Fujifilm X100T first impressions

My Fujifilm X100T arrived on January 2nd so I have had all of two days to try it out. A while back I wrote a list of what I would like to see in the X100S replacement that was anticipated for Foto Kina. There were nine items on the list and most have been fulfilled, or at least significantly improved with X100T.

1. The burst mode does not lock the camera so it is possible to take another burst almost directly. 

2. There is a setting for release priority, and it is separate for continuous and single shot focus so that you can have one for each. 

3. There is no tab on the focus wheel, nor is there always-on manual focus. However, the manual focus is excellent with split-screen, peaking, and 100%-preview modes. 

4, 6, 7, & 8. While there are no dedicated switches, there is a drive-mode button for selecting single, continuous, bracketing, or film mode, and there are seven programmable buttons that I have programmed to cover my needs. 

5. There is no dedicated ISO dial. Although, I have high hopes for a firmware update that lets you use the exposure-compensation dial for ISO. It should be easy, really. 

9. While there is no touch screen, the buttons are much better with a dedicated back button to get out of menus.

As you see, it still does not have a manual ISO dial, but otherwise I am happy. It is a massive improvement above the X100, which, given how much I liked the X100, is no idle praise. The film simulation is particularly useful when working in black and white, I have the camera set that way and have Adobe Lightroom set up to import as low-contrast black and white. It works excellently. High ISO is excellent up to 6400. I haven't had use for higher ISO seeing as I am only in Sweden in January, and not in a mine. Macro shooting also works well, at f2 the actual focus seems to lie slightly in front of the apparent focus using peaking manual focus, and autofocus is not the most accurate. Honestly, f2, autofocus, and macro are three things that don't generally go together. So, I can't really fault the camera for that.

Here are some examples from the first days of shooting. As you see it works right out of the box for boxer snaps.

With a little bit of thought it can take quite nice portraits.

And night-time shooting at ISO 6400 is no problem and gives very presentable result.

Tai-otoshi - free judo illustrations

Click the image to reach the illustration-library at Flickr, or you may cut and paste this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hultstrom/sets/72157632298341948/
Image is free to use under the Creative commons - attribution - share-alike license.

At our judo club in Uppsala we have been looking over the graduation hand-outs that have been used for years. They are just lists of techniques with some illustrations. The illustrations are a mix of horrid old photocopies, illustrations stolen from different books, and some hastily drawn stick figures. There are two problems with this. First, they are mostly bad, and secondly they are either copyrighted or of uncertain copyright status. In an effort to fix this we went looking for creative commons or other freely available judo illustrations on the internets.

There are photographs for some techniques on wikimedia commons that are not terrible, there are even some illustrations, although mostly not so good. At judoinfo everything is copyrighted, and frankly the quality is not always what you would hope for. In the end we were not able to find more than a handful of usable images, which explains the quality of our present hand-outs as well as the quality online in general.

Since I clearly haven't got enough shit to do, we decided to create a set of illustrations and release them into the wild for the judo community to use and spread. All those books are great, and we all have them, but the children don't and they never will. So, here are (or will be) a collection of free to use illustrations of judo techniques. They are provided under the Creative commons - non-commercial, attribution, share-alike - license, which means that they are free to use for non-commercial purposes as long as they are properly attributed, and any derivative works are also shared freely under the same license.

Original tai-otoshi photograph. Copyright Michael Hultström 2012.

First out is Tai-otoshi, or body-drop. Mostly because that was one I had a good photograph of to use as template. Don't expect this to go quickly, but give us a year or two and there should be fair number of images to use. Quality-wise I will be aiming for proper vectorised line-art in the end, but that is even more work and will take even more time.

Edit: I have been convinced that the non-commercial license is too restrictive as it potentially limits uses I would like to allow. Thus, the illustrations are now re-licensed as attribution, share-alike.