Fuji Incredible India

flysurfer

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I recently spent two weeks in Delhi and Rajasthan. During the short periods when I wasn't sick, I managed to take a variety of pics with the GFX. While I brought all GF lenses, I was mostly using the 32-64mm zoom.
 
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GFXA3713
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

This street portrait was taken in Delhi with a handheld Godox AD200 and a small brolly, using the legacy X1TF trigger. I recently received the new Godox XproF trigger, which is a great improvement wrt the user interface and experience.
 
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GFXA3718
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

Another street portrait, this time with natural light (just like all the remaining shots of this trip). Timing and luck were of the essence here, but it also helps to have a good understanding of how to use Fujifilm's AF system for pin-point accurate AF.
 
With fading daylight and artificial street lamps taking over, ISO quickly goes up to 2000 and higher. With medium format, a wide-open aperture of 4 is usually more than sufficient for subject separation. Note the "3D Pop" of the images, which is a benefit of the GF medium format lens design.

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GFXA3732
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr
 
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Lack of DOF is problematic for shots like this one:

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GFXA3742
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

You'd probably need f/22 for pixel-sharp DOF from front to rear here, but that would also mean ISO 25600. So we do have to compromise. Due to the laws of equivalency, medium format offers no benefit for shots like this one. I could just as well have used a 17mm lens at f/3.5 and ISO 640 on an X-T2 instead of 32mm and f/6.4 with ISO 2000 on my GFX.
 
Naturally, any camera with a larger sensor specifically benefits from its sensor size at the camera's base ISO. In case of the GFX, that's ISO 100. As soon as you are forced to use a higher ISO setting than base-ISO, you could take the same picture with basically the same quality using cameras with smaller sensors at equivalent settings (equivalent focal length, aperture and ISO). So schlepping around a large GFX mostly makes sense for me in situations where I can actually use camera's the superior dynamic range and resolution at ISO 100. This often means that I have to choose dangerous shutter speeds that can result in blur from either camera shake or subject motion.

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GFXA3707 – Not So Rosy After All.
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

In this case, 1/80s was a pretty bold choice.
 
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GFXA3835
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

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GFXA3836
by Rico Pfirstinger, auf Flickr

These samples were taken with the face and eye detection.

While this feature could potentially work quite well (look at Sony for how to do it better), it really sucks in the X Series: There's no way to select which one of multiple faces the camera should select. Additionally, face detection isn't just an AF mode, but also a mandatory exposure metering mode. This means that your exposure can massively change depending on wether a face is detected in a shot or not. As a result, face detection can only be safely used in manual exposure mode M, where metering changes have no effect on your exposure. In AE modes A, S and P, I don't recommend using face detection. Sure, you can try to lock the exposure with the AE-L button, but doing so invokes another Fuji X specific glitch: With AE-Lock engaged, you cannot change the AF frame position or size, anymore. However, you'd probably want to do just that, because face detection isn't always reliable, so having a small AF frame pointed at your subject's face or eye as a fallback is not a bad idea.

In this case, I had to throw out about 50% of my shots, because the camera randomly switched focus between the faces of the mother and the child. That's because face detection is calibrated to select the face that's closest to the image center. In this case, the camera couldn't decide.
 
Face Detection is something I would just never, ever use. It doesn't save me any time, from what I can tell, as long as I have very easy access to move the AF point.
 
Oh, I like it very much and it's really useful. Or could be if it was better implemented. For single portraits in M mode, it's already quite nice today. Since more than 99% of my shots are taken in M mode, I don't feel the exposure metering annoyance. But a quick toggle between multiple recognized faces would be nice.

In essence, Fuji should bring the new AF-C Tracking mode algo to face detection. It's the same technology (pattern recognition), so it shouldn't be much of a problem really, at least in theory. That would boost face detection performance tremendously.
 
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