Feeling frustrated with Fuji

EthanSLC · Apr 9, 2025

I used to be quite active in photography and was always a Canon shooter. A few years back I switched to a XT-4 but then kinda dropped out of the hobby for a bit and didn't use it much. I’ve recently picked it back up, but I’m feeling pretty frustrated with the SOOC JPEGs I am getting. Part of the reason I switched to Fuji was because of the reputation for great out of camera JPEGs, but that is not what I am getting at all. Images are underexposed with poor details and poor dynamic range. I am using a couple different recipes (Reggie’s Portra), but when I use all default settings I think the results are even worse.

For exposure, I'm using auto shutter speed and ISO, and manually setting aperture. Here is a similar shot (slightly different focal lengths) with the Fuji and an iPhone 15 Pro. The fuji JPEG is underexposed with poor detail on the cliff. The iPhone shot is much better.

Here is another comparison of an iPhone and Fuji shot. To be clear, I don't love the iPhone shot either, it feels over sharpened, but at least the dynamic range is better and the sky has much better detail.

Here is a zoomed in view. The iPhone has much more detail in the rocks. The iPhone has more megapixels, but I would still expect the better lens and larger sensor to do better than this.

A lot of these images were shot with the 16-80 f/4 which doesn’t have the greatest reputation, but I’m surprised it would be this dramatic. I know that amazing things can be done with raw files, but again part of the reason for switching to Fuji is because I don't love hours of post processing. Really curious to hear if I am missing something obvious here.

William the X-T5 guy · Apr 9, 2025

The iPhone is doing a lot of stuff in the background that you aren't seeing.

Bill Ferris · Apr 9, 2025

The first X-T4 photo was made at f/11, 1/30-second. Diffraction and motion blur probably contributed to the resulting image softness. An f/5.6 aperture would've produced an adequate depth of field with a well-chosen focus point.

The second X-T4 photo is of a backlit scene with the Sun high in the sky. A shutter speed of 1/500 was used. You could've used a slower shutter speed to optimize exposure without introducing motion blur. Did you return at another time of day to photograph the scene in good light?

Which focus mode are you using? AF-S with a single point or small zone painting your subject is a good option for landscapes. A smooth full press of the shutter release will reliably, consistently grab focus just before the exposure begins.

Which film look(s) did you select for the photos? Were the default settings used? If custom settings were used, what were the in-camera noise reduction & sharpening settings? Was a filter on the lens?

The iPhone images are composites from multiple exposures. A high dynamic range scene such as the first photo benefits from processing in a photo editing app. If you like what you're getting from the iPhone, you might consider sticking with smartphone photography and selling your camera gear.

--
Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ

Waku Waku · Apr 9, 2025

Computational photography is an area traditional camera mfg falls way behind modern smartphones. Software is doing magic behind the scenes to overcome hardware limitations. It does so surprisingly well.

You can do it with too but requires extra post processing work/skill. To some that kind of work is "fun" and part of the process. To others it is too much work to bother. Kinda like painting. Some want to paint their imagination. Others rather use generative AI or buy printed art etc.

The hardware in mirrorless cameras today has amazing potential but gimped by lack of software innovation/usability. Manufacturers in Japan are chasing FPS, MP and optics to push sales. It is what they know best. But... software is the modern day cutting edge frontier.

Erik Baumgartner · Apr 9, 2025

First, don't use Center Weighted metering unless you are actively dialing in an optimal exposure with exposure compensation (which you should be doing anyway), but Multi will typically result in a more optimal (and brighter) result with scenes like this without any exposure compensation (Center Weighted is fine too, but you'll often need significant positive exposure compensation).

If you are shooting bright/high dynamic range scenes like these, I would...

Turn on the highlight warning blinkies in your EVF to allow you to dial in an optimal exposure without blowing any important highlight detail (the Exposure Compensation dial in "C" mode transfers this adjustment to the front dial - very handy. If your highlights aren't blinking, they aren't clipping. In DR100 mode, you'll typically want your important highlight detail just below blinking, or set to whatever looks right for jpegs.

Try DR200 mode - usually with some positive exposure compensation. This (with jpegs) will give a full stop of extra highlight headroom to work with - allowing you to dial up the shadows and mid tones (with EC) to the desired level of lightness without losing the highlights. Adjust this to taste in using your EVF (with Natural Live View off). If you can't get the shadows and mid tones bright enough without any important highlights blinking, switch to DR400 mode - this will get you 2 stops of highlight headroom (an additional stop of exposure compensation range), but it will also flatten the contrast significantly more than DR200. In extreme situations, you might want to try the in-camera multi-shot HDR mode (this is what your phone is doing automatically), it works well, but you'll need a static scene for best results.

Battery_Kinzie · Apr 9, 2025

There’s a few things happening here really. Fuji does give good jpgs in good conditions, but when it gets a bit more complex, you need to do some work yourself. You could either change the recipe you’re using to add more range, by bringing up the shadows for example. Or you could use the ‘hdr’ mode on the camera which will take multiple exposures and combine them, just like the iPhone. Fujifilm does great results, but it doesn’t do computational photography like phones do, so you’ll need to put in a bit more work when the conditions are not optimal.

Mar · Apr 9, 2025

Well then why don’t you use only your iPhone? Problem solved.

kristian1 · Apr 9, 2025

Others pointed out important issues here already, you must know that getting best from your camera / lens combo it can take away little from the "fun" like using tripod, carefully manual focusing , knowing you lens curvature (in your example there looks like that lens has some field curvature) , exposing right and if needed taking more shots and then blend them together (but for this scene there is no need for this).

Iphone has quite clever processing, it is blending multiple images, has strong sharpen algorithm (too strong for many)..

Here I put your image thru Topaz Sharpen AI and it looks much better (maybe a tad over sharpened but just to show that you can extract more details then it looks).

Kristian

--

Nature and Wildlife photography

www.kristiansekulic.com

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KariP · Apr 9, 2025

EthanSLC said:
I used to be quite active in photography and was always a Canon shooter. A few years back I switched to a XT-4 but then kinda dropped out of the hobby for a bit and didn't use it much. I’ve recently picked it back up, but I’m feeling pretty frustrated with the SOOC JPEGs I am getting. Part of the reason I switched to Fuji was because of the reputation for great out of camera JPEGs, but that is not what I am getting at all. Images are underexposed with poor details and poor dynamic range. I am using a couple different recipes (Reggie’s Portra), but when I use all default settings I think the results are even worse.

For exposure, I'm using auto shutter speed and ISO, and manually setting aperture. Here is a similar shot (slightly different focal lengths) with the Fuji and an iPhone 15 Pro. The fuji JPEG is underexposed with poor detail on the cliff. The iPhone shot is much better.

Here is another comparison of an iPhone and Fuji shot. To be clear, I don't love the iPhone shot either, it feels over sharpened, but at least the dynamic range is better and the sky has much better detail.

Here is a zoomed in view. The iPhone has much more detail in the rocks. The iPhone has more megapixels, but I would still expect the better lens and larger sensor to do better than this.

A lot of these images were shot with the 16-80 f/4 which doesn’t have the greatest reputation, but I’m surprised it would be this dramatic. I know that amazing things can be done with raw files, but again part of the reason for switching to Fuji is because I don't love hours of post processing. Really curious to hear if I am missing something obvious here.

iPhone is using computational skills and some "software" - if you want to win your iPhone you must shoot RAW and start using some advanced software like Capture One ... images will be much better.

PP does not take much time in real life. Your computer and software does the work automatically. Just use a card reader to upload the files - it can take a couple of minutes. You can try to do the more amazing things ONLY with the chosen RAW files - it takes a couple of minutes / RAW file if you know what you want. Faster than going through JPEGs you do not like.

--
Kari
I started SLR film photography in 1968. Now two systems: Fujifilm X-H1 + X-E3 and Canon FF gear R5 + R6

EthanSLC · Apr 9, 2025

Thank for the helpful comments. Those that mentioned the center-weighted metering mode are totally right, that was totally a miss on my part for these particular example shots, and I'm sure is part of my issue. Also appreciate the suggestion on turning on highlight warnings and playing with EC until they show up (I have not used that feature before).

To be clear, I am not wanting to ditch my Fuji for my iPhone, I am trying to understand if I'm doing something obviously wrong. I hear so much about the amazing SOOC JPEGs that it seems like something is amiss.

Thanks again all!

Truman Prevatt · Apr 9, 2025

EthanSLC said:
Thank for the helpful comments. Those that mentioned the center-weighted metering mode are totally right, that was totally a miss on my part for these particular example shots, and I'm sure is part of my issue. Also appreciate the suggestion on turning on highlight warnings and playing with EC until they show up (I have not used that feature before).

To be clear, I am not wanting to ditch my Fuji for my iPhone, I am trying to understand if I'm doing something obviously wrong. I hear so much about the amazing SOOC JPEGs that it seems like something is amiss.

Thanks again all!

You are not the first person to have the metering mode wrong for the scene and you won't be the last.

Fujifilms does produce good SOOC jpegs. However, to get them you must nail your exposure correctly, apply exposure compensation where needed. Paying attention to the metering mode, over exposure indicators and applying EC judiciously and applying good exposure to the right principles will get you there.

William the X-T5 guy · Apr 9, 2025

EthanSLC said:
Thank for the helpful comments. Those that mentioned the center-weighted metering mode are totally right, that was totally a miss on my part for these particular example shots, and I'm sure is part of my issue. Also appreciate the suggestion on turning on highlight warnings and playing with EC until they show up (I have not used that feature before).

To be clear, I am not wanting to ditch my Fuji for my iPhone, I am trying to understand if I'm doing something obviously wrong. I hear so much about the amazing SOOC JPEGs that it seems like something is amiss.

Thanks again all!

You will get better results with your X-T4, but it is more work to use a dedicated camera. The iPhone does a lot of stuff automatically that you have to set yourself with a camera, so there is something of a learning curve.

The iPhones are probably the best ones out there for cell phone cameras, I know my wife's iPhone impresses me with it's output (I use a Samsung which are definitely as good as an iPhone from 2 or 3 generations ago), but it isn't up to what you are using by a long way.

Bill.
Proud user of Pentax and Fuji camera gear.

Erik Baumgartner · Apr 9, 2025

EthanSLC said:
Thank for the helpful comments. Those that mentioned the center-weighted metering mode are totally right, that was totally a miss on my part for these particular example shots, and I'm sure is part of my issue. Also appreciate the suggestion on turning on highlight warnings and playing with EC until they show up (I have not used that feature before).

To be clear, I am not wanting to ditch my Fuji for my iPhone, I am trying to understand if I'm doing something obviously wrong. I hear so much about the amazing SOOC JPEGs that it seems like something is amiss.

Thanks again all!

Unlike your phone, the camera requires more input from you to achieve a particular end result. Fuji jpegs can be excellent, you just need to sort out how to tweak the camera settings to get what you want out of it. These didn't go quite right, but with a few tweaks, they're still in the realm of 'fixable" ...

Mountaingrapher · Apr 9, 2025

Honestly the iphone photo look way more chromatically flat and oversharpened. I do understand that when we're used to look at only or mostly smartphone photos, that's the look we want to reproduce, but the world is more subtle than that. Believe me, after spending some time looking at non smartphone photos you want be able to have the same look at smartphone photos: they lack so much nuance, details, textures, colors... even on a small smartphone screen the difference is striking.

In your examples you could spend 5min in post-processing and get MUCH better results that the iphone ones. Photos you'd like to see on a bigger screen or print.

Alternatively, use in camera HDR mode or DR400 more regularly, boost shadows, sharpening settings, and extract more of your style out of the SOOC jpegs.

biza43 · Apr 9, 2025

Even with JPEGs, you need to exert some sort of control, either at taking stage, or processing stage. And it does not take hours, even with Raf files. Seems you are still in a learning curve, just don't give up.

If you give up, then be happy and use your phone.

fuji_phil_e · Apr 9, 2025

Mar said:
Well then why don’t you use only your iPhone? Problem solved.

MJ_Photo38 · Apr 10, 2025

The pond shot looks much better on the Fuji, the Iphone shot falls in all the traps of the HDR processing and oversharpening.

Same thing about the canyon shot, I find the colors and contrast of the Fuji photo much more pleasing, while the Iphone shot is dull, oversharpened and falls in those HDR problems again.

Keep in mind that any sharpening that in the iphone shot by default, you can apply to the Fuji image in post. The advantage of dedicated cameras when compared to high end modern smartphones isn't their SOOC results : smartphones have much more advanced computational photography tricks to compensate for their smaller sensor, like image stacking etc, but dedicated camera files come to life in post processing 90% of the time for me.

I very rarely use SOOC, unless I'm shooting black and white. Even if I don't edit my photos very much, there is always a little contrast / exposure / WB adjustment that I do to my images.

Nikita_64 · Apr 10, 2025

Since you mentioned you wanted to get good SOOC jpegs, You may want to save both RAW and Jpegs and if you do not like Jpegs (or want to experiment) to process RAW in FUJIFILM X RAW STUDIO. It is free software that uses your camera's processing power and has the same tools as the camera does. This will give you an idea of what tweaking you could have made durign shooting to get the perfect image. With some experience you will have favourite settings already made before the shot.

If you are happy to post process all your work, other tools such as Capture One are even better.

arsenal74 · Apr 10, 2025

I have accepted for a while now that if you point and shoot you are likely to get a more immediately pleasing shot from a phone even if when you really zoom in the phone image is likely to break down.

I just got back from a 3 week trip to Nepal and the images from my iPhone 16 pro max were pretty amazing TBH.

Mancunian0405 · Apr 10, 2025

Photography requires skill and always has. That’s why it is so appealing to many people.

Capturing the world with your iPhone is not photography, even though the results are similar.

A SOOC HEIF/jpg photo taken with a Fuji camera is 33% settings in the camera before you take the shot, 33% lens and 33% sensor.

An image taken with an iPhone is 0,33% lens, 0,33% sensor and 99,33% AI.
The next step is that you click on a point on Apple Maps, enter date, time and direction and the AI creates a picture for you. You don’t need to travel nor take out your iPhone to take the picture anymore.

Feeling frustrated with Fuji

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