Close Examination of Fuji X-Series Lag Time

John M Roberts wrote:

Easycass wrote:

Arnold Cruz wrote:

pxchoi wrote:

Does anyone get annoyed that the aperture blades close down with a half shutter press? When shooting at smaller apertures in low light, I hate that the gain gets amped up in the viewfinder and it starts to lag.

Ditto. There's just too much going on just to take a shot.

We were at an orphanage yesterday as part of my car club's community service and despite lots of light, 1/3 of the photos was unusable.

Yes, I believe stopping down the lens on half-press should at the very least be selectable on/off.

In terms of shooting experience, I can imagine shooting at an orphanage is just the sort of experience that I have found the cameras to perform badly in. The 18mm might be quick enough to capture an expression, but that lovely 56mm bokeh feature is just useless if my subject has to hold still for 0.5 to 1 second while the lens hunts backwards and forwards, and the lens clicks and whirrs. I understand that many people do not shoot in such situations and are quite happy, but we are not talking about sports action here, we are just talking about people expressions, or that pose of an energetic child, all gone in an instant. Surely a multi-tousand dollar camera and lens set-up should be able to do that?

The camera itself may be able to establish focus information in a few milliseconds, but what's the point when the lens can take a second or so to move all the lens elements into place when in AF? That is why I went to manual focus, and then finding there are 'variable' delays inherent also in that mode, which should be almost instantaneous and predictable, just made me wonder what is going on with this system... a real shame.

Unfortunately this is one of the issues one has to consider when purchasing systems especially higher priced ones that exhibit desirable quality in many other aspects. I bought into this system for it's size and quality, not for it's reaction time. For my lighter option which I'm hoping will be an improvement for the type of shooting you mentioned, being able to capture expressions and such, I have ordered the smallest and nicely priced refurbished kit Rebel to replace my 8 year old one.

Hi John, yes, I must admit that I bought into this system for much the same reasons as you. I travel an awful lot, and something lighter, good IQ and also more discrete were big draws for me. Prior to this, I used to carry two Nikon D5200's and the DX lenses, and to be honest, only a little heavier than the Fuji stuff, but not quite as good IQ as the Fujis I think. I must admit that I knew the AF was going to be a little slower on the Fuji's, but it is just the 56mm, fo such a nice lens optically, I just can't understand why it is so much slower than the Nikon 50mm. And then, with this manual focus issue also on the 56mm, I guess a little disillusionment crept in. The Fuji's are not bad, but when I came back from a recent trip to Vietnam with just the Fuji's, that frustration caused by not getting the shots I used to get very easily with the Nikons was like a real poke in the eye. But anyway, I am sure mirrorless will get there eventually... possibly the Fuji Mk II lenses...