On 15/03/2014 6:28 AM, Steve Cottrell wrote:
On 14/3/14, Bill, discombobulated, unleashed:
Was shooting today with the A*85/1.4 on the XT-1.
There was great joy in the experience, though the pictures are pretty
mundane (my niece being molested by my Rottweiler).
How do you find manual working with this combo? I presume you're setting
ISO manually, aperture manually and letting the shutter speed take care
of itself? If the speeds aren't in the right range, then bump up the
ISOP a bit?
Steve, it's just like using an LX. Set the ISO, set the shutter speed
and move the aperture to center the histogram.
Or, set the shutter to A, set the ISO and move the aperture to set the
histogram.
Bump the ISO if required.
While the camera forces me to use my A series lenses as K lenses, it
seems to get less in the way than the Pentax, I think because even after
10 years of using front and rear dials on the body, slipping back into
using the more traditional controls on top of the camera was like
putting on a comfortable shoe.
This may not be for everyone, but for anyone who has been doing
photography long enough to have used a full manual camera, the control
familiarity is wonderful.
I was also playing stabbing random buttons last night and found out just
how customizable the viewfinder it. In addition to being able to turn
all the overlays off and have a very big unobstructed viewfinder to look
at, one can also set the finder to a somewhat smaller output, probably
about APS-C sized, which makes it much easier to see the corners for us
glasses wearers (but also takes away part of the reason for buying the
X-T1 in the first place), and one can also set up a dual image where the
entire image is on the left side, and on the right side is a view of
just the focus point, much enlarged, which makes manual focus a snap.
On the subject of manual focus, the choice, in all viewfinder modes is
plain screen (no focus aids), what Fuji calls digital split image (self
explanatory), and focus peaking (including in the magnified views).
I know you mentioned that you were interested in what I had to say about
the camera, since I'm not a fanboi, but I have to warn you, I have very
much become a fanboi of this camera.
So far, the only niggles I have with it is the camera shake warning,
which cannot be turned off, and sits there like a wet fart in the
viewfinder. It's annoying, but can be ignored, or put outside the image
area by dropping the image size in the finder, the four way buttons are
certainly on the small side. The people complaining about them have a
valid point. The buttons really need to be sitting about a millimeter
prouder of the body for perfection, and the battery life (which is
pretty ugly coming from Pentax).
There are decent workarounds for all of my complaints, and quit
honestly, they are the camera equivalent of First World Problems.
The vertical grip is not nice when using the camera horizontally,
especially with manual focus, manual aperture lenses, and because of the
traditional control layout and shape of the camera, the camera can be
flipped into what I find is a more comfortable shutter button down
vertical position when shooting. If I am doing a lot of verticals, such
as a portrait session which would pretty much be all verticals, then the
battery grip becomes a thing of beauty (and doubles the shooting life to
something close to a decent number of shots).
In use, this camera is as close as I have seen to an LX in a digital
camera. The control layout is virtually identical, and the size seems to
be very close as well. I might dig out an LX this weekend and do some
size comparisons.
Fuji has, for me, been almost uncanny regarding this camera. It's really
like they read my mind and custom built a digital camera just for me.
The X-T1 doesn't get in the way.
Apparently a lot of people feel the same way, they are selling them
faster than they can build them.
bill
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