Fuji seem to have made the camera that Nikon should have built.

[I @ M]

http://www.fujifilm.com/news/n140128.html

Now where do I get some cash from, maybe sell a few Nikon bodies -----

[old dog]

mmmmm....me like him. Will put a big dent in the wallet though for sure. $2k ?

[I @ M]

mmmmm....me like him. Will put a big dent in the wallet though for sure. $2k ?

USA prices are at USD $1299.00 for the body and USD $1799.00 with the 18-55.

Going by the Australian retail prices of other Fuji models compared to the US figures the new one should be very similar in Oz as the US.

[arthurking83]

$500 for an 18-55 kit lens!

how much for a higher resolving D7100+18-55(collapsible)VR?

If these so called mirrorless cameras are supposedly cheaper to build .. why aren't they cheaper to buy?


Personally, I'd prefer a Df over any of the current mirrorlesses .. I think EVFs are still a few years off(maybe two more generations or so) from becoming a realistic alternative to OVFs.

Needless to say I recently spent more moolah on a focusing screen for my current toy.


This is not to say the camera looks like it has the potential! Far from it. Looks quite good in almost all areas(I'm still a bit cynical about the retro dial controls tho).
One thing that looks 101% appealing about the vf is the split overall+focus point magnified capability. All other features I could live without in most ways.

So far(from my experience) focus peaking doesn't seem to actually give the results everyone actually hoped it supposedly did. Had a read of a Sony A7 report, describing many of the inadequacies of focus peaking in marginal conditions .. ie. low contrast fast lenses in low light.

I've now found a good balance between hitting focus with the 50/1.2 at close range but still being able to see through the vf with this new screen. It's bloody dark tho.
(I'll show you in a few days time, I hope).

[fillum]

Come on Andrew !! No video, only 1 card slot, only 8 fps pfffft. If I think a bit more I can probably come up with a heap more negatives for a camera that's barely announced and I've never even seen...

Actually looks quite nice. If it comes in near the prices you're suggesting might be very tempting.

Fuji seem to have made the camera that Nikon should have built.

Yeah...on 2 counts. Physically, especially size imo, that the Df should have been, and technically (but not stylistically) a long way toward what I'd imagine the D400 would have been / will be.


Anyhoo, I'm off to google "F-mount to X-mount adapters"...


Cheers.

[I @ M]

$500 for an 18-55 kit lens!

Yep, bundled with the body it represents a saving on the retail price of the lens alone but it is pretty exe for such a beast. It does however review quite well, especially in build quality compared to the "normal" kit offerings.

I think EVFs are still a few years off(maybe two more generations or so) from becoming a realistic alternative to OVFs.

I am still not a real convert to EVFs but technology is rapidly advancing and the lag times and magnifications on this Fuji EVF seem to reflect that swift march in tech. Time will tell.

Come on Andrew !! No video, only 1 card slot, only 8 fps pfffft. If I think a bit more I can probably come up with a heap more negatives for a camera that's barely announced and I've never even seen...

Phil, it does do them moving pictcha thingys, even has a dedicated stop start button instead of a menu based system of past bodies. As for one card slot, I reckon it is a good idea, less time spent fumbling around in the grass looking for that tiny bit of plastic that my fat fingers dropped when you only have one card to change.

8fps, pffft, real fotographers only need 3.

[fillum]

Phil, it does do them moving pictcha thingys, even has a dedicated stop start button instead of a menu based system of past bodies. As for one card slot, I reckon it is a good idea, less time spent fumbling around in the grass looking for that tiny bit of plastic that my fat fingers dropped when you only have one card to change.

8fps, pffft, real fotographers only need 3.

Cheers Andrew. Missed the video, but these are features I don't actually care about - just my poor attempt at humour trying to impersonate what appears to be the standard "hater boi" response these days to announcements. (I should probably spend less time reading comments on NR etc ).

[I @ M]

- just my poor attempt at humour trying to impersonate what appears to be the standard "hater boi" response these days to announcements. (I should probably spend less time reading comments on NR etc ).

I got the humour and yes, get away from the comments on the 'net and take some photos.

[rackham]

In my opinion, the only thing stopping EVF from being the dominant viewfinder nowadays is legacy equipment and consumer habits. The refresh rate on them is almost as good as the real thing and the opportunity to overlay information as required/desired by the user is really only beginning to be taken advantage of. As the next generation of mirror-less cameras continue to overhaul that gap in image quality with DSLRs I think you'll start to see cameras with EVFs and the way they can be used become serious and advantageous alternatives.

[arthurking83]

...... As the next generation of mirror-less cameras continue to overhaul that gap in image quality with DSLRs ......

captured IQ, or rendered IQ through the finder?

if it's capture IQ, I don't think they ever will .. even a Sony A7 type 135 format sensor ... almost certain to never catch up to the image capture qualities of most DSLR designs.

if you're referring to the image prejected onto a vf, it's a possibility! Of course OVF design could also steadily get better in the same period, but the problem with that is one of cost and size.

For my money, EVF's still can't do enough in terms of visual trickery to claim that they are better!
They may have 'better features' but if it's 'features' you want and not performance, then I dare say you may as well use it with the rear review screen for framing!
Their benefits in having visual aides generally comes at a price. I hear comments of 'live histogram overlays' .. really! What ever happened to knowing how to expose correctly?

D800 has a live histogram overlay via the review LCD .. and it drives me bonkers!! (that and all the other ancillary overlays that only serve to diminish the ability to compose properly)
Maybe I'm just in an unusual position of generally knowing how my exposures will eventuate, but more importantly is the cluttered screen image.
Trying to compose an image and with all this annoying clutter is a feature that should be exorcised from any viewfinder image/overlay.

Whats the point in having a metering system built into the camera, if you're going to use a live histogram(which is probably not going to be correct anyhow, as it's based on an 8bit jpg image too btw .. not as helpful for raw shooting)

What I'd like to see: if EVFs never do catch OVFs for image quality it'd be nice to have an EVF overlay on an OVF.
That is, OVF as the base image, as they never use power and have instant refresh rates .. not 0.005s, or 0.0000001s .. instant refresh rates all the time.
It'd be nice to have access to switchable EVF overlays such as magnified focus, and simple items like unobtrusive framing overlays and focus point indications and stuff like that.

[rackham]

captured IQ, or rendered IQ through the finder?

if it's capture IQ, I don't think they ever will .. even a Sony A7 type 135 format sensor ... almost certain to never catch up to the image capture qualities of most DSLR designs.

if you're referring to the image prejected onto a vf, it's a possibility! Of course OVF design could also steadily get better in the same period, but the problem with that is one of cost and size.

For my money, EVF's still can't do enough in terms of visual trickery to claim that they are better!
They may have 'better features' but if it's 'features' you want and not performance, then I dare say you may as well use it with the rear review screen for framing!
Their benefits in having visual aides generally comes at a price. I hear comments of 'live histogram overlays' .. really! What ever happened to knowing how to expose correctly?

D800 has a live histogram overlay via the review LCD .. and it drives me bonkers!! (that and all the other ancillary overlays that only serve to diminish the ability to compose properly)
Maybe I'm just in an unusual position of generally knowing how my exposures will eventuate, but more importantly is the cluttered screen image.
Trying to compose an image and with all this annoying clutter is a feature that should be exorcised from any viewfinder image/overlay.

Whats the point in having a metering system built into the camera, if you're going to use a live histogram(which is probably not going to be correct anyhow, as it's based on an 8bit jpg image too btw .. not as helpful for raw shooting)

What I'd like to see: if EVFs never do catch OVFs for image quality it'd be nice to have an EVF overlay on an OVF.
That is, OVF as the base image, as they never use power and have instant refresh rates .. not 0.005s, or 0.0000001s .. instant refresh rates all the time.
It'd be nice to have access to switchable EVF overlays such as magnified focus, and simple items like unobtrusive framing overlays and focus point indications and stuff like that.

Image quality produced by these cameras will catch DSLRs. I'm confident of that. It's not this generation of camera and probably not in the next two or three either, but it will happen. It'll happen when EVFs are better than OVFs and industry professionals who cut their teeth and made their craft on the backs of DSLRs retire/move on. Overlaying exposure in camera is certainly one possibility. Same goes for areas in or out of focus. Of course, it may not be desirable to everyone, especially those who can already do it without aids. It could be toggled on/off momentarily by holding a button for a brief overlay. I don't know but it's an exciting opportunity to explore.

That said, a lot of where and how cameras have advanced in the last five or so years has been very seriously aimed at diminishing the size of the barrier of entry for people to get into photography. Mirrorless cameras aren't conspicuous anymore and companies outside Nikon and Canon (for example Fuji and Olympus) have been taking them very seriously for a while now and are producing some seriously good cameras with that experience. Sony have begun to push the envelope in terms of sensors in them. Combine this with an emergent group of photographers with a non-classical photography background who don't see this technology as a passing fad or imitator to the throne - rather as another tool to use - and you'll find that these cameras will be taken very, very seriously. I don't think they'll replace DSLRs but they will (and in some instances already are) most certainly compliment them.

[arthurking83]

..... I'm confident of that. It's not this generation of camera and probably not in the next two or three either, but it will happen. It'll happen when EVFs are better than OVFs and industry professionals who cut their teeth and made their craft on the backs of DSLRs retire/move on. .....

in terms of absolute IQ, I doubt it.
For any given (current)mirrorless camera, a DSLR has the advantage of size(mainly of sensor area).
Then we have the issue of the smaller size of the mirrorless camera and the limitations inherent in those systems.

It's much harder to make the camera smaller if the sensor is larger, and a quick read of DPR's issues with the Sony A7 is clear on that.

In brief, the smaller back focus distance in a large mirrorless camera introduces lens anomalies at the periphery of the image sensor.
Apparently Leica have resolved the issue with 'angled' photosites which helps to reduce the phenomenon, but not completely.
Massive vignetting is the key problem, but not the only one.
IQ at the edges is also difficult to design out of the lens too. The answer is basically to make the lens slower(small max f/stop)!
This really isn't a proper solutions, as larger aperture lenses are always desired by some(many) people.
(Zeiss is clearly an exception here tho!! .. but then again they have been for a very long time )

The other alternative(and one that bugs me the most!!) is in camera pre processing of the image prior to saving as the native raw file.
Sony do this with their native FE lenses, and Olympus do it on a massive scale with some of theirs, and So do Fuji and Panasonic.
With Nikon(that I know) and Canon(I'm not sure), you can allow lens correction ability in camera, or not.
In the mirrorless cameras, it doesn't seem as tho you can!

That last option is the best one .. as it allows the user to determine absolute quality of the output file.

For an example of how dastardly the issue can be, take the example of the Olympus 12-24/2.8. It's barrel distortion in an uncorrected raw converter is huge( over 8% barrel). If you use a typical raw converter, the chances are that you probably have no control over the correction profile switch, so you may never see this.
But it's there, and will always be there being dealt with behind the scenes.
I'm sure I've seen fisheye lenses with less distortion figures!
I think the Panasonic 12-35 isn't as bad, but also rates amongst the worst lenses for distortion values of almost any lenses made.
Of course there are DSLR lenses with quite bad distortion values too, but these are about 50% worse than almost every bad DSLR lens ever made and tested.
These bad DSLR lenses tho are generally limited to the superzoom lens types 18-300 or so zooms .. I don't know of any short range zoom lenses with such bad distortion values.

This proposes two issues here:

1/. IQ, native IQ is never going to be higher than it could otherwise be, as the lens designers are compromising good lens design in favour of in camera processing. Any corrected images are going to always have to deal with a slight drop in absolute quality.
The counter to this argument is, do you really notice the difference in image quality? Probably not, but the point is not do you notice it, it's more along the lines of the precedence being set here.
Good lens design will always net you better image quality .. and lenses like Nikon's 14-24/2.8 acquire the reputation they get due to good lens design. Of course this good lens design, usually means larger than average lens size and weight.

2/. Countering this bad lens design, involves in reality only one solution .. make the lens larger(as far as we know of with current technology!).
Although in saying this, some manufacturers are doing better, showing natively better lens designs .. which seems to indicate that optical technology is still improving, and may continue to do so for a while yet.
So the problem now becomes size! making the lens bigger on a smaller camera body seems to be a contradiction of design philosophy!

Of course you can make better lenses, still smaller and even higher quality ... both Zeiss and Leica have shown this for many years .. but can you afford them?

$1000 for a Zeiss 55/1.8, where almost all other similarly specced lenses usually cost less than $200!!
Your screen isn't large enough to display all the digits in the price of most Leica lenses!
... I'm not sure this is the answer for the future.


As for increasing sensor size ... for the compact mirrorless systems, Sony has shown this is next to impossible without wholesale changes to the entire system!
Again a costly exercise in terms of reacquiring new lenses to replace old lenses.

Adding a 135 format sensor to an APS-C body as has been shown by Sony, Canon and Nikon is both easy and cheap.

So saying that smaller format sensor IQ will catch up or surpass the IQ of larger format cameras ... well it may well do so for a given output format .. but in absolute terms(that is pixel for pixel level .. it's highly unlikely and almost impossible, unless current DSLR makers cease all development on current DSLR technologies.

From what I see of available online raw file sources of many cameras ... In the cropped mirrorless range, Fuji is way ahead in some respects, but still has the X-Trans demosaic algorithm issue against it.
Olympus is about 2 generations behind in comparative output terms to the Nikon/Canon/Pentax APS-C cameras, and probably 3 or 4 generations behind similarly priced 135 format DSLR IQ.

In terms of similar ISO output(above base ISO) .. Olympus's ISO800 looks like Fuji's ISO 1600, looks like Canon Nikon's ISO3200.(this is based on a visual comparison, not a measured DxO style test)
Switch that to Nikon's 16Mp Fx sensor, and it's easy to see maybe a clear 4 generations difference in favour of the Nikon(16Mp FX sensor).
Df ISO 6400 images look cleaner than Olympus's ISo800 in some ways(not all, but some ways).

Once again, this leads to the question of internal pre processing of the raw file, prior to viewing via most conventional software.

Have yet to try loading all images into RawTherapee to see how they all look by way of comparison.
My comments are made using both Lr4 and some online resources(Imaging resource and DPR).

EVFs!! a totally other long winded reason why I don't think they'll catch up to the absolute quality available in an OVF.
I completely accept that a standard OVF as seen in all DSLRs today is easily not quite the best compromise, but alternatives are available(unfortunately not for all cameras by all thirdparty vendors!)

I think, EVFs need at least double the refresh rate, and possibly double the pixel density they currently have to equal some EVFs. This entails many problems.
I'm sure they will be addressed in the future, and the reasons will most likely be for higher end DSLR purposes. But the question is, can they address the issue of dynamic range.
LCD/LED/OLED screens have a decisive disadvantage when it comes to dynamic range. OVFs are only limited by the person's eye capabilities.

[old dog]

thanks Arthur for the in depth discussion here. I am currently (and as a seasoned procrastinator) still deciding on a travel camera....but just know deep down inside that it won`t be anywhere near as good as my D7000 and 17-55 (most used lens on hols). I am looking between sony nex 6 and 16-50.....fuji X-E1 and 18-55 and shoch horror..the panasonic FZ200 (2.8 constant super zoom). It`s a hard decision because I don`t want to keep buying different systems. I absolutely love my 7k...had him nearly 3 years now. The fuji X-E1/E2 etc have a hybrid OVF/EVF which is reported to be really good. As yet I have not held one. Ah, the future and what wonderful technological advances that will come......

[swifty]

Old Dog: Which 16-50 were you looking at? Sony has a 2.8 version but I presume you mean the kit 3.5-5.6 version. You should be aware the Fuji kit lens is 2.8-4 so anywhere from 1/3 to a full stop faster. But the extra 2mm at the wide end does make a difference.

The biggest issue against Fuji X currently IMO is one of workflow. If you're a LR and RAW shooter you may be forced to change workflow if you want to get the best out of your x-tran sensors. Alternatively There's an X-A1 with a bayer sensor but the body is quite basic.

But yea, the X-T1 looks good and I get the feeling I might agree with the 'what the df should have been' sentiments.

Rackham: I'd got further in saying that sensor IQ produced by mirrorless cameras are on par with their DSLR counterparts. I can't see a reason why they won't be. In many instances it is the same sensor.
Comparing like for like (ie. same format size), there're little difference between eg. an A7r and D800E. Or if you look at any variants of the 16MP or 24MP Sony sensors in DSLR or mirrorless guise respectively. I'd argue the small differences are purely down to the 'toppings' each manufacturers put on top of their sensors. Nikon just seem to be very good with theirs, whether it is the CFA, microlens or other.
There's no X-tran counterpart in DSLR world and neither are there m43 counterparts unless you're going back to the very dated 4/3 Olympus DSLRs which wouldn't be very fair.

When you look at the whole lens + mount + sensor combination it gets quite complicated though. One could argue that newly developed sensor mounts such as m43 are easier to design lenses for since the mount diameter and flange back distance were picked specifically without the limitations of the mirror. In the case of Sony, they may have gone too extreme with the flange back distance and there's also a small question mark over whether the E (and now FE) mount was ever intended for FF or an after thought when they realised they could accommodate one.

Add the lens to the equation then the story changes again. The auto-correction in Olympus and Panasonic lenses are an issue for some, depending on their chosen lens. Unfortunately there's no free lunch and optical correction almost always means bigger lenses. So software correction usually applies to compact designs such as the compact fast zooms, pancakes etc. How much resolution you actually loose - that I haven't looked into.
But I don't believe it is a pre-processing of the RAW files. You still get a RAW file but for some common and native software, there's no option to render an uncorrected file. But you can with other software so the data is there. It is just a nuisance that manufacturers try to impose this 'correction' of the lens on the photographer. Unfortunately I fear this trend is growing.

For me, I prefer optical correction so have only really been interested in designs such as the Olympus 75/1.8 and the Pana-Leica branded ones. The size trade off is not extreme bearing in mind we're still on a smaller sensor format so the image circle required is still smaller than APS-C and FF DSLRs.

For those looking at Fuji should be aware that auto-correction is applied to a number of their lenses.

So there's some gains and some trade-offs. Pick your balance I guess.

Back to the X-T1 and I think it is a pretty good balance in body and lens size for the system.
In terms of the EVF, regardless of how good the EVF gets in this or subsequent models, it will still look different even with no lag, higher resolution etc. I've come to accept this difference but still have a preference for OVF (purely from a subjective feeling POV).

PS: The Sony FE 55 f1.8 ZA's closest counterpart is probably the Zeiss Otus and we all know how much that costs. Now whether anybody needs that sort of resolution at that focal length I'll leave to the photographer who's buyiing it to decide.

[old dog]

yes the kit lens Swifty. ..and thanks for the info too.

[arthurking83]

I'm just hinking ..... would there be a demand for a slightly smaller(than Df) Dx equivalent camera body from Nikon

that is, the current (or any other) APS-C sensor is a downsized D3300 body .. no video, no blah blah features .. etc?

The question is, what sensor would they use?

If they make it the current 24Mp APS-C sensor .. how does that fare against the Df .. being only 16Mp?
We know that Mp isn't everything .. but does the average person know what, why and when you need Mp over better pixels?

They usually just see the numbers and think .. umm 16Mp -> $3000 .. 24Mp -> $800! .. why would I want less pixels.

Anyhow, I doubt that the DSLR could be made too much slimmer with the current mechanical setup.
Even those 8mm between sensor and LCD may be hard to eliminate

[swifty]

I'm just thinking ..... would there be a demand for a slightly smaller(than Df) Dx equivalent camera body from Nikon

My guess is not, without accompanying quality smaller DX lenses. The total camera + lens combination wouldn't be enough of a difference otherwise IMO.

[martycon]

A most informative and interesting discussion.
But hey blokes, it is a bit teknikel, which camera takes the better pitchers ?