ct8282 wrote:
Dude, calm down. I'm not personally attacking you am I? I know the X100 and X100s are amazing cameras. That's not in question. I'm merely saying that at f2 they simply do not compete with the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 and Sigma f1.4 when wide open. They just don't.
If I feel hard done by that's my problem. No need to make it yours and get all weirdly defensive. The fact is that at close distance and at f2 the X100 produces softer images than the other 2 lenses I mention. Fact.
Who's defensive? The x100s is just a fun camera for me and does everything I've asked; whatever you care to think of it is your opinion, but it's sweeping generalizations like "..can't deliver @ f2" (still waiting on the samples of f2 that 'doesn't deliver' btw) that are so silly. Like I said, I should know better.
Amazing shot of a bottle, f/2, ISO 400 or 640? about 2 feet away Lightroom RAW conversion (just export). If anyone would like to see it @ 90000% zoom top right corner, lmk.
ct8282 wrote:
Dude, calm down. I'm not personally attacking you am I? I know the X100 and X100s are amazing cameras. That's not in question. I'm merely saying that at f2 they simply do not compete with the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 and Sigma f1.4 when wide open. They just don't.
If I feel hard done by that's my problem. No need to make it yours and get all weirdly defensive. The fact is that at close distance and at f2 the X100 produces softer images than the other 2 lenses I mention. Fact.
Very true that the X100/s lenses aren't great at close distance wide open. What I'm curious about is what your shooting typically that requires closer focal distance and also being wide open ?
I totally get the wide open part, as a lot of people want to get as shallow of DoF as they can, and lets face it, being just a 23mm lens, its not always the best camera for such purposes, but that is something of the trade off for being such a compact lens. I had a Fuji XPro and certainly loved the faster lenses for their shallow DoF, but they were pretty big and bulky in comparison. From mock ups I think I saw, the fast 35mm equiv is going to be much larger than the 23mm f2.0 lens that is somewhat built into the X100s body.
Back to the question at hand though, it just seems if your needs are a good macro shooting camera, the X100s seems to be a poor choice. Now, I hardly take any shots closer than a few feet so its never been a real issue for me, but, if that was what I'd shoot often, I'd go back to my OM-D in a heartbeat for that stuff.
You can set the focus point anywhere in the frame just by touching the screen, plenty of excellent and pretty fast lenses that render beautifully, like the 25mm f1.4 and 45mm f1.8. Again, not a real forte of mine, but when I did take some flowers, food etc type close ups, it was awesome being able to just frame the shot and then play around with where the focus was with a quick tap, tap, tap.
X100s is a RF styled camera that lends itself to RF styled shooting. Most RF's have a min focal distance far greater than the X100s lens, and I think it just so happens that they were able to make it able to focus at more macro distances, but as a trade off for lens speed, its just not going to be its best at MFD and wide open, but I can't imagine they really saw that as something the typical shooter would be wanting to use very often.
Just close it down a stop when you want to shoot something at MFD and it works fine. If f2.8 isn't shallow enough DoF for you, then f2.0 really isn't going to be either I wouldn't think. For for a 65mm macro lens on a FF DSLR or something, far better close up performance and more control over DoF
OK, 3 samples showing the sharpness, or lack of with this camera. As previously stated, I'm not suggesting its a bad camera, on the contrary its a superb camera and the reviews across the web speak for themselves.
However, personally I expected a little, well quite a bit more, from this camera at the larger apertures. To get any sort of dof from this wide lens you need to be relatively close to your subject. This lens/camera just can't deliver sharp results. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but I traded my X-E1 + 35mm f1.4 for this as I wanted the smaller form factor and wider angle of view but the sharpness from the X100s at equiv distances at f2 compared to the X-E1 at f1.4 is really poor to be honest. These are all 100% crops, jpeg sooc with sharpness set to +1 (max is +2) ...
I have some images with great sharpness from my X100 at f/2. I think there were some sacrifices made to get the minimum focusing distance closer (without going into macro mode).
ct8282 wrote:
OK, 3 samples showing the sharpness, or lack of with this camera. As previously stated, I'm not suggesting its a bad camera, on the contrary its a superb camera and the reviews across the web speak for themselves.
I would say still not quite good enough at f2.8 and just about there at f4. The 35mm f1.4 at f1.4 is as sharp as the f4 sample from the X100s.
So, to you X100 users. Do I have a dodgy camera or is this the same level of sharpness you see from your X100's?
um, these are 100% crops right?
why didn't you focus on the watch face? the lens looks sharp enough near the back of the box where the focus plane is, but the vast majority of the box and watch are out of focus not unsharp.
why didn't you focus on the watch face? the lens looks sharp enough near the back of the box where the focus plane is, but the vast majority of the box and watch are out of focus not unsharp.
Indeed. By the time you get to f/4 the DoF is enough that the watch face is now in the focal plane....surprise.
why didn't you focus on the watch face? the lens looks sharp enough near the back of the box where the focus plane is, but the vast majority of the box and watch are out of focus not unsharp.
These are 100% crops. Focus is on the centre of the chewing gum box, around the 't'. Watch was just put there for reference.
Thanks Jojoman. Still no one is really answering my initial question though. Are my samples normal for this camera? Would you X100 and X100s users say your cameras produce equally soft images at f2.
Believe Ken Rockwell and you'd be fooled into thinking the X100 is 'tack sharp' at f2 and his samples would show that too. I quote... 'The fast f/2 lens, is unchanged from the X100 — because it is already perfect.'
Do I have a dodgy camera or am I getting standard results from this camera?
?? Am I the only one who didn't know? I feel dumb now.
Lets keep this going guys...
