I have to say that I think Erik has written a very short and nicely done little reply here on XTrans. I stared at it a while and looked at my long and definitive list (compiled over 8 years of intensive research and DPR-tracking
) of XTrans advantages and disadvantages, and he perhaps missed some of the "strengths" but then again, I have come to believe over the years that XTrans does have a significant marketing element to it, so he is right about that.
I'm not bragging, but I'm just telling you that no one on this orb we call Planet Earth shot Fuji X more than me from 2013 up until two years ago when I stopped shooting Fuji X gear. I shot it like a madman all over the World and I had all of the gear.
I was a big believer in and supporter of the XTrans thing because I liked the rendering and thought it gave the smaller sensor (compared to FF) an ability to get close to (or even sometimes match) the image fidelity of FF while enjoying the advantages of the smaller Fuji X system and great XF glass.
I believed that the people who attacked XTrans were almost always really just conducting marketing attacks on Fuji itself and that they had even less actual technical prowess than even me (which is a pretty low bar). I got in a lot of trouble over the years fighting with anti-XTrans (anti-Fuji marketing dudes) on the Fuji Board. This was mostly from 2014 through about 2019 - a 5 or 6 year period where I defended XTrans and considered myself the World's top authority on XTrans (
), even though I had absolutely no idea how it worked technically. I simply had a list of every positive aspect ever mentioned on the DPR Fuji Board, Fuji reviews throughout the web and statements of Fuji themselves, as well as the rare actual technical article (which were all over the map and often depending on the bias of the author). I also had the list of all the attack-points people used against X-Trans. I tossed that around and used them (and my own shooting experience with Fuji X gear) to try to combat the anti-XTrans marketing frenzy that occurred on the Fuji Board on a constant basis for 6 years (and no doubt continues today - but I don't dwell there anymore so could be wrong).
I don't care anymore, but here are a few of my basic observations after thinking about it over a long period of time (years) and shooting a lot of Fuji X, Canon DSLR FF (5D II, III and IV) and now Q2 and GFX.
I think XTrans is good and helps stretch the capabilities of that smaller sensor to get close to FF image fidelity in a lot of situations. I compared thousands of FF Canon DSLR (5D) shots (not 50 MP) to Fuji APSC X-Trans shots over the years and thought the Fuji X shots held up very well to the Canon FF shots in a variety of situations. That was just me peeping my own shots and was not a scientific comparison of course. Anyway, I liked XTrans.
Now that said, there was a huge disadvantage of XTrans and that was Adobe in the early years of Fuji X. Lightroom had a terrible time rendering XTrans files and it resulted in the famous watercolor effect on foliage and brick in some situations. That got better over the years and I don't think was an issue the last year that I shot Fuji X.
In my opinion, about 85% of what has been written about XTrans on the DPR Fuji Board is nonsense and just a bunch of pro-Fuji / anti-Fuji marketing speak. But I haven't followed it in the past year or so.
I think XTrans enables Fuji X to punch above it's weight class. It is good. Adobe has basically )over time) negated the old demosaicing issue and I like the rendering of XTrans files in most situations. I think the image fidelity of Fuji X is pretty remarkable for that smaller sensor and the Fuji one-two punch of X-GFX is quite a brilliant thing and hits the FF market from both flanks like Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae.
One last point.... No way Fuji ever even briefly considered XTrans for GFX. I'm glad Fuji uses it for their X line and not for GFX. Most people I know that shoot both systems agree with that sentiment.
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Greg Johnson, San Antonio, Texas
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