dynamic Range

Used subtly it can enhance landscapes and city skylines greatly, but it is very easily overdone, where the colours ends up looking like coloured LED lights way too saturated and the image becomes flat, because there are no shadows left to shape the objects in the picture.

The FX look

Often seen in advertising and american football. It’s a certain almost cartoonish style. As any look it can be very effective but also very easily overdone.

The Cinematic look

This is quite a broad term. Cinematic look is mostly a ratio thing. Super wide pictures fit for the Cinema screen have muscled its way into many websites as banners and background images.

But it is also a colour thing, where colours are manipulated to be a big part of the story. If you’ve seen the film: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, you might have noticed that the colours of the different scenes, directly relates to the lead characters state of mind. When he is in his “dull” working life, the colours and the scenes are quite cold. Mostly cold blue with the shadows tinted towards green. But as his character develops, so does the grading. The colours change and become more vivid and warm to support the story.

The beauty shot

There are so many incredible skilled photographers whose pictures are outstanding. But in my mind there’s a couple of bad habits that I wish publishers and photographers would change.

Skin retouch… There are too many pictures of women and men, with skin that looks like plastic. Skin texture varies and the skin over the eyes are not the same texture as on the chin or on the forehead. In a lot of model shots, the skin texture are the same all over, which makes the model look like an alien.

Check out Fries Before Guys podcast (Danish)

I have nothing against skin retouching. If the model has a mole, you might not want the viewer to stare at that mole, so you might tone it down a bit or completely remove it. But making skin into a single textured entity, looks really weird.

Then there’s the whole body thing, were the model are being made thinner in photoshop. I wish nobody would do that. Learn to pose your model, and you can do a lot that way. Your model might even learn to embrace themselves and their body. But this is another matter and doesn’t really have anything to do with colours.

Happy shooting

Inspired by my own post… (it actually happens) I’ll post a series of heavier graded images, starting with one. Bookmark this page and follow this space for more images to come.

There have been quite a few attempts to explain depth of field and its relation to sensor size. I will try to explain why shooting with different “crop factors” and how it relates to depth of field, framing and background compression, is a different experience on different sensor size cameras.

Depth of field are the same on any camera no matter its sensor size… almost.

Many have the belief that larger sensors also have a shallower depth of field. But that isn’t true. Actually the opposite is true. If you put a 50mm lens with an aperture of F/2 on a MFT, APSC, Full Frame and Medium Format camera, take a picture from the exact same distance. The D.O.F. (depth of field) will be almost exactly the same.

But because of the smaller pixels on the small sensor, the circle of confusion will be smaller, and therefore the D.O.F. will be slightly narrower. But this is not what makes the big difference between shooting crop and full frame.

What affects the D.O.F.?

The short answer is distance. The closer you focus, the narrower the D.O.F. The further you are from your  focusing point, the deeper the depth of field.

You might have tried to shoot macro, and even on F/8 or F/11 the depth of field are so narrow that you have to stack more pictures into one, if you want the whole subject sharp.

If you’ve tried to shoot landscapes and focuses say 5 meters away from you with an F/2.8, everything from about 3 meters and further away, are perfectly sharp.

So if you have a “cheap” kit lens with an F stop above 4 and envy those who have those expensive wide open lenses that goes down to F/1.0. Get closer to your subject, and you will experience the same shallow depth of field. Only thing you will miss, is more light.

There are more ways than one, to alter your D.O.F.

You can move closer by moving your feet and moving in on the subject you want to focus on. You can attach a tele lens which will count as moving closer or you can zoom in, if you have a zoom lens. The closer you get, the longer the zoom, the longer the tele, the narrower the D.O.F. if you use the same F stop value.

If you decrease your F/stop value, the narrower the D.O.F.

The lowest F/stop value is the largest opening through the lens. allowing maximum light to pass on to the sensor.

You can increase the distance from your subject by either physically walking away from your subject or you can choose a lens width a wider field of view, which also counts as making a larger distance between you and your subject. Or you can zoom out, if you have a zoom lens. The further away, the wider the D.O.F. If you increase your f stop value, the wider the D.O.F.

Crop factor

Crop factor is easily explained. It is the size of your frame. If you pick up different sizes of old school frames for paintings and hold them on an arms length and look through them. The largest frame can be compared to a medium format camera. The mid sized frame can be compared to a full frame camera, the smaller frame can be compared to the APSC camera, and the small frame, which is half the size of a full frame, can be compared to the MFT camera.

The larger the frame, the more you can see of the scene, the smaller the frame the less you see of the scene. It is that simple.

The tricky part is when you try to compensate for the framing, by moving further away with the small sensor camera. Then the optical principles are no longer the same and shooting the same scene, framing the same, with different sensor sizes, will be different experiences. And your pictures will not look the same as with the full frame or medium format camera.

The forgotten element

What everyone seems to have forgotten, is the optical compression.

If you want a picture of the moon next to some very large buildings, and want that moon to look very big. You have to make that moon look relatively large in comparison to the buildings. Therefore you will have to physically move away from the buildings, until the buildings look relatively small in comparison to the moon. The moon is so far away, that it will seem the same size to your eye, no matter how far away you are from it (if you are still on this earth). But the buildings that are much closer to you, will quickly appear smaller, the further you move away from them.

When the Moon look large enough in comparison to the buildings, you lift the camera up to your eye, and then you have to do one more thing. You have to mount the longest tele you have, to properly frame the picture. If you use a wide angle lens, the scene with the buildings and the relatively large moon, will seem equally small. But if you zoom in close from the distance, you will get that epic shot of a super moon, that are so large that it dwarfs the buildings.

If you move in close, and shoot the same thing with a wide angle lens, the buildings will appear much larger in comparison to the moon. And that was not what we were looking for at all.

So we’ve established that a long tele, will be able to compress the background, so it looks comparably larger to the foreground, than it would using a wide angle lens. If we frame the same portion of the scene.

Lets say that we did the above exercise with a medium format camera, but now stand in the same spot with an APSC size camera. Now the only difference is, that we will see almost 4 times less in the frame, as if we were looking out of a smaller window. The compression is the same, the relation between the size of the moon and the buildings are the same, but it takes up much more space in the frame. So what do we do? If we move away, the relation between the moon and buildings will change again, but we will be able to fit the same scene as the medium format camera and because we move away again, the buildings will now appear even smaller in comparison to the moon than before. It will make the moon look larger.

We tend to frame the same

If we translate the above exercise to shooting portraits, most photographers tend to frame portraits more or less the same. Using an 85mm lens at F/2 on a full frame is pretty standard for portraits. On an APSC you’d probably use a 5omm lens for the same thing. (Fuji’s 56mm is a good choice) and on a MFT camera you’d use a 42mm for the same sort of framing.

To frame the picture the same, all three cameras would require approximately the same distance. But because of the different focal length, you’d have to compensate to get the same depth of field. You’d do that by using a lower F – stop number. Lets hope that you have one of the great Voigtländer F/0.95 lenses on the MFT camera, else you won’t be able to get the same narrow “only eyes sharp” depth of field. If the full frame guy steps down to 1.4, you are toast on the other sensor sizes.

The medium format guy, wouldn’t care much about it. He’d probably use a 120mm lens, and get the greatest narrow depth of field and softest sharpness to bokeh fall off, using F/4  close to where any lens performs the absolute best.

But now take a look at the background

If you inspect the pictures from the above exercise, you will notice that the background is different. The longer focal length compresses the background more and gets less of it in the frame than the APSC and the MFT. It’s the moon thing – the more tele, the closer the background appears. A tele lens will also distort the subject less than a wide angle lens, no matter what it is attached to.

A 50mm on a medium format and on a MFT sensor camera, will always perform as a 50mm lens. Only difference is how much of the scene you can fit inside the frame.

With the medium format camera, you can get close with a tele, and see more of the scene, while your background appears closer and more blurred out, without you having to take the picture from a mile away, with a tele lens.

Atmospheric disturbance

Being physically closer to your subject also means that the light photons reflected from the skin of your subject will have to travel a lesser distance through the atmosphere. The further the physical distance to your subject, the more stuff will be in between the sensor and what you are photographing. Heatwaves, dust particles, moist, haze and so on, which in some way or the other will affect the light reflected from your subject to your lens. In real life, there won’t be much of a difference, if you are in a studio. But if you are outside and half a mile away with a 600mm lens, there will be quite a difference from being closer with a 50mm lens.

Getting closer means you get less hazy shots, richer colours, brighter pictures, better sharpness and detail, more nuances and so forth. You get more photons to reach your sensor cleanly without being disturbed and diffracted by the atmosphere and the lens itself.

If you combine that with a really good and large sensor, with a great lens, set at the best setting for the least amount of diffraction at around F/4 to F/5.6, in a well lit environment, then everything is perfect.

Embrace what you have and use it

Digital photography has come to a level of quality that is quite incredible. Yes analog film is charming and such, but is no way close to the image quality of modern day sensors.

Analog film prints well but cannot compete against digital sensors, when watched full size on a screen. When we start to down scale and put our pictures on Instagram with its minuscule picture size, anything goes. It is hard to spot the difference between iPhone pics and those taken on a large sensor. But if we need to use our pictures professionally and when we set high demands for how we want the pics to end up, then we need a tool that fits the job.

Shooting with different sensor sizes is a different experience, that is just the way it is. When taking everything into account, it makes no sense to try to mimic anything but what you have in your hand. It only makes sense to capture great pictures.

Stick with what you’ve got and use it to the best of your ability. It is all about passion and having fun.

But then again – if Fujifilm makes a medium format camera, I will lust for it and maybe sell a kidney to get my hands on it.

The Fujifilm X-Pro2 has gotten dual SD slots and have been moved from the battery compartment to the side. The lid is solid and will stay in shape. Slot number 1 is a UHS II read/write, where slot number 2 is  a regular read/write slot. Fuji didn’t have enough space for two UHSII slots. But don’t worry, the X-Pro2 will read and write to your old cards as well. But if you want the camera to be able to unload from the buffer to the card super fast, you should consider buying UHSII cards. Especially if you want to use the X-Pro2 for video as well as stills.

New FN button on the front lever

Yes, you have an extra FN button ingeniously hidden in the OVF/EVF lever. By default it is assigned to showing frame lines in the OVF. But you can set it up for anything the X-Pro2 will allow you to. I use it for “Preview Exposure and White balance in manual mode”, because I often go back and forth between using flash and ambient light.

The frame line review is pretty smart though. If you are in doubt of what prime to use in a given situation, you switch the frame lines on and evaluate your framing and pick the prime lens that fits the bill.

The smartest OVF on any camera

It’s a bold statement, but it is true. Those who knows the OVF from the Fujifilm X100T knows what I’m on about. Apart from having accurate frame lines, that aligns itself depending on how close you focus, you can also add an EVF into the frame. It can show the whole frame or a zoomed view by pushing the data wheel on the back of the camera.

When is a good situation for using OVF?

If you shoot sports, say boxing or dance or any dynamic scene. You’d like to see if you take the picture at exactly the right time. When the boxer connects or the dancer strikes a pose you’d like. If you use the EVF, you know that you might have squeezed the shutter at the right time if you don’t see the pose or the strike. Because cameras go black while it captures light to the sensor. But using the OVF will allow you to watch if the pose or strike lands with the noise of the shutter and you will be able to see if anything or anyone is about to enter the frame, because you have space outside the frame lines.

A few knobs do more than it seems

The ISO wheel is inside the Shutter speed dial. Exactly like the old SLR and Rangefinder cameras. I.E. the Minolta CLE. You lift up the outer ring and choose your ISO value. It is pretty neat and makes the X-Pro2 stick to the look of an old camera.

On the old film cameras, you picked the ISO at most at every 36 pictures When changing film. Using a digital camera, you use that way more often. So it will take som getting used to. I have no complaints, it is pretty easy.

The exposure wheel now goes to five. Well it goes to three, and then you will go to the menu to decide what the C position will be. An exposure compensation wheel is very handy when shooting in aperture or shutter speed priority or in auto mode. If you quickly have to adjust for a wrong exposure metering or if you shoot against the light.

I don’t use it much though. I’ve gotten used to the manual mode, where shutter speed and aperture is king.

Huge improvement in the menu department

Software design has never really been Fuji’s strong point. But they’ve made the X-Pro2’s menusystem a gazillion times better and way more intuitive by using icons.

You can also design your own menu, aptly called “my menu”. It’s only active if you’ve put something in it, and if you have, you will always enter that menu first, when you press the menu button.

A hint: If you want to explore the buttons on a Fujifilm camera, hold them down until something happens. There is a lot of hidden shortcuts on these cameras.

A little praise for the X-Pro2 and Fujifilm

I know that there’s a big chance of you, dear reader, suspecting me of being biased. I am an X Photographer, but I’m not in any way paid for my opinions. I chose to use Fuji’s X cameras in 2011 and haven’t looked back since. I’ve connected to these cameras for many reasons.

Fujifilm cameras are small

So are many other cameras. But the size are combined with old school intuitive and tactile knobs and wheels and very impressive overall picture quality.

They look great

People ask about you camera and become interested. That gives you a lot of opportunities as a photographer. It looks great – if you like the retro looks – and if your camera looks great it commits you not to suck and to live up to the aesthetics of the camera.

A dead giveaway of the infatuation with the Fuji cameras are that you tend to photograph your camera a bit more than owners of other brands. Quite a bit actually – often referred to as “gear porn”. It’s a nerd thing I guess.

They are silent and stealthy

Fujis doesn’t make a lot of noise. When I get a new camera, the first thing i do is set it to dead silent. The focal plane shutter system in the X-Pro2 is very quiet but sounds fantastic. Kind of suppressed, but with a nice chunk. It is beyond me, why Fuji has put in an electronic shutter sound, for when you are using the electronic shutter. It sound like you are stepping on an egg or a tiny nut. If I use the electronic shutter, it is because it has no sound or if I need a superfast shutter.

I’ve heard many stories, where the Fuji guy got to take all the great pics on a film set, because the other guy with the big ass DSLR, just made too much noise.

Unobtrusiveness is the key

Image quality

Fuji have made analog film for years and they know a thing or two about colours and image quality. JPG’s directly out of the camera don’t need much work if any. That’s why I like it for product shoots. I really dislike doing postwork on 1.000 pictures of boring items. Using the JPG’s from my Fuji – I don’t have to.

The new X Trans III sensor in the X-Pro2 is 24MP at 6.000 x 4.000 pixels. And the RAW files are fantastic out of the box. Makes post work so much easier.

Fujinon lenses

Fujifilm are masters of glass. They’ve among others produced lenses for Hasselblad and Zeiss and have a long tradition with broadcast lenses that costs as much as a house. These guys know how to make great glass.

If you’ve ever shot with what Fuji calls a “Kit lens” the XF18 – 55 zoom lens with OIS. You know what I’m on about. That is one very high quality zoom and surpasses any other “kit lens” I’ve ever tried, by far.

I like old analog vintage lenses and uses them quite a bit. These pictures are shot with the X-T1 and a Voigtlander Nokton 50mm F/1.5. I love that lens.

But if you need a modern autofocus glass, Fuji makes some of the best and for a price many times lower, than what you can compare them to.

I know I sound like a fan boy, and I might be. I have a tendency to really like tools that does the job, and also are very pleasing to work with.

I hope you can forgive me for my enthusiasm.

The Fujifilm X-Pro2 is simply put, one hell of a beautiful performer.

The magnificent Cathedral Sagrada Familia, initiated and thought up in the clever mind of Antoni Gaudí, leaves me breathless even thinking about it.

Often religious buildings have a tendency to bring you down with a heavy dark ages feeling. They stand tall and powerful with an architecture that strikes fear into those it is supposed to submit. Sagrada Familia is nothing like that, not at all.

I have yet to experience the feeling from Sagrada Familia in any other cathedral. For the first time in my life i felt truly uplifted when walking around in this incredibly beautiful Cathedral.

It seems so alien like but still very friendly and loving. The principles of Antoni Gaudí are that no pillars in nature are straight, and all lines and patterns are continous. He brought this principle into all his projects and it truly sets him apart from anyone else.

I brought my Fujifilm X-T1 and tried the best to capture this magnificence. If you get anywhere near Barcelona, buy a ticket online and visit Sagrada Familia. You will not be disappointed.

The danish winter is mostly grey and dark. Here is seldom snow, it’s mostly overcast and the sun goes down 15.30 when it is the darkest. Fortunately we are approaching lighter times and go to dark in the late afternoon now.

The sparse photons

There isn’t much light in the north. I mean, the amount is different than closer to equator. Less photons and therefore less color. I think that is why every single camera manufacturer shoots all their advertising and test pictures near the equator, where colours are vivid and the light is plenty.

The lack of light makes the Scandinavians prone to melancholia. We are supposed to be the happiest people in the world, but we also have a world record in consuming antidepressants.

Photographers often moan about the light. It’s either harsh, there is too little, there is too much, too much contrast… I’m guilty as well… Moaning about the light.

Advice to those who don’t need it

A fellow X-Photographer Jonas Rask, although being a very postive and energetic guy, complained to me about the lack of light in the wintertime. I told him to embrace it… I’m not sure where that came from, as I’m a bit of a complainer myself. But out it came and it actually sounded wise…

I felt a bit weird giving advice to such a talented photographer as Jonas, but hey… when you get the chance, grab it.

Following your own advice

So when I go out there, looking at the big and dull mass of  grey and faded colours. I now have to follow my own advice, instead of complaining. I have to embrace this dullness and make something out of it.

Fortunately, I’m walking around with a Fujifilm X-Pro2 dangling from my neck. I’ve learned that the RAW files are excellent. But I also know that the JPG’s will bring you far.

It is so sharp that you don’t have to

I’ve been spending quite some time, changing my presets from quite a solid bit of sharpening to next to no sharpening at all. Sharpening is no longer a thing you’ll spend time on, if you decide to get yourself an X-Pro2 when it arrives. It just isn’t necessary any more. Keep it at default with RAW and don’t sharpen your JPG’s – at least, that is what I ended up doing.

Thinking about it… Sharp might be the wrong word. The files are distinct and clear. It doesn’t cut you in the eyes, it pleases them.

Cheat the grey into another season

The side effect of having awesome quality files, is that you can push the colours quite a bit, without destroying detail. So I do, making the grey look vivid and autumn like. Because I’m not to fond of the grey.

In my honest opinion, todays digital cameras blows the socks of film. But there is a certain something about analog film…

Maybe that is why every digital phototograph or at least most of those that comes out of your run of the mill smartphone, tries to emulate film and all the flaws and charms.

The Minolta CLE is a pretty neat camera. It was made in collaboration with Leica, who needed Minolta to build them a better light meter. So in a joint collaboration the Leica CL was born, busted the sales of the Leica M5 and was discontinued. Minolta continued to make their own version, and it led to this fine little camera.

I don’t know how long my flirt with analog film will last…

If I get better at scanning, it might be long. Or I might grow tired of the laborious and tedious scanning proces.

I shot a little with a 6×6 Rollei Flex…. and there is absolutely no contest between the 6×6 and the 35mm. The 6×6 is by a thousand miles superior to 35mm. But the 35 is small and practical..

Anyways… Here is a couple of shots done with my Minolta CLE. I needed to see if the lightmeter was reliable and I could trust it. It seems to work just fine.

Light sensor

My prediction was a 25MP Organic Sensor with the best capabilities from the X-trans sensor.

It came with a 24MP X Trans III sensor – and a great one, with the best RAW files I’ve seen from a Fujifilm camera.

Crop factor

Wished for 1.2, predicted 1.5. It stayed 1.5

Shutter

I wished for an in camera Leaf Shutter…. It came with a focal plane shutter, that sounds awesome and is pretty silent.

Physical Controls

“The shutter speed control has a center lock. I’d get rid of that and place it on the Exposure compensation dial instead. I NEVER accidentally turn the shutter speed dial, but i keep knocking the Exposure comp out…. I wouldn’t mind a dedicated wheel for quick choosing the iso, but i can live without it. Instead of the diopter on the viewfinder, i’d rather have an adjustable one, as on the X-e1 and the X100. Buying one that fits my sight, doesn’t fit the next guy, if i ask someone to shoot a photo of me, or to check a picture using the evf. Please make the Exposure compensation dial go from -3 to +3.”

Centerlock is still there, I got a dedicated dial for ISO, but much more clever than I thought as it is worked into the Shutter speed dial, in the same manner as i.e. the Minolta CLE, where you lift the outer housing of the shutter speed dial, to pick your preferred ISO setting.

We got the adjustable diopter as well. And the Exposure wheel now goes to 3 and beyond. Up to 5 to be exact, but that you have to set in the menu. I rarely go beyond 1. Maybe my shooting has changed and I use the Shutter speed dial instead.

“The placement of the battery and SD card are annoying, if you use the X-Pro on a stand. But placing it on the side, will destroy the retro look of the X-Pro. I’d rather live with unscrewing whatever i use the bottom thread for.”

Fujifilm moved the SD slots to the side and added an extra SD card slot. You hardly notice it, and I’m pleased with the solution.

Build in flash

“A flash will be an external flash. But a build in transmitter, with an optional receiver for triggering external flash’s would be a nice touch.” 

No build in flash trigger. It might have been a nightmare to make such a thing work with every flash out there.

EVF/OVF and screen

“Having no screen at all, could be a somewhat daring touch and would save a lot of battery life. But you can just turn it off. Having an upgraded screen, with a much higher resolution would be good for showing off shots to a client. The EVF should also have a much higher resolution and a much speedier update frequency. And it will surely be so, as Fuji are rumored to fit a double processor in the X-Pro1s or X-Pro2, whatever it’ll be called.

The OVF are pretty ingenious. Making it a bit smarter would be a natural evolution. But i have no complaints in that department.”

Well, everything in that department came through. Higher resolution, speedier update frequency (85fps) and the OVF became much smarter and are the most ingenious viewfinder in any camera today.

Battery life

“Thats a tough one. If Fuji can make the software smarter, they will be able to save a lot of battery life, but they’d also have to go for a better battery, that would last 600 shots, combined raw/jpeg shooting.”

The preproduction firmware are not extremely convincing in that department. But usually finetuning and energy consumption are set for last in a development fase. Lets see what the first production firmware does to the X-Pro2 energy wise.

Memory Buffer

“Bigger! Nough said!”

And so they did!

Software picture processing.

“This is a bit of a hot potato. There is a lot of pride among photographers getting the shot directly with the existing light and not having to process the picture. But everybody in the age of digital photography messes with their images, as we did in the old day of film, in the dark room. But what could be the coolest way to do this? If Fuji were able to read Lightroom presets – a crazy thought i know – It would be crazy cool. You could add the little touch up things you do anyway and maybe a bit of personal coloring, that makes it personal. Maybe as some sort of a plugin or something. I would’t mind that at all.”

It didn’t come to that… Yet! Lets see what the future brings.

Speed

“I just want the general speed to be insane. I want it to autofocus crazy fast in any light condition, instant shutter release, no lag what so ever. write to card lightning fast. Insanely fast EVF and so forth. Speed, means that the camera doesn’t prevent you from getting that perfectly timed photo.”

Shutter release is instant, It is a very fast camera, also in low light. The buffers works fast and I never get stuck looking at a red “write to card” LED. Unless I try to provoke it, and just hold down the shutter release at 8 fps until the buffer are filled up.

Weather Sealing

“This is a huge deal. It just have to be weather sealed. I want to photograph in rainstorms, when it snows, in crap weather. I want to be able to drop the X-Pro in a pile of mud, and be able to wipe it off, and continue shooting. I want to be able to bike in shitty weather, with the x-pro dangling from my side, not having to worry about it. Seal the thing… please.”

It is weather sealed. Which also means dust proof and condense resistant. Which is the really important part.

Design

“I think the X-Pro1 is as gorgeous as the X100. It looks like a mix between an old Contax, a 57 Canon L1 and a Leica. Having the X-Pro as both black and black/silver would appeal to a lot of buyers. Id keep it as it is, and NOT putting on an S on the lower right buttom on the face of the camera, as on the X100S. It’s a bad looking font. If the next X-Pro will be called X-Pro1s, make the S red in a similar font or something, that would look cool.”

It looks as close to the X-Pro1 as I could have hoped for. The Fujifilm X-Pro2 is a gorgeous looking camera.

GPS and Wifi…

“Personally i think it would eat up precious battery life. I can see the benefit from such functions, especially if the GPS could be used as a tracking device, if some douche nicked the camera. Wifi… It would be great if shooting tethered, a thing i miss when using the X in the studio.”

That functionality came with the X-T1 and are also to be found in the X-Pro2. Not the GPS though. But you can set up your phone to geo tag your pictures.

Power supply

“Powering up from external source. I’d like if I could power the camera from a power supply in the studio.”

Which is now possible with a power supply with a battery casing.

Tethered Shooting

“To Shoot tethered via cable or wifi, that would be cool. If a camera has a working self timer, it will be possible to trigger it from an outside source. Worst case with a USB cable, best case via WIFI, from an app on an iPad, iPhone, Computer, tablet, smartphone android whatnot thingy.”

Well that came as well, with the X-T1. I do hope there will come a more reliable Mac based tether plugin. I had it up and running, but It failed when lightroom was updated.

Software

“A Customizable Q-menu would be a cool addition. There is a few things i use all the time and a few things I rarely use. Just changing the position of the existing menu items, would be a plus for me personally.”

That was also introduced with the X-T1 and have been further improved with a “my menu” in the menus and a much more intuitive menu system.

“Set up a possibility to choose a transparency for the distance metering bar, which is eye scratching blue. I can’t frame properly with the blue bar obstructing my view.”

They fixed that long ago with the X-T1 and it has come to the other cameras as well.  Nicely done!

Movie mode

“Make every jpg setting possible, make a dedicated video Q-Menu, make everything manual. Have a white balance bracket setting, so the whitebalance will be in control within a range. let it be possible to choose a “film” setting, with a high dynamic range. As the cinestyle is for Canon DSLRs. One could do that by maintaining the highlight and shadow tones, and extending the range of these controls.”

Well there is a bit of attention to put into that field still. I’m sure Fuji will look into the video department via firmware. But lets see. I really hope they will.

That was my wish list for an X-Pro2 and it came up pretty realistic as well – at least i think it did. The X-Pro2 is what I hoped for and it exceeded my expectations quite a bit. I really love that camera and hope that Fuji will stick to their Kaizen principle, and improve this already fantastic camera along the way.

I’ve been using the Fujifilm X-Pro2 for a while now. Unfortunately only Lightroom, Camera RAW and Fujifilms Silky Pix translates the Fujifilm 24mp (6.000 x 4.000 pixels) RAF files so far. I’m looking forward to and expecting a lot from a future Capture One update. The guys from Phase One are really oriented towards very high quality RAW processing, and renders the RAW files with a lot of depth and color resolution.

What I’ve noticed is that sharpening is much less of an issue with the new 24MP X Trans sensor.

With the RAW files from the older 16mp Fujifilm sensor, I had to struggle a bit with sharpening and detail. But with the X-Pro2 I almost don’t touch the sharpening at all. The RAW files are so close to finished, that I often sit back and wonder if I should do anything at all. The details are well defined and very clear although not tack sharp. Pushing the sharpen to the Lightroom default of 25% and keeping the detail parameter to almost nill, renders the picture very clear without being to sharp on the edges.

If you’ve preordered the X-Pro2, you will be very pleased with the RAF files from Fujifilms new top of the line camera.

The picture above was shot with a preproduction model of the Fujifilm X-Pro2, using the Fujinon XF56mm F/1.2 APD on F/2 with 2 Elinchrom DLite One flash heads.

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