Fujifilm’s new X-H2 finally pushes its APS-C camera system to higher resolution

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23342074/fujifilm-xh2-mirrorless-camera-xf56-gf2035-lens-price-specs-availability

by fortran77 • 4 years ago

81 85 4 years ago

dannyw2• 4 years ago

Hope this makes its way to the X-T50. I love small camera bodies, and my 24MP (X-T20) is certainly not bad, but I love zooming in.

Glad they're keeping the X-Trans. I love the film grain like look.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

I love the film grain like look.

Sounds interesting. Having dropped out of the pro-digital-camera loop many several years now, I am only guessing that perhaps the "X-Trans" has digital (compression?) artifacts have an analog "feel"?

EDIT: did some Googling, sounds like it's the Bayer pattern the CCD uses that is unique — interesting: https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/x-trans-vs-bayer-sensors-fa...

robin_reala• 4 years ago

That really confused me until I worked out that they’d reused the name of a defunct film cartridge for a sensor size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Photo_System

neilv2• 4 years ago

For many years, prosumer DSLRs have been said to have "APS-C" size sensors. Or "1.6x crop factor", or "1.8x". That's a a multiplier for effective focal length, relative to using the same lens on a 35mm film body.

DSLRs with sensors the same size as 35mm film were called "full frame".

bayindirh8• 4 years ago

APS-C crop factor is around 1.5x - 1.6x. 1.8x is a bit too small for digital cameras and I never encountered one.

Canon uses 1.6x, and everyone else is on 1.5x bandwagon.

bayindirh8• 4 years ago

They reused it because the sensor size is equal to that film cartridge’s frame size.

Same for full frame. That’s equal to 35mm film.

nakedrobot2• 4 years ago

Uh, 20 years ago.

hotpotamus• 4 years ago

Ever dialed a phone number?

anovikov• 4 years ago

What's the point of all those megapixels? Can lenses work at such a crazy sampling frequency? 40 mpix at APS-C means 2.9 micron pixels, or for Bayer array sensor, 86 lp/mm. By comparison, "resolution" line on the MTF chart is at 30 lp/mm sample rate, 2.9x more coarse. Contrast at such extreme frequency will be virtually zero for any real life lens. These pixels are a waste of photons, and storage space.

bayindirh8• 4 years ago

Actually no. Modern lenses coupled with stabilization systems get pretty sharp.

I have a 24MP A7-III. The very lenses I use can resolve at 60MP siblings, too.

Modern glass foundries of Nikon, Canon, Sony and Fuji can create pretty impressive glass nowadays.

hef198985• 4 years ago

Even with older lenses the question is whether you can see the "lacking" resolution on the final product or not.

bambax2• 4 years ago

I'm wondering about this too. Storage of raw images esp. is already a difficult problem (not unsolvable, but expensive).

I wonder if the future would not be the opposite? Store low-res images and upscale those you need with the help of AI.

Maybe in the future we can have just one super high resolution image for a shoot, store all the other images as super low res, and use the high-res image as a reference when upscaling. That would be very cool I think.

bayindirh8• 4 years ago

Lossless compression of raw images solve much of these problems. Also flash memory is getting cheaper and faster than these cameras getting resolution. The problem for the serious photographer is nonexistent.

A 2TB drive is very sufficient for any amateur photographer using a camera in 24MP-40MP range.

We store raw images to archive what we got. AI interpolates. It's not acceptable.

dannyw2• 4 years ago

Fairly irrelevant, but it's not a Bayer sensor. It's X-Trans. That's why I love Fuji.

CarVac5• 4 years ago

X-trans… no actual advantages, a big pain.

Source: I develop raw processing software.

sbaiddn• 4 years ago

At f1.8 maybe. At f22 not a chance in hell. Diffractiom blurs everything.

All should not be lost though. A lot of noise in a picture is independent of a pixel's neighbor. So, if you have more pixels, you can average out a neighboring pixel to get better low light sensitivity.

twehrou32423f• 4 years ago

They certainly do for full-size sensors; I've heard APS-C lenses are harder to make, but don't see why not.In any case, even if they don't it helps bring down the noise when down-sampling.

That said, all of us do love new toys : D

wyager3• 4 years ago

In theory, we're still well below the diffraction limit even at f/4. Aberration, depends on the lens. Plus, superior lowpass filtering in software.

smilekzs2• 4 years ago

I think it's the same reason audio is processed at 192 kHz --- basically oversampling to make anti-aliasing less of an issue.

type0• 4 years ago

How good is Fuji for videos these days? Few years ago they were very much behind competition probably because of their X-Trans filter array.

CarVac5• 4 years ago

As soon as they started doing full sensor readout they became competent.

xyzzy_plugh• 4 years ago

Fuji is fine. But there's better IS, tracking, better AF, thermals, power, noise, audio in other cameras. I never really felt like X-Trans had much to do with it, once they got proper streaming.

wyager3• 4 years ago

That claim doesn't make sense. Their sensors are just sony sensors with a different bayer pattern. The only way that puts them behind is somewhat inferior support for their bayer pattern in RAW editing software.

In any case, you're almost always capturing video in pre-processed 422, at which point the image processor has already debayered the image.

okasaki3• 4 years ago

It's weird how phones went to 100M with their tiny sensors, but APS-C cameras stayed at 20M.

Anyway with used FF cameras now well under $1000, I have no idea why anybody would buy an APS-C camera. Even if you love some APS-C lens, you can just mount it on a FF camera and crop. Usually the camera will show you the cropped view in the viewfinder, but raw photos are taken at full resolution for you to manually crop later.

nikita2206• 4 years ago

Because of the size, weight and mechanical dials people might prefer Fuji over FF Sony cameras.

okasaki3• 4 years ago

True, the dials are nice. And I just noticed that the Fuji camera has a LCD on top, which is a big plus for me. I used to have a Pentax K20D and found that to be very useful.

Although I tend to just shoot on auto-exposure and bracket 3 shots, 0EV, -2EV, +2EV. One of those will usually give me what I want, without any messing around with dials.

stephencanon• 4 years ago

Indeed. The Fuji APS-C cameras are a delight because of their small size and excellent handling (lenses too; you can fit a couple in a jacket pocket).

FF cameras are great, but a totally different thing.

decafninja• 4 years ago

I test drove a variety of cameras renting them from Lensrental to find the perfect travel camera.

I took a XT-3 with me to Tokyo. While it’s a nice camera, I still found it too bulky but without the benefits of FF.

I ended up going with a A7R3 combined with a RX100. I leave the hotel room with the former gets taken when I know there’s something important I want to capture, if it’s at night, or when I know bulk isn’t an issue. The latter is taken when bulk is of concern.

_visgean• 4 years ago

the reverse is also true - with adaptor you can mount any old FF lens to aps-c, there is a slight advantage there that the old lenses tend to be shit in corners which might be visible on FF but not on APS-C...

skhr0680• 4 years ago

High MP rapidly shows the flaws / limitations of lenses and the photographer’s technique. Phone cameras use a ton of image processing to hide these and the limitations of the small sensor. That’s not even mentioning the rapidly finishing returns; 100MP only gives images twice as large as 24mp crop cameras for 4x the disk space needed to store and processing power needed to edit the pictures.

CarVac5• 4 years ago

The FF cameras well under $1000 are not ones that crop to APS-C gracefully.

hef198985• 4 years ago

A D750 does, not that I would do it. I'd rather have FX lenses on a DX body to get the additional reach. Heck, why pay prime money for a FX body to use DX lenses on?

hef198985• 4 years ago

I have both, a used Nikon D700 FX and a used D300 DX with 12 MP each. Why? Because FX is just nice to work with, it feels a lot like film. DX on the other hand is the best teleconverter you can think of, turning a 300mm FX lens into a 450mm one.

pdpi• 4 years ago

Phones went to 100Mpx because it’s an easy number to sell. Dedicated cameras have been hovering around 25Mpx for mainstream bodies, and somewhere around 40-60 for high-res bodies, because there’s not much benefit past that. Most full-frame lenses aren’t sharp enough to take advantage of higher-res sensors anyway.

I have an A3 print in front of me, from a photo taken with 24Mpx a7iii, and cropped a little in post. You’d never look at it and think “it needs more resolution”.

techpression• 4 years ago

This is a common misconception. Even a piece of plastic benefits from a higher resolution sensor.

It’s not very hard to get moiré on a 45mpx sensor with a modern lens, hence we most definitely need higher resolution cameras. But even with a lower resolving power than that there’s an advantage.

neogodless• 4 years ago

Anyone on this thread is probably into these kinds of cameras and knows, but just in case (it took me a few seconds)

FF = full frame, refers to sensor size. They are about 1.5x - 1.6x[0] in surface area compared to APS-C sensors.

Sensor size has various benefits in how you frame your photos, and can have larger sensor pixels at the same resolution, which can result in less noisy photos.

One such explainer of the differences: https://expertphotography.com/full-frame-vs-aps-c/

[0] EDIT: See below, this was a mistake; this is the crop factor, not the difference in surface area. It's more like 2.5x (depending on the exact camera/sensor.)

zokier• 4 years ago

FF = full frame, refers to sensor size. They are about 1.5x - 1.6x in surface area compared to APS-C sensors.

Actually more like 2.3× in surface area.

radford-neal• 4 years ago

In theory, the only benefit of FF over APS-C is when using very wide apertures.

For example, you might using a FF camera with a 52mm f/1.2 lens, in order to get the very shallow depth of field this gives and/or the very high light-gathering ability. A good 52mm f/1.2 lens is expensive, but quite feasible (they've existed for many decades).

To get the equivalent effect with an APS-C camera, you would need a 35mm f/0.8 lens. As far as I know, no such lens exists (though it's theoretically possible to construct a lens as wide as f/0.5).

In practice, FF may have other advantages, due to engineering considerations. For example (though I don't really know), it might be that electronic noise from the rest of the camera has more effect on noise during pixel readout when the pixels are smaller.

andyfilms1• 4 years ago

There is a lot more to image quality than just resolution, and often increasing resolution will hurt sensor performance in other areas like dynamic range, QE, and noise.

The Arri Alexa's Alev III sensor, which has won basically every Best Cinematography Oscar for the last decade, shoots at about 3k resolution (~7MP) yet holds up perfectly fine on huge cinema screens.

antisthenes• 4 years ago

Anything at 1080p holds up fine on screens already, and that's only 2 megapixels, and it's been around for 15 years.

Majority benefit from shooting at a higher resolution is the ability to crop/zoom during processing. Sometimes, it's the ability to actually reduce the resolution to get rid of noise/grain.

thih9• 4 years ago

I have no idea why anybody would buy an APS-C camera

Perhaps somebody is giving more priority to weight, size, price. Or lacks interest in shallow depth of field.

Even if you love some APS-C lens, you can just mount it on a FF camera and crop.

Cropping a FF photo, especially from a cheap FF camera, may result in lower resolution than what an APS-C camera offers.

ama5322• 4 years ago

The tiny sensors are a marvel of technology but have absurd levels of noise though. They're essentially unusable as traditional single-shot readout sensors in anything but exceptional light conditions. Internally phones take multiple shots and do an enormous amount of postprocessing for each shot. It's a completely different technique.

You can get a feel by how much post-processing is done by installing something like "opencamera" on a flagship phone, disable all filters and look at the raw file (if your phone allows it) and compare the results.

okasaki3• 4 years ago

OpenCamera is great if you want natural looking photos.

I went out with my android shitphone and someone brought their iphone 12 pro max. Here's a comparison (opencamera + rawtherapee vs iphone camera jpeg):

https://i.imgur.com/0E3KoBq.jpg

The iphone looks awful. It overbrightened/hdr-ed everything and made the sky blue (it was grey).

anta40• 4 years ago

Why would you put APSC lens on FF body (which is bigger) then crop? Just put on APSC body, which is smaller. Done. For some, APSC is still big, and they are happy enough with MFT.

Now I wonder, why would people buy FF cameras (especially if they don't shoot 35mm film cameras)? They are still bulky. Pick APSC or MFT which is smaller. If you want superb image quality without compromise, then skip FF and join the medium format club.

ekianjo• 4 years ago

Such resolution is completely useless since the optics are usually the real bottleneck for resolution above 20M. This is just marketing, folks.

ihateolives• 4 years ago

"640KB ought to be enough for anyone"

abc_lisper• 4 years ago

Fortunately, Fujis newer lens, first released in last 5 years, are all up to the task

https://www.fujirumors.com/list-of-fujinon-xf-lenses-that-ge...

wyager3• 4 years ago

Fuji has some nice lenses that can use it, and there are some secondary benefits like software low-pass filtering (which has superior falloff compared to extant optical low-pass filtering tech).

smilekzs2• 4 years ago

Basically spatial oversampling at this point then.

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

Fuji have some nice lenses.

jherskovic3• 4 years ago

I love Fujifilm cameras. I moved from Canon full frame to Fuji, because of the physical controls on the X-T line. The ergonomics are superb.

The X-H handles nice, but as a still (amateur) photographer, the X-Ts are where it's at. Having separate, physical controls for exposure compensation, speed, ISO, and aperture is a delight. The tilting screen on the X-T line is also a better fit for still photography than the articulated one on the X-H lines. Here's hoping they keep it.

I have an X-T3 now, I'm waiting for the X-T5. It should come out in a few months, and cost a bit less than the X-H. The main advantages should be the 40 MP sensor (vs 26) and sensor-based image stabilization (introduced in the X-T4). They also offer a pixel-combining mode now that shifts the sensor very small, precise amounts and then combines images to increase resolution up to 4x in the final result. You need a tripod and some time, but I'm looking forward to playing with it.

It's hard to explain exactly how, but the color rendition straight out of the camera on Fuji kit is also second to none. Other posters commenting on RAW files are right, though - they're a pain because of the non-standard sensor. Only Fuji's terrible software and commercial offerings like Lightroom do a decent job. Darktable, for example, doesn't. I stopped shooting RAW partly for this reason, but also because the JPG engine on Fuji kit is outstanding. It makes the best JPGs straight out of the camera I've ever seen.

The APS-C sensor size across the entire line also means that high-quality glass is a bit more affordable, smaller, and lighter than some of the competition.

I guess I became a huge Fuji fanboy along the way.

herrherrmann• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing your journey and opinions! I’ve also switched from a Canon EOS 7D to the X-T3 and was pleasantly surprised about all the neat extra features (e.g. the good color filters, GPS metadata via Bluetooth, customizable controls) and how nicely it can be handled despite the tiny body.

jherskovic3• 4 years ago

The other thing I like is that Fuji will deliver new features via software updates if the hardware can handle them. With Canon, at least, the feature set is set (sorry) in stone the moment you buy the camera.

fassssst• 4 years ago

However, I stopped shooting JPEG's because of how fast machine learning is improving. The vast extra data in a 14-bit RAW will surely allow extra amazing processing in the future.

vladvasiliu2• 4 years ago

I like the images the Fuji cameras produce and was interested in the xt4 when it came out. But boy is that thing huge, especially with the faux-pentaprism bump.

I currently own a pen-f, which is tiny. But I figure if I'm going to haul around a brick, might as well go for full-frame. Especially since Sony came out with the a7c. However, Sony doesn't seem to have small lenses and their tone rendition doesn't have the same effect on me.

Guess I'll just have to wait and hope for a pen-f mark 2...

They also offer a pixel-combining mode now that shifts the sensor very small, precise amounts and then combines images to increase resolution up to 4x in the final result. You need a tripod and some time, but I'm looking forward to playing with it.

This is great. My pen-f has this, and the images it produces are wonderful. But there are some failure modes, like leaves moving, and the water has a high likelihood of looking weird.

hotstickyballs• 4 years ago

The xt series might be as big as some full frame cameras, but there’s no cheating physics. Full frame glass is always going to scale in volume/weight faster than the increase in sensor size. Might want to consider a smaller apsc body instead?

igouy• 4 years ago

Having separate, physical controls for exposure compensation, speed, ISO, and aperture is a delight.

On an old Sony a65 I never use the exposure compensation or ISO or aperture preview physical-controls. There's a control wheel for shutter speed and aperture depending on PASM mode, which I use all the time.

But then I never use out-of-camera JPG, just raw at lowest ISO — to me, that seems to provide more possibilities.

(For example, converting a single raw file multiple times into an exposure series and then using the old Enfuse software to combine the "best" exposed pixels.)

twelfthnight• 4 years ago

Only Fuji's terrible software and commercial offerings like Lightroom do a decent job. Darktable, for example, doesn't.

What trouble have you had with Fuji RAW + Darktable? I've been using it without trouble, but I wonder if I'm doing something wrong?

jherskovic3• 4 years ago

The out-of-the-box settings yield dark, flat images, and no amount of twiddling on my part even approximates something pleasant, much less Fuji's defaults. If I could find a set of defaults for raw processing I liked, I might have stuck with it.

But seriously, the out-of-the-camera JPGs are _ridiculously_ good. Sure, you're throwing away information, but I found I very rarely used that information.

If I'm doing something particularly intricate, complex, or delicate I might shoot raw. For walking around the city taking snapshots? JPG is more than fine.

openbankerX• 4 years ago

Fuji is putting out some awesome stuff. I’m still shooting my XT-1 and have no complaints. I’ve been wanting to make the large jump to the GFX line, specifically the GFX100, I’m seeing used bodies pop up on eBay for ~7K, I’m torn between the GFX100 and 100S. I’ve always had a vertical grip. Also, the GFX100 has a higher resolution viewfinder and the optional swivel and tilt viewfinder. I’d like to find a GFX100 and 3 lenses for <10k.

Someone• 4 years ago

FTA: “This pro-oriented camera looks just like the recent X-H2S it’s based on, matching it with the same processor, in-body image stabilization system, dual card slots, electronic viewfinder, and more. It’s nearly the same camera with a different sensor for those who value megapixels most”

So, why does it have the same processor? Is this camera fast enough for the kind of photos you’d make with that sensor? Is the market for these things not large enough for them to design the larger body that would be needed to house the larger battery needed to power that? Or does such a processor not exist, and is the market too small to create it? Or something else?

saltcod2• 4 years ago

I moved from an original Canon 5d to the X100F a few years back. The immediate improvement in AF was jarring. So was the output straight from the camera. Then there was the incredible size- I could just slip it into my jacket pocket.

I moved up the the X100V when that came out to try and get even better AF performance (most pictures are of my busy kids) and it has been a worthy upgrade.

Since then I’ve tried an X-T3 and an XPro2. I fairly quickly sold both. The XT3 is just too big for me to want to take out. The XPro2 is smaller but still much bigger than the X100.

As hard as I tried to justify spending more money, the X100v is basically perfect for my needs.

A Leica Q2 is on my wishlist but I wonder if it too would feel too big to take with me most of the time.

It’s true that the best camera is the one you have with you and because of the size of the X100, you can basically have it with you all the time.

kylehotchkiss2• 4 years ago

I have an xpro3 myself and love it. It’s a beautiful little titanium box that takes really lovely photos. It was my entry into the fujifilm ecosystem and I’m looking forward to diving deeper.

saltcod2• 4 years ago

Did you have an xpro2? Wondering if the difference is significant. Betting it is.

Fujifilm’s new X-H2 finally pushes its APS-C camera system to higher resolution

Related Stories