Gloria Jean of Sydney - Fuji X-Pro 1 Testing with the 35mm f/1.4
Been roaming around Sydney the last few days with the Fujifilm X-Pro 1, just trying out the lenses to see how they look, and how the camera works in the hand. A few minor notes on it, compared to the X100 I had previously...
- it seems snappier, and the menus are better organised (yay!); that said, the way the buttons are arranged on the back is a little different, and I find it harder to hit the AF-L when manual focussing. (That activates the autofocus temporarily, you can then do a manual focus touchup if you want.)
- my thumb does however regularly find the View Mode button, when I'm holding the camera; so suddenly I keep not seeing things in the display when I'm expecting to because I've accidentally switched something off.
- at times, the AF has difficulty locking on to a small subject in the foreground, if the background is higher contrast. Also, the AF patch is pretty large, so when shooting at wide apertures on these fast (fast!) lenses, it's hard to be sure which actual part of the image is going to be totally sharp. So, it pays to take a few images - in fairness that's often the case with SLRs as well, though. If focus is critical, cover your options!
- as with the X100, when the camera first came out there wasn't support for the Raw files in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. Fortunately, though, the .jpgs look AMAZING and are pretty great to work with. Metering in camera is great, auto white balance is pretty good too - so you can do quite a lot with them even without Raw conversion. (The image above was shot on the camera's Provia setting, but I added a bit of saturation with Alien Skin Exposure 4's Velvia profile - so it's not actually straight from the camera, if anyone's wondering!)
- for whatever reason, the lens hood keeps coming off in my bag; and, if you leave the rubber lens hood on the camera with it on your shoulder, you WILL lose it. I heard it hit the ground, so I've still got mine - but it comes off easily. Put it in your pocket!
All that said, I'm pretty happy with it - and it's taken me several days (admittedly not shooting ALL the time) and about 700 images to kill the battery for the first time. But I had a spare with me, so no big deal there.
Still a big fan of the hybrid optical viewfinder, especially being able to review what you've just captured without having to take the camera away from your eye - probably my favourite feature of the camera!
This image is from a couple of days ago, but I tried out the 18mm f/2 lens today a little so I'll post something from that a little later - but really impressed with both lenses so far...