Thursday, February 16, 2012

Fuji X-Pro1 – very impressive sample images …

Someone posted a link to the site http://LensTip.com where there are a number of sample images for the new Fuji XPro-1, a pretty amazing interchangeable lens camera with a new sensor that appears to seriously rock.

I’ve seen some of Hugo Poon’s initial images, as he often posts images before cameras are released, such is the respect Fuji accords his excellent photography. Click that link to see just how marvelous his work is with this camera. This is a real step up for him … I like his new images better even than his images with the Fuji S5-Pro. The XPro-1 is a much better camera I think, despite its lack of dynamic range extension tricks.

So … back to Lens Tip’s excellent images. I will examine one of them here, calling on the Fair Use Doctrine to allow me to use one of their images for educational purposes. I will not, of course, post a full sized image, just a smaller version and some crops.

That image is magnificent. At base ISO, there is no noise to speak of, the tones are rich and the gradients are perfectly smooth. The sharpness is magnificent. In fact, I put together a pair of crops to show the extreme high quality of this camera’s lens, sensor and jpeg engine.

Click through on that image to get the larger version. You will see just how outstanding the sharpening tolerance is for this sensor and jpeg engine. A far cry from the weak EXR images from the X10. The X100 competes, but I never got the razor sharp sense from that camera that I see in this one.

And it was shot at f/1.4! With sharpening on soft! Amazing …

One thing I don’t like so much … I’m not fond of lipstick that does not cover the whole lip. I am sure that she must be compensating for a perceived dislike of her very full lips, but I think she should really consider using the entire area to the ridge. Not only does it balance the thickness of the top and bottom lips, but it shows a fullness that many stoop to Botox to achieve. She has it naturally …

Just my opinion of course …