“Fujifilm X-T2: The Good, The Hype and The Rant” + About the Real Life and X-photographers Reviews

Fujifilm X-T2
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I know, now that the X-T2 hit the market, many of you are waiting for “real-life” reviews. For example Grittymonkey, who, in his article “X-T2, the good, the hype and the bad” said that the X-photographers X-T2 reviews we have read so far could potentially have inflated a hype bubble around the X-T2, since those reviews come from people, who have a relationship with Fujifilm, and therefore could be biased (that’s a really short summary, read the whole and more elaborated article here at Grittymonkey before making any comment, please)

Now, I’m actually looking forward to real life reviews, too. Really, I mean, I’m a review-holic, and I recently was able to watch hours of reviews just for buying a simple multi-tool like my [shoplink 49081 ebay]Leatherman Juice CS4[/shoplink].

So yes, the more reviews we have, the better.

But…

But I’d not dismiss the feedback that “X-photographers” give us. They are (almost) all Pro photographers, and after years of experience and work with Fujifilm X-series cameras they surely master their gear really very good. And knowing your gear inside out really helps a lot to take the most out of it. That’s why they will achieve better results with X-gear than an amateur like me. Moreover, in the past I’ve seen X-photographers demolishing certain Fuji X products, like Patrick La Roque here.

Is this a 100% guarantee that every single X-photographer will be 100% objective and accurate? No. But we don’t have this guarantee even with real life reviews… let me tell you why:

Consider this: the Fujifilm X-T2 is right now falling in the hands of all kind of photographers: experienced Pro’s, long time and skilled X-shooters, X-enthusiasts, but also photography amateurs, PRO Photographers, who just switched to Fuji thanks to the X-T2, people who upgrade from a simple entry-level mirrorless to a high-end X-T2, long time DSLR photographers who make their first step into mirrorless with the X-T2 and what not.

And while some of those won’t take much time to get familiar with the X-T2, others will really have to study first, test a lot, and get familiar with the X-gear, before they can make any accurate statement about the X-T2.

I say this, because in the past I’ve seen “real-life” reviewers complaining about this and that, and at the end it turns out they didn’t turn the “high performance mode” to “ON”, or they had face detection enabled (which disables the fast Phase Detection AF), or they tested the AF-speed using the slowest lens in the Fuji lineup, or they used the smallest possible AF-box for tracking instead of a wider area (like recently also Ken pointed out in one of his X-T2 videos here), or people who have not the latest firmware installed on their lenses, others who tried the X-T1 tracking with MS+ES enabled (the X-T1 does not focus between each tracking shot, if electronic shutter is enabled)… and a lot more. These are “errors” an official Fujifilm X-photograher, or an experienced X-shooter, probably does not do.

For example, I remember that Tony Northrup even had to re-shoot his entire EM-1 and X-T1 comparison video here, because, on suggestion of X-shooters in the comments, he found out that he had the camera set up wrong. But he’s that kind of guy, who takes critics seriously and was fair enough to shoot the entire review again… and his conclusions, with the camera set properly, changed quite a bit.

So, in the next days, everybody will upload his X-T2 review on the internet. And that’s perfectly fine and I look forward to that (and I’ll share on FR). But, we, as the “consumers” of these real-life reviews, should make sure the reviewer is familiar with the X-system and knows his craft, before joining every possible shitstorm.

At the end of the day, the best thing to do is to choose some photographers you really trust, X-photographers or not, and wait for their feedback about certain products.

So feel free to make a list in the comments of people, whose reviews you trust.

cheers
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