UKC

Following on from my last thread, one of these appeared in my in tray yesterday. I haven't had much time with it, but enough for a play around.

Most of the impressions are good. The EVF is nice, images are sharp and clean, and the extended dynamic range mode seems to work on the contrived shots of light fittings I have tried so far.

The rings are quite nice, and the exposure compensation dial seems to have been designed for the way I like to work. I haven't figured out my way around the menu and UI completely yet so it will be a while before I'm really fluent with it, but that's always the way with these things.

There is one downside though, and for me it is quite serious. I can't believe none of the reviews I read saw fit to mention it! It seems that the maximum exposure time allowed is inversely related to ISO.

On ISO 100 I can take 60 second exposures, on ISO 200 I can only take 15 seconds, ISO 400 is limited to 8 seconds etc. This means I can NEVER get a brighter night time image than I would with a 60 second exposure at ISO 100.

I'm not sure this is quite enough to make me return it but it does mean I am stuck carrying two cameras on trips where I plan to stay out overnight.

In reply to davidbeynon:

Are Fuji basically saying that that's the point at which the rate of noise production vs. the rate of photon arrival is the limit they're happy with? It isn't a big sensor, perhaps if you need long exposures at night time you need a bigger and less noisy sensor. I'm not a night time photographer though.

In reply to ashaughnessy:

My guess is that someone made that decision, probably someone in marketingwho thought noise metrics were more important than tking pictures. It is the wrong decision though - you can get good results with inferior sensors, unless the firmware decides not to let you.

In reply to davidbeynon:

Funny thing is... you can attach a mechanical cable release on this camera!

To be honest, I was thinking between X20/30 and Olympus E-PL5 a year ago. The base price (i.e. with kit lens) is nearly the same. Apart from terrible controls, I love it. You can get some cheap lens (Sigma 19mm, 30mm or 60mm F/2.8 are all 100 pounds each) with stunning results.

In reply to davidbeynon:


Isn't this only when you have the auto-DR turned on? I have an X10 and if the dynamic range setting is on the shutter speeds get quite severely limited. I assume this is because the different sets of pixels on the sensor can't be used for greatly different times*

Try turning Auto-DR off and see what settings you can get.

*just a dumb hand-waving explanation which is probably totally wrong

In reply to psaunders:

I'm pretty sure I had it locked to 100%, as I tried the long exposure after a bunch of extended DR tests. I will check when I get home.

The extended dynamic range certainly does work though. Badly composed pictures of light fittings have noticeably more detail in the bright areas when it is turned up