Reviewed! Fujifilm X-Pro2...

Link: Full Review on Mike Mander's Blog

After using my new X-Pro2 for well over a month, I've finally managed to get my full review published on my own blog. I've included a fair bit of material, including details on the performance of most lenses after testing many different Fujifilm lenses, nine of which I actually own myself now. There are details of the operation of the Hybrid-Viewfinder, card write speed and buffer size tests, comments on ergonomics, user interface, focus performance and, of course, image quality. Link to the review is above.

To summarize, I really enjoy shooting with the X-Pro2. Not only does it have great image quality, but it also has quick and reliable AF as well as very snappy performance overall, with a very fast and responsive shutter mechanism (that also sounds great) and minimal EVF blackout between frames. It has a generous raw buffer, exhibits fast card write times (with UHS-II U3 cards) and is generally responsive enough that you never feel like you are waiting for the camera to catch up. With its enhanced Hybrid-Viewfinder, revised control ergonomics, a custom My Menu, a configurable Q menu as well as numerous customizable buttons, it is also one of the most fluid cameras I've used, one I've been able to configure so that it's perfectly suited to my style of photography.

As with any camera, it is not perfect and there are some quirks and annoyances detailed in the review as well, relatively poor battery life being one of them. That said, none of the issues are even remotely deal breakers for me, and I can still highly recommend the X-Pro2 for most types of photography.

If you just want to see a gallery of images taken with the X-Pro2, and deal with reading the text later, click on the image below, taken in the Nitobe Gardens at UBC. Speaking of images, there are also numerous full-resolution files you can download that are linked within the review. Enjoy!

Gallery (110 images): Fujifilm X-Pro2 Review Gallery 

Review! Fujifilm XF 16-55mm f/2.8R LM WR

Please click on the above image to go to my personal blog for a review and gallery of images shot with the Fujifilm XF 16-55mm f/2.8R LM WR zoom...

-Mike Mander

Review: Deep ND Filters Compared (updated)...

[Update April 2015: Added a few comparison images and at the end of this post taken with a Hoya Pro ND1000, as well as some notes about that filter.]

This article is a quick review on some of the latest and greatest IR-blocking ND filters and how they stack up against the “old standby," a standard B+W 10-stop ND which has no IR filtration. The above image is a screenshot from Lightroom, showing a side-by-side comparison with the image thumbnails conveniently colour coded to match the colour cast of the filter used! The B+W 10-stop ND gives colour images a somewhat ruddy-brownish colour cast (the red thumbnails) and it has been speculated that this is due to infrared light affecting cameras with sensors that still have some residual IR sensitivity.

In response to the IR issue, several companies have come along and made filters that purport to solve this with the promise of easily corrected colour balance. The issue is that if a scene being photographed is heavy in IR, a sunny day with foliage perhaps, or anything that reflects a lot of IR, then a deep visible light blocking filter that lets through IR, like the B+W, might affect some areas of an image differently than others, meaning that a simple WB correction in post might still yield an image with strange looking colours or colour casts. There are two image galleries that accompany this article as follows…

Gallery: Deep ND Filters Compared / Uncorrected Colour - Daylight WB

Gallery: Deep ND Filters Compared / Colour Corrected

There are details about what adjustments were made in the second colour corrected gallery. Also, the filters being discussed in this review are as follows (with the image filename suffix indicated in brackets, also detailed in the galleries)…

- (TA) Tiffen Apex XLE-series 10-stop IRND
- (BW) B+W 10-stop ND (110 ND 3.0 - 10 BL 1000x

- (FHF) Formatt-Hitech Firecrest 16-stop IRND

NEW IN RENTALS! Canon 11-24mm f4L

NEW! The lens of many a landscape, architecture, real estate, astrophotography or interior photographer's dream has finally arrived! Yes, the new Canon 11-24mm f4L has made its debut in Beau Photo's Rental Department! Incredibly sharp at all focal lengths, and very well corrected, this hefty beast is sure to find its way into many photographer's bags! $45/day or weekend.

Canon 5DmkIII + Canon 11-24mm f4L @ 11mm - 1/4 sec, f16, 100 ISO

Canon 5DmkIII + Canon 11-24mm f4L @ 11mm - 1/30 sec, f4, 800 ISO

Canon 5DmkIII + Canon 11-24mm f4L @ 12mm - 1/60 sec, f5.6, 100 ISO

Fujifilm's Fifty-Sixes Compared! The APD Effect...

A large version of the above here: APD-f1.2-lights.gif

Fujifilm has two versions of the their 56mm lens, the regular Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2R and the Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2R APD, one that has an internal apodization (APD) filter. Before I get into the technical lens details, let me mention that you'll see a number of animated GIFs in this blog posting that are comparisons between those two lenses wide open at f/1.2. Note that GIFs only have 256 colours in total and are dithered to allow them to display a 24-bit colour image. This dithering can be visible as some roughness or even slight banding in these animations. Also, for those who just want to dive in and look at images, following is a link to a full gallery with all the photos mentioned in this posting, each carefully shot at seven different f-stops with both lenses - 70 images in total! Please note: this gallery is hosted on the author's personal website and the links in the gallery won't get you back here. Since the gallery will open in a new window, just close that to return to this posting...

Gallery: Fujifilm's Fifty-Sixes Compared! The APD Effect…

I chose to test the lenses at third-stops from f/1.2 to f/2 and then go right to f/2.8 and finally f/4 since the effect becomes so minimal once you stop down past f/2.0. The photos in the sample gallery were all shot on a tripod, with the two 56mm lenses changed carefully as to not move the camera. For some reason, I did notice a hint of movement on some sets that was likely my forgetting to sufficiently tighten the panning-lock on my ball-head, however, there was definitely a distinctly different "aim" to both 56mm lenses, something I found a bit unusual. Even though the shift was only slight, it was bothersome enough that on all the photo groups, I carefully cropped them ever so slightly, then nudged the crop frames around until I got the best superposition of the regular set with the APD set. While this was rather tedious, luckily Lightroom made it fairly painless. Once I had the f/1.2 versions aligned, I could just sync the crop settings on each group of smaller f-stops.

In order to show some of the bokeh effects more obviously, I heavily cropped two sets in the gallery, namely photos 15-28 and 57-70. On those, the frame you see is roughly a third the area of the whole field-of-view. All the others only have a tiny bit of cropping, just enough so I could achieve perfect alignment of each set of shots, well almost perfect at least. Lastly, there was some movement of branches due to wind, especially in photos 43-56.

For some less technical and more aesthetic samples, see my own personal blog posting from a week earlier (also opens in a new window)...

Post: Nicole with the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2R APD

So, now for some details of what makes Fujifilm's 56mm APD lens (almost) unique...

Gallery: Testing the Fujifilm 50-140mm f/2.8 Zoom

Gallery: Testing the Fujifilm 50-140mm f/2.8 Zoom

I finally had a chance to really put the new Fujifilm XF 50-140mm f/2.8R LM OIS WR zoom lens through its paces on this past Christmas day. You've probably already seen my preview blog posting of this lens at this link here, but for that one, I only had the lens briefly and took maybe a dozen shots with it. On the 25th, I took nearly 300 shots and you can see some of the selected images in a gallery on my personal website by clicking on the above image. The high-res images are nice and big, 3000 pixels in the long dimension, so you can get a better idea of how good the image quality is on a wider range of shots.

My conclusions hold by and large: the new professional zoom from Fujifilm is spectacularly sharp, focuses very quickly and has effective image stabilization. On my X-E2, with the added Fujifilm handgrip, I actually didn't find it to be unpleasantly heavy, although it is certainly a large lens. Following are some additional comments about this lens, now that I have tested it more thoroughly.

Friday Featured Film Spotlight - Ilford HP5

Our Friday Featured Film this week is Ilford's Black & White HP5 Plus.

Ilford HP5 does a great job in most lighting conditions when shot at 400ISO, however if you find yourself caught out on a particularly light or dark day, HP5 has a wide exposure latitude and I've had great luck pushing and pulling it. In general it yields middle of the road tones with nice contrast. It is interesting to try different developers with various films though, as they will each yield a slightly different result, especially when it comes to the contrast of your film.

If you compare the Ilford Delta 400 to the HP5 400, and look at it very closely, you will notice they have a different grain structure. The Delta has a T grain structure whereas the HP5 has a cubic grain structure. This means the actual physical shape of the individual grain in the film is different, giving each film a distinguishable look. The Delta film with its T grain shapes tends to look more fine grained, and you don't notice the grain as much. The cubic shape of the HP5 grain is more pronounced, giving it more of a grainy look. I personally like that effect of the HP5 and prefer a bit more pronounced grain in my photos.

Here are a few photos from my family farm in Manitoba this summer shot on HP5 120 with Nicole's RolleiCord.

HP5 is available year-round in several sizes: 35mm, 120, 4x5 and 8x10 sheet films. Though if you're the really experimental type, Ilford has their ULF sale once a year, usually in June. During this time there’s a variety of unique sizes available, everything from 2.25 x 3.25 inches to 20x24 cut sheets. One would place their order in June and receive their order in fall, as everything is cut especially for individual orders. Please contact the film department if you would like to place an order or need more information. 

Hasselblad H5D-50C versus Nikon D800...

This is a continuation of the previous blog entry: Hasselblad H5D-50C - CMOS sensor magic!

The second instalment of my Hasselblad H5D-50C tests will compare its sensor performance to the Nikon D800. This could be interesting for several reasons: Sony makes the CMOS sensor used in both cameras, the D800 is known to have excellent usable dynamic range with very clean shadows that are free from colour noise or banding and cross-hatching artifacts and lastly, in the past most digital backs were not known for their high ISO performance. So the question is, how does the new H5D-50C with its 50 megapixel sensor stack up to the the Nikon D800 when it comes to dynamic range and high ISO image quality? As a matter of fact, the new Hasselblad equals or outperforms the D800 in these tests at pretty much every ISO, right up to ISO 6400... remarkable!

Hasselblad H5D-50C - CMOS sensor magic!

Hasselblad H5D-50C w/HC 35mm f/3.5 at f/11, ISO 800, 1 sec

UPDATE: I have now posted a second instalment to this comparison, with D800 versus H5D-50C screenshots, as well as a download link so you get three ISO 400 raw files to view yourself, one from the H5D-50C, one from the H5D-50 and one from the D800.

We recently had an intro event for the new CMOS sensor equipped Hasselblad H5D-50C and I had a chance to do some side by side tests with the previous CCD equipped model. The new CMOS 1.3x crop 645 medium format sensor used in the H5D-50C is actually made by Sony, and that's a good thing since they also make the best sensors for the DSLR world. The Nikon D7000, D800 / D800E and even the underlying silicon used in Fujifilm X-Trans sensors are made by Sony for example. What this means for medium format camera systems is that finally, there is a sensor capable of not only superb low ISO sharpness and tonality, but also excellent high ISO image quality with much less chroma noise in the shadows when those shadows need to be opened up in a high dynamic range scenario.

In addition, this new sensor seems to have slightly better highlight dynamic range as well and you can also do much longer time exposures with no need for long exposure noise-reduction, up to 12 minutes in length. This means after a 12 minute exposure, you don't need to wait an additional 12 minutes for the camera to do a "dark frame" - you can start another time exposure immediately.

NEW! Fujifilm XF 10-24mm f/4R OIS Zoom Review

Fujifilm X-E2 w/ XF 10-24mm f/4R OIS zoom @ 12mm, ISO 800, 1 second at f/5.6

For a gallery with a variety of samples, click the image or… Fujifilm XF 10-24mm Samples

We finally received a small shipment of the new ultra-wide-angle Fujifilm 10-24mm zoom lenses and I have also received my own personal one. By and large, I am very impressed with this new zoom which is equivalent to a 15-36mm zoom on a full-frame camera. It stays at a fixed f/4 throughout its zoom range and also has an amazingly effective OIS unit - the Optical Image Stabilizer. I did a series of shots at 10mm in near darkness with a 0.8 second exposure, so nearly a full second. Of the ten photos, two were unusably blurred, three were a bit blurry but would still make decent 8x12 inch prints I'd say, but five were actually tack sharp, looking almost like they were shot on a tripod. That is the advantage of having an effective stabilizer on an ultra-wide lens! I have also done a handful of shots at 1 second at around 17mm focal length and while the hit rate is a little worse, even that is doable if you try hard. Examples of both are in the above linked gallery. However there can be a disadvantage to OIS…

Lunch with the new Nikon Df DSLR...

[Update 11/21/2013]: A few people have already asked about my impressions on how suitable the viewfinder is for manual focus of older lenses. A very good question and one that I forgot to address in my writeup. Sadly, the focusing screen is not interchangeable, so there are no options for split-image or micro-prism collar screens. It seems to be pretty much the same screen as a D800 so, like virtually every other DSLR on the market, it is not particularly easy to judge sharpness when manual focusing with some slower or dimmer lenses. However the focus confirmation light does work with old MF lenses, so that might help in some situations. It may turn out that the screen is slightly better on the Df, but since I did not have the time to do any side-by-side comparisons, I cannot say for sure at this point. My gut feeling though is that it is not significantly different from a D800 screen.

[Update 11/25/2013]: One thing I realized today was that I made no mention of the shutter sound. It is far quieter and smoother sounding than other Nikon pro bodies like the the D800, D3S or D4. In fact, movie stills photographers will be all over the Df probably, since even inside a sound blimp, other Nikon pro bodies can still be loud enough to be an issue on some film sets. I also corrected my focus point comparison to D7000 instead of D7100. I had forgotten that the D7100 was upgraded to 51 points. One more note is that I really only had a scant few minutes before and after having lunch to actually handle the camera, maybe 10 or 15 minutes in total, and I had no other camera with me to compare the viewfinder to. To reiterate, my gut feeling is still that it really is no better for MF than a D800, but I certainly could be wrong. Note that there are third party companies that might be able to install an aftermarket focusing screen, but it is definitely not user replaceable and I wonder if you might lose some functionality with an aftermarket solution (grid-lines, focus points etc). There may be warranty concerns too? The only thing I did do back at the store was compare the shutter sound to a D4, just to confirm my impressions of how much quieter it was. That is why it is weird I forgot to mention it. People also have asked me about image quality, but both were preproduction units that I was not allowed to download photos from. I was assured by Nikon that it should essentially be the same as the D4.

---------------------------

I had an opportunity to spend my lunch break with a couple of Df bodies (and some Nikon reps), a black and a silver one (the cameras, not the reps), courtesy of Nikon Canada. The Df was announced a few weeks back and I have been hesitating to write a report until I personally had a chance to play with one. There seemed to be some contradictory info online and I didn't want to repeat any incorrect information myself. Following are my first impressions of the camera's ergonomics and how I see it fitting in Nikon's DSLR lineup...

NEW! Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide-angle lens...

Update [11/16/2013]: for consistency, the shot of my father that I had done purely in Lightroom for the original version of this post, I reprocessed in PhotoNinja and added a 100% crop view as well. I also added exposure data below the last few shots. Lastly, I provided a slightly more detailed description of why I use PhotoNinja and mentioned one of its current limitations.

We have finally received our shipment of the new Fujiflm XF 23mm f/1.4 R lenses and I have now had the opportunity to shoot with a production lens a few times. We have fulfilled our preorders and now have a handful in stock for sale. Yes, I did buy one myself. What do I think of the lens so far? In a word: stunning!

The weather, and my lack of time, have conspired to prevent me from shooting with it much yet but what I have seen so far impresses me. With luck, I will have a chance to use it some more over the next few days. Update: my First Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R Tests gallery is now up and there are a few high-resolution images below as well...

Canon EOS-5D Mark III: Preview & Images

Canon EOS-5D Mark III, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II at 18mm, f/4.0 at 1/40, ISO 5000

       
The long awaited EOS-5D Mark III ($3,739 for the body) has finally started shipping and we also have one in our rental department now. In the next couple of weeks we should be caught up with all our pre-orders as well. Was it worth the wait? In my opinion, most definitely!

Not only has Canon improved the video quality and video mode functionality over the Mark II, but for still photographers,  Canon more or less dropped in the AF system that will be coming in the top end EOS-1DX later in the year. While I have not had much opportunity to use the Mark III yet, during my brief testing, the AF seemed convincingly fast and accurate, even under very low light conditions. While my own EOS-7D was a noticeable step up over the 5D Mark II, the new 5D Mark III seems a big step up over the 7D when it comes to its AF system.

Fujifilm X-Pro1: Review & Images

Fujifilm X-Pro1, XF 35mm f/1.4 lens, f/4.0 at 1/2 second, ISO 400

       
The Fujifilm X-Pro1 has finally shipped and I've had a few opportunities now to shoot with a production camera. I am going to be adding more posts on this exciting new camera in the future, but for now I will start with an overview of one of this camera's strengths, focusing on Fujifilm's new "X-Trans" sensor and its tremendous dynamic range.

For those not familiar with the X-Pro1, here are a few links to previous articles where I mentioned it.

First Thoughts: Fujifilm X-Pro1 System

NEW: Fujifilm X-Pro1

For some writings on the X-Pro1's predecessor, search my own blog for X100 related entries.

The Eve Of the Eve of Fusion

Well it's almost here!  We wait for it all year long and then it's here. "Just one more sleep"!

For those who don't know what Fusion 2012 is, it's the biggest DSLR Video event on our West Coast! You would have to go to Vegas or LA to see a bigger show. If you ever thought of shooting video and wanted to know how they got that shot, or how to shoot it yourself, this is the show for you.  If you want to be one of the first to see Nikon's D800 or D4 this is the show for you.  If you ever wanted to see Canon's line of DSLR video cameras including the all new EOS-1D X, this is the show for you. If you are a PRO and wanted to see some of the best gear around... this is the show for you! If you are anywhere near Vancouver this Saturday get yourself down to Canada Place and check it out because if you don't you will have to wait another year to see an event so cool!

Also Don't forget Kirk Neff's talk this Friday Feb 24th 7PM at Langara - it's FREE !

 Tickets and more info at : http://www.beauphoto.com/fusion2012/fusion_frm.html

Nikon D4: First Thoughts...

Our former rental manager Kathy, happy to have handled the awesome D4!

Sorry for the delay regarding my first thoughts on the brief time I had with the new D4 prototype. I am currently feeling really under the weather, having gotten sick with a bad cold, and since the weekend, I have just not felt up to writing much. So, what I'll do is just mention a few tidbits that jumped out at me while playing with the D4...

Review: LowePro Classified Sling 180 AW

LowePro Classified Sling 180 AW

A LowePro bag? Isn't this a digital blog entry from Mike? That camera bag isn't a digital item! Well okay, that may be your reaction, however I do end up using non-digital products too of course, and once in a while I come across something I quite like and feel inclined to share some feedback about. In this case, I feel that these Classified Sling bags are so unassuming looking and stealthy, that they might actually fly under the radar of people who would otherwise find them well designed and efficient, were they actually to give them a try. So here is my take...

I recently ordered myself a Classified Sling 180 bag, more or less sight unseen, based on looking at the larger 220 version we have in stock here at Beau and based on a few brief Internet reviews I read. Honestly, some of the Internet reviews were actually not all that favourable and complained about several aspects of this camera bag. All I will say to some of those is “... what a bunch of whiners!” Sure, the bag is not perfect (nothing ever is) but all in all, it may just be the nicest camera bag I have bought so far... and I have many, many bags. Even though my continual and never-ending quest for the “perfect” camera bag means I already own way too many, I still thought it was worth trying this one out. I'm glad I did!