And since smaller youtube channels seem to often stay on the piece better than the big ones, today I’ll share a video of an even smaller youtube channel, in fact so small, that this time even I missed this video, but a fellow FR-reader made it notice to me today.
Passionate bird photographer liewwk Nature runs a 860 subscriber channel with hundred of bird photography videos.
A lot of it has been taken in tropical forest environment, often in tricky and low to very low light conditions and with a complex and distracting background.
In these objectively difficult conditions, Iiewwk Nature writes:
The new system just weight 2.4KG which allow us to shoot 150-600mm (225-900mm 35mm equivalent) which is one best available
This system allow me have >50% success rate 1/125 at 900mm which is my recommended minimum shutter speed for handheld.
The AF is fast and accurate (on bird eye), it may not best in market but it is very good and accurate even at low-light & complex environment.
For the Auto-focus, I think this is a huge upgrade compare previous X series. The Animal Detection just simple amazing
Keep in mind that this is the success rate mentioned is for shooting at 900mm.
In my eyes it already looks pretty amazing. And considering that this is an early pre-production firmware (on both, camera and lens), I guess it can get only better from this point on until the final firmware is released.
You can find the video down below and his blog post about his experience at liewwkphoto.
Eye Autofocus
The second video below is of Lee Zavitz, who used the Fujifilm X-H2 with the XF18-120mmF4 for a portrait session and he is says that eye AF is crazy and it detects the eye even when the eyes are mostly blocked by her hair.
He says he is really impressed by eye detection and he did not expect it to be that good.
It’s still a beta firmware, but it is on par with competitors in terms of eye autofocus.
Announcement days are exteremely busy and so much content is spilled out all at once.
In fact there is so much out there, that most just watch the videos of the biggest channels and skip out on others.
This means that is easy to miss out on something.
And quite frankly, smaller channels can sometimes kick out better content and coverage than well known and established ones.
Well, today I’d highlight one review that I am not sure how many of you have seen. It comes from tb- photography, who runs an 11K subscribers channel.
It’s all worth a watch, but for the purporse of this article I’d like to focus your attention on the part that shows subject and animal tracking at work (min. 11:16 to 12:16)
For being pre-production, I believe the Fujifilm X-H2S did an astonishing job, especially with Pre-AF turned on.
And again: it’s pre-production, so it can only get better from here on.
Go see by yourself. The video below will start at 11:16 for 1 minute of new AF tracking glory ;).
So far we know (and it has been well documented) that the Fujifilm X-H2S has a vastly improved dynamic range performance in video over the the previous generation sensor, with 14+ stops compared to the previous 12 stops).
But so far we don’t have any word about the dynamic range or ISO performance for stills. And that makes sense, as it is pre-production and we better wait for the final thing before we make any judgments.
With this disclaimer printed clearly on top of the article, I’d like to share a video overview of the X-H2s plus new lenses shared by Ringfoto.
It’s in German, so let me translate the part I’d like you to hear.
Martin at Ringfoto shows samples he took with the Fujinon XF150-600mmF5.6-8 of his cute dogs running around. He talks very positively about the autofocus.
Then he addresses the concern that f/8 at 600mm (900 equiv.) might be perceived as too slow by some, as you will have to shoot at higher ISO. But here is what he says:
Opposite to other X-Trans cameras, the X-H2S has four analogue-to-digital converters [admin note: X-T4 & Co have two A-D-C]
Thanks to the new sensor and new technology inside the camera and the four analogue-to-digital converters, my feeling with this pre-production X-H2S at this point is that ISO performance on X-H2S is 1.5 stops better than on the X-T4, which would be sensational.
I want to be careful for now, but it looks very promising.
So what is Ringfoto talking about when they mention the analog-to-digital converter (ADC)?
We know the Fujifilm X-T3 and X-T4 (and all other ISOless or ISO invariant Fuji cameras) have two analogue-to-digital converters. On the X-T3 it works like this: every image recorded under ISO 640 “travels” through one ADC, and every image above ISO 640 goes through another ADC. This helps to improve noise performance.
This can have the paradoxical effect that an image taken in camera at ISO500 can be more noisy than an image taken in camera at ISO800 or even ISO1200, because after ISO640 the other ADC kicks in to improve performance, as you can see at the photonstophotos technical chart here.
What’s important for us to know in this article, is that those analog-to-digital converters are a good thing when it comes to noise performance.
And now that we know thanks to Martin that the Fujifilm X-H2S has four AD-converters as opposed to two ADC in the previous X-Trans cameras, then this could indeed explain what Martin observed: a sensational improvement in ISO performance.
Now, to my knowledge Fujifilm has not made any public statement about the increased number of ADC or about the improved ISO performance in stills.
All we could observe until now is that in video the noise performance is shockingly good, as documented also by Gerald Undone and we reported here.
My final word?
Well, there is no final world.
I will wait for final production samples to be tested side by side with other Fujifilm cameras. And this is what also Martin at Ringfoto said, that he wants to validate (or not) his impression with a final production camera.
And once he did that, I will do my job, report and translate his findings for you.
