Fujifilm xt-1 review update! + sneak peek on Fuji 23mm 1.4R

"and so he deliriously stumbled onto his bed and slumbered on for days, not quite sure where his life was headed to now that he handed in his baby, wrapped tenderly in a clean brown envelope..."

Here's my melodramatic recount of my life ever since I handed in my dissertation. Don't you love how we all like to act all literary and creative with big words with irrelevant pictures? (Instagram is chock full of it haha)

Anyway, I feel great! Freedom calls for another follow up post on monoclebarnacle on the Fujifilm xt1 that I've been using for the past week or so.

Some thoughts about the camera:

1) It's really good-looking. Everywhere I go, people notice the good looks and praise the  feel of it. Even girls with disdain for geeky techie stuff can't help going wow. If there was a Mr. Universe for cameras, The XT-1 is going to be a real strong contender for the crown. Heh.

2) The directional pad feels like that old Playstation controller in the Challenger store that got ravaged by the crummy fingers of angry young schoolboys. It has little to no tactile feedback and sometimes I have to consciously look at the back of the camera to know what I'm pressing. It's soft and a little too shallow for rapid operation. Not my favorite, after coming from DSLRs, where the directional pads feel much more robust.

3) Jpegs straight out of the cameras are pretty good. A little smeared here and there which gets on my nerves but the colours really astound me at times. Not always the most accurate in white balance and colours but its a pretty charming package as a whole. Not to mention the recent dry spell turned Singapore into a dry and dusty pseudo-autumn landscape. Pretty nice for picture taking though, if the haze wasn't in the equation.

Now let the pictures do all the talking. All of these pictures are not edited at all, shot mostly on Provia (standard) or Astia (soft).

Pretty lovely isn't it? For something totally unedited! (At least not on a computer)

Next up: I've just gotten the Fujifilm 23mm F/1.4 R prime lens.

Here's a sneak preview of it!

A real hefty lens with a 62mm filter thread size. As with all fuji lenses, this one feels really solid to the touch, with metal parts used throughout the lens. And I have to say, this lens is pretty sharp wide open at f/1.4! The depth of field is pretty hard to control but I'm seeing some real promising stuff coming out of this lens! I will update again once I've shot some serious stuff with it.

Before I end, here's a little camera geek tidbit for you guys out there (that's reading this virtual space). 

White Balance

You've heard this word being thrown around by pompous photographers when you've got a photo that's really yellow or orange (sounds familiar?). We kind of know what is it, but how is it relevant to photography after all? Here's a chart for you to know what exactly is colour temperature in everyday light.

Credit: www.digitalcameraworld.com

So what does this have to do with your camera? When you take a picture with auto white balance (most ppl use this), it tries to sense the colour of the light in your photo to accurately portray the degree or warmness/coolness correctly. However most small cameras are quite poor at this as their auto white balance abilities are pretty poor, which means it can't sense the colour of the scene properly when its out of its range (such as way too yellow/orange). Photographers use a grey/white card to counter this, by taking a photo with the grey/white card in the scene first, after which they can use it as a point of reference for all the subsequent photos taken. If I'm not wrong, you can just shoot anything that's pure white in colour for reference later on. From there, you can just adjust the temperature till the paper is pure white and you will get an accurate white balance! Be sure to employ this little trick the next time when you edit your photos!

Feel free to comment if you have something you would like to read about the next time!

Fujifilm Xt-1 unboxing + hands on!

Fujifilm XT-1, the king of the Mount Fuji! (get it?)

Alright I'm just kidding.

Finally got a call today to collect my pre-order package for fuji's latest camera XT-1! A pretty good timing since I've just completed my first draft for my dissertation and I've got a little time to do some hands-on the camera!

Here are the unboxing pictures! 

All wrapped up nicely in the box

Plan view to see the dials

From the back!

From top left: Charger + cable, neck strap + metal connecting clips, 18-55mm R kit lens, XT-1 body, NP-W126 battery + the add-on flash (weird thing but guess what at least it there's a flash).

Really nicely designed.

Crappy front shot

First impressions:
Wow I have to say, this camera scores big on looks and feel. Body feels light, yet really compact. It feels fully metallic with no cheap plasticky feeling which is really nice, since it didn't actually add on to the weight! Compared to my d800, this camera feels like a feather. 
The rubbery grip feels solid, but somehow it feels a little small to hold tightly, probably not the most secure grip which I probably will be adding a battery grip or hand grip to improve the overall hold. Everything else seems pretty okay, except for the buttons at the back that kinda feels mushy without a solid click and tactile feedback (which is present in the x100s).
Once you turn it on though, the magic begins. You'll be greeted by a really nice tilting 3" 1.04mil dots LCD screen, and when you put your eye to the viewfinder, you start to understanding what's the big fuss with the latest EVF from Fuji.

It's really good. (I still can't decide if I like OVF better though)

It's like peering into a FHD mini screen inside. And Fuji has reduced lag on this unit to just 0.05s (1/10th of previous Fuji models). I can't quite tell what's the difference though, just feels pretty snappy anyways.

EVF has the advantage of being able to display a hell lot of information real time, like your history etc while you're shooting which can be pretty nifty. It reflects real time changes as you switch your aperture and exposure compensation which is really nice too. However when it gets a little dark, it kinda looks smudgy with a lot of noise and grain which you don't get on the OVF (but then again, in the OVF it's just dark and you barely see anything haha.)

How does it shoot some of you may ask. Well I only had the X100s for comparison, and if you want to compare to that, then XT-1 is without a doubt, extremely fast. Autofocus on the X100s is decent, but not really mind-blowingly fast though, I actually get moments where everyone's just waiting for me to lock on the focus. I've only had a moment with the 18-55mm kit lens, which has been rated pretty good and we all know focus speeds depends on the lens too so it's probably not a great comparison between a digital rangefinder and a mirrorless system.

Feels exciting so far, can't wait to try it out for a longer period of time. Key features that's really interesting for me so far:

1. In-built wifi with a fully featured app. You can change settings, view it on live mode, do interval shooting without having to use a clunky wired remote, change focus points and many other things. Now this beats many of the other clunky wifi cameras/cards I've seen and used.

2. Hugeass EVF! I can now put 2 screens inside the viewfinder that's gonna allow me to do manual focusing with so much more ease. X100s has already proven itself to be a real joy and experience to use with its focus peaking  features.

3. Overall handling. Just look at how sexy (in a geek way) it is, with its small but substantial size, along with a fully featured weather sealed magnesium alloy body (the whole thing!), it sure seems really promising! So far, it just screams of premium quality to me. Lol.

4. Image quality. Latest sensor (same as the X100s) from Fuji? Checked. I've used the X100s and boy the image quality (I've shown u guys a picture didn't I?) is really good for something so small. I'll be posting up an amateur review of the camera with the lenses when I've taken it for a good test drive.

My apologies to the all you cool kids out there but this post is filled to the brim with geeky goodness. Hope you've leveled up in your geekness with this post and maybe you can join league of geek gods in time to come! Thanks for reading =)

P.S. I promise a non geek post the next time alright!