Trek of Joy

I've seen a couple incidents of the Sony 70-200 splitting in the middle, plastic at failure points sucks when its surrounded by metal. Hopefully a repair isn't too costly.

Still get the walking bob like you do with a gimbal, but damn that's amazing.

I'm always so paranoid about my tripod flopping over, I have a Benro S8 carbon and the head weighs twice as much as the legs, so it feels really top heavy. Fortunately I don't use a spreader and with the legs in the first locking position its rock solid. I still hang my bag on it photo style to keep the center of gravity lower in case the operator (me) bumps it, which frequently happens.

The Q menu that's activated by a button on the back of the cam has 7 different memory banks - C1, C2, C3..., and you can just scroll between them with the rear command dial when you hit the Q button. You can assign movie modes to one of the tiles in the Q menu, along with WB settings, film simulation and so on. http://fujifilm-dsc.com/en/manual/x-t2/shortcuts/q_button/index.html

You can set the front and rear command dials to control aperture and shutter speed if you want it to act like most other cameras. I like the fact that the SS is easily locked down with the top dial. I can't count how many times I've changed the SS just moving the camera from shot to shot. The a6300 is two dials short of a complete set of controls - it needs one more on top and a front dial below the shutter, I hate using the goofy dial next to the LCD. I hate Sony's micro record button on the side of the thumb rest too, just let me assign record to the shutter button dammit! The NX1 is nice, I bought one to try and get away from Sony. But they started pulling out of markets and I was concerned I'd never see the lenses I need, so I sold it. The rolling shutter in 4k is also pretty bad, for me better lens selection and a future won out, despite Sony's awful RS numbers.

For me I need the holy trinity of zooms for event work, a UWA (10-24 in Fuji), a standard (16-55) and a tele (50-140), Fuji's top Sony's APS-c f/4 options in terms of IQ/speed and the GM's are just silly at $2500, and of course they're FF. For low light and creative stuff I shoot with three fast primes, a 16, 23 and 56 which hits 24/35/85 in FF terms. Sony's 16 is garbage and while the 24/55 are really good, given Fuji's regular lens sales - Fuji's are faster and cheaper. After testing the XT2, all I can say is I'm impressed - enough to be seriously considering a system shift despite the costs. Its just so much nicer to shoot with than any body I've used, and that includes the Nex7, a6000, a6300, a7s, a7II, a7rII, GH4, EM5, NX1, 5d2 & 3 and d750 in recent years. I'd prefer a touchscreen, but most of the cameras I've owned don't have one so I can live without it. IBIS is the one thing I'll miss the most with a Fuji move, but after shooting handheld with stabilized lenses the XT2 footage is more stable in my hands than Sony because of the awful rolling shutter Sony's produce. Either way I'm adding a gimbal like the Zhyiun Crane because Sony's IBIS doesn't offer enough stabilization for me. Its good to have options. Cheers

Fuji certainly isn't cheap, but Sony's F1.4 primes and F2.8 zooms are considerably more expensive than Fuji's, and none of their APS-c only lenses are faster than f/1.8. When you start looking at the system as a whole, costs are not very different and can easily fall in favor of Fuji when you start comparing all of the lenses. The Em1.2 is $400 more than the XT2, and I'm betting the GH5 will be priced even higher. NX doesn't have anything close to Fuji's lens selection, outside of the two S zooms, everything is slower and doesn't cover nearly as many FL's as Fuji. And there won't be any new NX lenses. Or bodies. Ever. Fuji has a new lens every few months and all of the traditional focal lengths covered. They have zooms from 10-400mm, along with fast native primes in 14, 16, 18, 23, 27, 35, 50, 56, 60 and 90mm with more coming. There's also 3rd party Touits and Sigmas that are mirrored on Sony. I've been a die hard Sony shooter for years, but I'm seriously looking at Fuji with the XT2 and dumping my a7rII and a6300. The controls, dual cards, the joystick, the speed (its so much faster than the a6300 and a7rII in operation), the SOOC colors, the lack of Sony's ugly magenta tinted skin tones and so on make it a pretty compelling option. I rented one for a few days and absolutely love shooting with it more than any Sony body I've ever used. These are great times, we have so many compelling options that are capable of producing some incredible images. Happy shooting.

Thanks, Resolve definitely isn't going to work for me. I think I'm going to take a 12" Retina for a test drive, thanks!

The screen resolution is terrible on the MBA, 1440x900, not even HD. I tested one out and its just not sharp at all. The 13" Retina with charger is over 5 pounds, that's about double the Surface or MacBook Retina weight. Every gram adds up when you're going to be living out of a carry-on size backpack for a few months. Resolve is a bit of a resource hog, that's why I didn't mention it. Its slow, really slow compared to FCPx. I may just buy a MacBook to test. I have no problem paying for software, just want to avoid the CC and Premiere. Will check out the others, haven't heard of Blender or Shotcut. At the moment I'm just exploring my options. I've already invested in FCPx so my preference is to stay Mac and just move what I use to a laptop. I was ready to buy a MBA as the rumors had it getting a retina screen with the newest MBP refresh, but that never materialized. I have a friend that uses a 12" retina MacBook and he gets by fine. Until two years ago my whole setup was a 2009 2ghz dual core MBP with 8gb ram, 512mb Vram and a 5400rpm HD. Benchmarks show the new MacBook easily topping my old machine. I've never used Vegas, will watch some demos. Thanks That looks really good, can you talk a little more about working with a 12" Retina? My preference is to stay Mac. PCIe 3.0 makes for some insanely fast SSD speeds, it makes my new 5k iMac crazy fast. I've watched a few videos and it looks more capable than my old laptop at a fraction of the weight. I'm counting every gram so if I can make it work - and I'm patient enough to be slow and methodical when scrubbing and letting things render overnight and such. Thanks

Hello all, I'm going to be doing a lot of extended traveling in the next year and I want to keep my kit as light as possible - so on the camera side I'm downsizing from Sony FF to Fuji with the XT2. Now I'm looking at portable editing solutions lighter than the most recent 13" MacBook Pro Retina's that still has the SD card slot. If the MacBook Air had the retina screen it'd be a no-brainer, but it doesn't and I don't want to spend that kind of jack on a low rez screen. My other lightweight option is a loaded 12' MacBook, but then I need dongles as its down to a single USB-c port. I'll be carrying my whole life in a backpack for months on end, so less is better. That has me considering a Surface Pro 4 to use for the next year and something other than Premiere - because Premiere is so clunky and I'm not paying for CC anything. Not planning on doing any heavy grading, just want to edit travel videos on the road with a quick/efficient NLE. I know very little about Vegas and Hitfilm, any others? Any experiences with other editing platforms and thoughts on using them with a scaled down machine like the Surface? Thanks in advance.

Super impressed by the lack of RS. Olympus claimed the new dual processor setup eliminated it, sounded like marketing speak, but it looks legit.

Good Fuji 4k samples in this piece. C-AF and IS look good too IMO. After spending a couple days with the XT2 I came to a realization, I'm done working around Sony levels of rolling shutter just to get the all the bells and whistles on their spec sheets. Being able to use color SOOC is big for me as my grading skills are very much a work in progress (in other words they're bad, but I'm working on that).

A nice collection of SOOC 4k shots using various lenses. Fuji's IS and continuous AF is pretty effective. Color and detail are fantastic.

It looks more like camera movement to me, IBIS has a floaty feel to it, but the changes look like the shooter is suddenly reframing. From the description: "I sat in an open trailer pulled by an off-road vehicle driving parallel to the path of the horses. Sometimes it was very hard to keep the horses in my viewfinder because of the very bumpy road." ^^^exactly, the Olympus Iceland launch junket and those provided with early samples all seem to be stills shooters. John Brawley posted he's testing one, so hopefully we'll see something from an actual videographer soon. There are a few videos in the other thread that have a lot of handheld movements and I haven't seen any noticeable RS.

Honestly from the early samples, I like the XT2's video IQ better, its just the IBIS...

Geez, those fence posts in the foreground have no skew that I can see. Nice.

Everyone is clearly following Sony's lead and taking their lines upmarket while jamming as much as possible into a body. The prices are reflecting that. I fully expect the GH5 to be in the $2500 range, and I felt that way before the EM1.2 price was revealed. Enthusiasts and wannabe's with cash to burn are boosting Sony's bottom line. Olympus and Panasonic are trying to get a piece of that, which makes sense as the bottom of the camera market has cratered and FF prices are dropping rapidly. M43 is fighting sensor size insecurity and for many as we're seeing, its a tough hill to climb. Anyway, sorry to go OT. The IBIS and touchscreen are the main reasons I'm considering the EM1.2. The XT2 is a seriously capable camera. The bigger sensor will be better on the stills side and Fuji's jpeg's are so good you don't always have to shoot raw and spend time messing with things in post. If you like look of the film simulations, Fuji is tough to beat.

I spent some time with the XT2 and 18-55 last weekend, its a great combo. Stabilization is pretty good with that lens - I can get three stops with it and I have some pretty shaky hands. Combined with really good rolling shutter (compared to say the Sony's and the NX1) handheld shooting is very do-able and has a great look, not jittery at all. It would really benefit from a touchscreen because the new AF system is up there with the best (excluding Sony's eye AF, though Fuji will continually refine its AF with FW updates). Lots of Fuji lenses and most can be had at a great price used. The best stabilized options are the 10-24, 18-55 and 50-140. I'd be all over the 16-50 if it were stabilized, its among the best standard zooms around. There's a post in the XT2 thread here that matched colors to the C100 pretty well, I'm sure you could do the same with a FS5. No aliasing and moire at all, Fuji really got it right with this one. And there's Flog with an external recorder if you were so inclined. Controls are so nice, everything is right there so adjustments are easy, plus you have the quick menu button and "my menu" in the menus so you can group all your most common menu items in one place. Its really well engineered/built, no plasticky feeling at all. Makes my a6300 feel like a toy in comparison. A cool little thing I noticed, when shooting video if you hit the menu button you always go to the video portion of the menus. So you're not cycling through endless garbage like Sony. The EVF is something to behold, the best I've ever seen and despite the A7rII's having a slightly better magnification spec, the Fuji's looks much better. Focus magnify isn't soft like it is on my a6300 either. I recorded an hour of video (in consecutive 10 min increments), the camera didn't overheat and there was still 15% of the battery left. The grip adds two batteries, extends record time to 30 minutes and adds the headphone jack. The EM1.2 really has my attention as well - touchscreen, IBIS, dramatically improved battery life, weather sealing, great ergonomics, blazing fast shooting, dual cards, headphone jack and so on. Like many I have a mental roadblock when it comes to a m43 camera that costs $2000. They surrounded a small/noisy sensor with the best feature set of any camera on the market IMO. Though I suspect the GH5 will cost even more, so the price bar has been raised in m43 land, its a new reality. I just have to decide if that reality is acceptable on the stills side as I'm not running two systems anymore. Whatever I decide, I'm looking at getting two bodies and investing in the system. I prefer the sensor and the stills on the Fuji. And the price. The XT2 + 18-55 kit is $100 less than the EM1.2 body alone.

This review gives a pretty good rundown of the remote app. Looks like it's much better in stills mode, but you can control AF and exposure then hit record. http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Fujifilm_XT2/

Here's a half baked review from Steve's Digicams with a few video samples. http://www.steves-digicams.com/blog/olympus-om-d-e-m1-mark-ii-review/ Steve Huff posted a video way down his long winded part 1 review. http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2016/11/01/the-olympus-e-m1-mkii-review-part-1-iceland/ No RS tests, as if it would have been so hard to do a couple whip pans while walking around Iceland for a few days. Lots of features not tested either, like tracking AF, video AF and other functions. The rush to get these reviews out first result in incomplete testing that reads more like previews kills a lot of the reviewers credibility. Read the Gordon Liang's (Cameralabs) XT2 review by comparison, lots of in depth testing of all the AF functions, all the video functions and little things like actual battery levels when shooting multiple clips after hitting the record time limit. That in addition to comprehensive ISO tests and such. Spending three days with a camera is not enough time for a real review. As an aside - I have to admit, at first I balked at the price. But the more I think about it, the better this camera is starting to look as rolling shutter looks really well controlled and the emphasis on speed addresses one of my main gripes about most mirrorless cameras. The touchscreen has me rethinking my decision to move from Sony to the Fuji XT2. The 12-100 and crazy weather sealing would make a great all around travel/video setup and almost completely eliminates the need for support/stabilization. Then you add the 7-14 and a few small/fast primes like the 12/2, 17/25/45/75 f1.8's and you have a pretty good travel/doc kit. I need two bodies with complete cross compatibility in terms of batteries and such, and $4000 for a pair of EM1.2's as opposed to $3500 for two XT2's (including one with the 18-55 lens) is still a tough pill to swallow. IBIS, touchscreen, weather sealing with lower IQ stills (EM1.2) vs. better stills and 4k that looks better to me at a much smaller bitrate (XT2). Hmmm...

Its all Fuji recorded in-cam, he's just cycling through the different film simulations.

$1999, not sure what Olympus is thinking beyond a cash grab.

Side by sides with the EM5II/GX85 show Panny hasn't got it quite figured out yet.

I have the camera one more day I'll do the rest tomorrow and follow up later in the week with a vimeo video and dropbox files. Looking at what I shot over the weekend, the 18-55 has really effective stabilization and when combined with much better rolling shutter it looks really good handheld. If I go Fuji I won't miss IBIS that much. Everything will be matched, same FL, same exposure settings. The only difference will be colors (obviously) because I really only use Cine and Autumn Leaves with Sony. Though Pro Neg and Classic Chrome seem to be tops with Fuji. Will do. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll cycle through all the simulations using the -2 shadow/highlight settings and sharpness dialed down.

Rolling shutter, 4k and 60 are at the top of my list. From the XT2 thread Classic Chrome look like the best color profile, with the a6300 I like Autumn leaves and I have a custom Cine PP. Thanks! Added to my list. I'll be on the beach, so I'm going to head to the pier and just shoot for a bit. Thanks! Nice list, thanks! I'm doing a lazy beach weekend so greens, ocean, sky, sun and people should be everywhere. I need to bring a notepad so I can keep track of the exposure changes. I've been able to run my a6300 to the record time limit, so I'll see what I can do.