A recent review from the SWPP of the Impending Canon compact killer, the G1X revealed that it had totally failed to capture
the actions of a hyperactive dog frolicking in the park (apart from a prolonged mud bath). It’s something I’ve long been aware of with the G series cameras, superb lightweight gear for landscapers but if it’s action you’re after the camera is just too slow to respond in every way.
So when I walked in on a pizza making session involving three generations of the Perkins family, plus a friend I couldn’t resist grabbing the Fuji X10 from the glove compartment to see how it would measure up to the task.
For the amateur photographer who may well find himself short on subjects, no impending Eastern Europe city breaks or traction engine rallies, creating a picture story may well be an interesting project.
The light was bright for an interior with harsh raw sunlight occasionally bursting through the window. I set the camera to shoot Raw files, set the mode dial to P – programme auto – where the camera sets both the aperture and the shutter speed (with small sensor cameras large apertures tend to be chosen automatically) and the iso was set to 400.
A hurried and bad choice of settings, With shutter speeds of around a 200th of a second and apertures of around f2.8 I could have certainly worked at 200 Iso and possibly even 160 either of which would have reduced the image noise or digital grain with a risk of a little subject motion blur which, in my opinion often brings life to an Image.
I’m immensely fond of the X10. During the pizza shoot its response times were fantastic, pretty well up to entry-level DSLR speed, in fact I don’t recall missing a shot. But Image noise is a real issue and shooting raw has produced some unpleasant surprises. The early test images from the x10 were all based on Jpeg images, not surprisingly because Adobe had not then updated the Raw converters to read the Fuji files for Photoshop and Lightroom, and they were impressive, right up to 1600 iso. The raw images at 400 iso are sadly very noisy and even applying noise reduction in Lightroom I was unable to achieve a decent noise level without playing havoc with the skin tones, at full size it looks like everyone in the pizza party has stage makeup smeared on their faces.
So next time I’ll shoot at a lower ISO and place more reliance on the x10’s superb image stabilizer. I’ll choose Aperture priority on the mode dial and set the largest aperture, no problem with the superb Fujinon lens. I’ll also try a few Jpegs as well as raw – Lightroom treats them just the same so it will be easy to see how things compare. I believe that lowering the sensor’s resolution to 6 mega pixels is also an option at higher isos ( Don’t know the details as I haven’t explored this are yet) and according to some reviews this creates a massive reduction of noise.
The x10 is certainly producing the best out of compact camera jpegs I’ve seen and perhaps this is the way ahead, as a raw shooter it’s certainly counter intuitive but in Lightroom at least, image processing is just as fast for jpegs as raw so this may well be the way ahead.
I muted the colour a little in Lightroom by the way just to give the snaps a little more of a Mama’s kitchen feel.
There’s a massive X10 thread on talkphotography at the moment and I’ve just posted a question about the X10 raw image quality there. Having had little time this winter to dabble with the camera it will be interesting to hear what the more experienced users have to say.
Update 11th March. According to Duncan from talkphotography, probably the most experienced x10 user around, I may have been a little harsh with my criticism of the Image quality of this set (Duncan examined full size images) and I think he’s probably right.
Experimenting recently I achieved Nikon D40 quality images by setting the image size at M, (6 mega pixels), and shooting jpegs at 1000 iso. So I shall persist when time permits, perhaps using the sweep panorama mode at 120 or 180 degrees and sweeping with the camera held vertically to give the images a greater vertical pixel count.
Urban panoramas perhaps, panoramas providing a new perspective on our decaying High Streets. Essential ingredient – NO CARS. They are the greatest of all image pollutants and very difficult to remove in Photoshop. I guess I need to hunt down Red Routes!
John's Photography Notes 