Back to Fujifilm! Whatever happened to Kaizen?

Threaded wrote:

Jerry-astro wrote:

ViMa wrote:

I apologise if I appeared cross. It has been a point of contention for a few days now and there was a long conversation about it in another thread you have also posted in, so I assumed wrongly that you were being sarcastic.

They generally promoted it mostly in places for enthusiasts: interviews, podcasts, statements, fora. I'm not suggesting everyone who bought into Fujifilm did because of Kaizen, that would be daft. I'm just saying it clearly used to be a thing and then didn't.

It may have started out because their first generation cameras were unfinished so they had no choice but fix them. But then fans liked it and started talking about it and the company embraced it and used it to their advantage. It could be that.

The point is, it seems to not be there anymore.

It's not necessary. The X-Pro3 is an amazing camera, unlike any other, as is. It's just that maybe a few years ago, the same X-Pro3 would have already received a firmware update that would have given it the X-T4 autofocus. Truth be told, the X-Pro3 AF is excellent as is, but people would have been pleased to receive such an update.

You're making a huge assumption here that this is even feasible and that this could be accomplished via a firmware update. There may well be some improvements that could be accomplished at the firmware level, however, bringing the X-Pro3's AF to the same level as an X-T4 may easily require much more than a rework of the firmware. Without that knowledge, I think your assumption here might be very faulty and that such an upgrade may well be completely infeasible by simply retooling the firmware. I can't say whether this is the case or not, but I suspect neither can you without a much better understanding of the internals and the firmware itself. I'm guessing that neither of us possess that knowledge.

Jerry, come on, it’s not exactly a wild assumption to make. First we have the historical precedent - cameras of each previous generation received substantial AF upgrades in firmware to match the latest and best of each sensor. The same complete reworking of the XT1’s autofocus wound up in the older XE2 for example; the X-Pro2 received all the same AF abilities (on paper) as the XH1, and so on.

Then there’s the fact that the XT3, released a full year before the X-Pro3, has already received the full XT4 style AF system via firmware. The two years between the XT models hasn’t prevented that at all, but you’re suggesting that the younger X-Pro3, which already has some of the improvements later expanded on in the XT4, can’t be improved in firmware in the same way?

Ok, we don’t know for sure, the same way we don’t know for sure if the sun will come up tomorrow - but we can take an educated guess.

Sorry, but I’ll stick with my assumption here.  Simply assuming that newer generation firmware should offer the same capability for improvements as previous generations, is just that… an assumption.  I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible, but I’ll also state that neither of us know enough about the internal architecture of the camera and its firmware to know what level of improvements would actually be possible.  If it is strictly a prioritization issue, then you have a point and Fuji might in fact be nudging away from the level of Kaizen updates that they’ve offered in the past.  Absent that knowedge, then your guess is as good as mine.  Where we clearly differ is that you’re taking this as a given and I’m suggesting that neither of us have sufficient information to do much more than guess.

BTW, if in fact Fuji is nudging away from Kaizen updates, count me in the group that would be sad to see that sea change.  I’ll stick with my opinion that neither of us have sufficient information to know for sure why this is actually happening (or not happening as the case may be).