CineD and Gerald Undone About Excellent Lab Test Results of Fujifilm X-H2S and Fujifilm’s Strategic Advantage over Sony and Canon

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CineD and Gerald Undone recently published a video where they talk about how they make their lab tests.

It’s a one hour video I invite you to look in its entirety.

What I will highlight are 6 minutes towards the end of the video where they talk about the excellent test results of the Fujifilm X-H2S (starts minute 48:35).

They talk about how different and pleasing noise actually looks on the Fujifilm X-H2S (not the first to say this and actually that’s a peculiarity of X-Trans sensors, I mean the more film-like grain at high ISO and the less color noise).

So it seems that when Fujifilm advertises the X-H2S as having 14+ stops of video dynamic range, they are totally honest about it. In CineD tests, it beats even the full frame Sony A1.

But even more importantly, if you want to get rid of noise, for some “secret language” reason (as Gerald would call it), it seems that at least noise reduction applied in post is able to clean up noise with an ease he has never seen before.

Also, CineD mentions a strategic advantage Fujifilm has over Sony and Canon. Which one? You’ll find the answer in the short summary down below.

Summary

  • Gerald says noise can have a quality that affects not only how it looks (that’s subjective) but also how it seems noise reduction works to it
  • Gerald was enthusiastic out the X-H2S because not only when it was noisy it did look good (to his eyes), but applying noise reduction cleaned up the noise better than he has ever seen on other camera files
  • he has never seen clean noise with so much ease, like post processing and suddenly there is just no more noise anymore
  • Gerald showed in a video how he took away the noise from a spiderweb and he didn’t lose any detail at all in the spiderweb
  • Gerald could not understand it
  • There is something about the way the noise is generated, that some sensor have an advantage
  • CineD confirms that the noise has a very fine appearance and it looks very organic
  • you can underexpose by four stops and don’t even need to use noise reduction
  • the latitude test is very important, as no matter what the software tricks are, with the latitude tests you just raise the shadows and you just see the image and judge by yourself
  • latitude test levels out the playing field, because it is not about camera settings, but it shows you what you really get
  • if noise reduction is very blocky, you can not save it in post. But if you have very fine grain like on the X-H2S, you can very easily use noise reduction
  • they are happy that both got such great results with the camera, otherwise people would call them Fuji shills
  • the cool thing about Fujifilm is that in terms of video cameras, they don’t have any market to protect in the higher end
  • there is nothing that prevents them to put their absolute best into their new cameras they make and put everything they can in the smallest body they have
  • Sony and Canon have their higher end video cameras to protect (Sony Venice, Canon C70, etc)
  • X-H2S: phenomenal rolling shutter, great dynamic range

Note that none of the three guys discussing the Fujifilm X-H2S is a Fujifilm shooter, although Gerald says that if it was only based on the results, he should actually switch to the Fujifilm X-H2S. But he uses Sony because he prefers the ergonomics, which fits better simply the way his brain works. Others shoot Canon. Johnnie from CineD (not on the show this time) is a Fujifilm shooter, though, using X-T cameras.

And that’s actually a good way to end this article. Specs are not everything, no matter how mindblowing they might be. There is so much more and very subjective reasons to pick up a camera over another, that have nothing to do with the specs on paper.

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