30 Days with the Fuji X-T2: Day 25
Both yesterday’s shot and today’s shot are from a quick trip to San Antonio last weekend to see some friends. Photography wasn’t a focus of the trip by any means, but I did carry my X-T2 with the 35mm F/2 with me on a few of our walks.
I’ve been using a Gordy’s wrist strap on the X-T2 since I got it, and using a wrist strap as opposed to a neck strap has made me feel like the camera itself is smaller and more portable. I know it’s just a psychological trick, but it has probably resulted in me carrying my camera more often1. On our second in San Antonio, we went down to the amazing Riverwalk for a Texas-sized margarita, and I’m not sure I would have taken my camera if I hadn’t had a small-profile wrist strap attached.
I took quite a few shots along the river that evening, and I should probably be posting one of them instead of this image… The Riverwalk at night is a very tricky place to shoot if you don’t have a tripod. The range in brightness between the shadows and the bright, artificial lights is massive. I was shooting handheld with the 35mm F/2 and most of my shots were made in the ballpark of F/2 at ISO 6400 with a shutter speed of 1/100s. The reason I said I should probably be posting one of those shots is that they’re good examples of how much detail can be pulled from the shadows with the X-T2.
For example, one shot was taken handheld with the 35mm F/2 at 1/60s at ISO 6400. In Lightroom, I pushed the exposure +0.6, brought the highlights down –0.5, brought the shadows up +0.8, and set the luminance noise reduction to 0.3. The result was a very web-shareable image. The fact that I was able to do all of those fairly extreme brightness adjustments on an ISO 6400 image and not need to push the noise reduction up more than 0.3 is pretty astonishing. Obviously how much you “need” to push the noise reduction is subjective, and I don’t know that the X-T2 is any better in this category than other similar cameras, but personally I couldn’t be happier with how the X-T2 handled the conditions.
So why am I not sharing that image? Well, because both that image and this one were taken on the same day and I can only share one before my 7-day limit on the recency of images for this project runs out. And I just like this image way more. 🙂 If you’d like to see that example image, just let me know in the comments and I’ll send it to you or throw it at the end of this post or something.
- It has also probably resulted in me capturing a few shots that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. When you’re carrying your camera down by your waist and don’t have an obvious strap around your neck, people don’t seem as intimidated by you. It’s easier to get closer and grab a quick shot. This has been a really useful combination with the small profile of the Fuji cameras. ↩
kyle wurtz 
This series has been very helpful. Just wondering if you find the EVF gives a good representation of the exposure, I find it under exposes and brightening or darkening the EVF does not help.
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It’s interesting you say that… I’ve noticed that the viewfinder’s image usually looks too bright, so if I adjust exposure based on how the image looks in the EVF I tend to come out with images that are underexposed. Is that the same effect that you’re experiencing? I modified the EVF settings so that it shows the histogram overlayed on the image, and I’ve been using the histogram as a check for my exposure to try to combat that phenomenon.
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Exactly. But I find the histogram is not perfect. I moved to average metering and that helps a bit, in review I can check for blinking highlights, but the screen for that is too small. Some one suggested removing preview of exposure in B&W as a help. Trying that as well. The problem occurs when the dynamic range is high. I don’t like in camera fixes for dynamic range. I have also used bracketing that works and it’s fast but with moving subjects not an option.
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I hadn’t heard of the tip to remove preview of exposure…maybe I’ll give that a shot. I haven’t really had troubles with using the histogram, though. Since I shoot with RAW+JPEG, in the cases where the exposure has been significantly off I’ve been able to work with the RAW file and adjust it to satisfaction. It’s definitely obnoxious, though. Good to hear that others are having similar issues…perhaps that means Fuji will work on a fix. Seems like something that could be fixed with a firmware update…
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