gyoung143
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 Re: Will XT6 finally catch up to Sony, Canon and Nikon with AF. | |
old-gregg wrote:
Going back to the original question, as a former industry practitioner I can offer some general considerations regarding Fuji's competitiveness in AF implementation.
To run a competitive camera-making business, you must convert your structural advantages into sustainable differentiation and cost-optimize everything else that doesn’t differentiate you. For example, both Sony and Canon enjoy major sensor fabrication advantages, which means Nikon and Fuji are forced to compete on other fronts. As cameras become increasingly complex, there are more and more areas of expertise to master, the need to differentiate is not going away; all while the overall market keeps shrinking because of smartphones.
Another crucial area is software. The importance of software development expertise keeps growing with camera complexity and smartphone-driven user expectations, while the cost of quality software keeps rising. Hardware companies like camera makers compete for software talent on the global market, where the best engineers are getting more expensive and generally prefer to work at actual software companies with much higher revenue/employee ratios. What I’m saying is that it’s incredibly hard to build and maintain top-tier software development expertise inside a traditional hardware organization. (this is why your car's native navigation and smart TV interface suck)
Which brings me to autofocus. The hardware side of AF systems is largely a commodity these days. The real secret sauce is the quality and talent of your software team: data scientists, programmers, product, design, UX, all of it.
I see and cannot ignore a direct correlation between software quality and AF performance among the big 3. Take Sony and Canon. They are much bigger and more diversified companies than Nikon, they have access to a deeper and stronger software engineering talent pool. You can see it in the quality of their RAW converters, tethering apps, and smartphone applications. Nikon’s software is slightly worse, and you see the same capability gap in autofocus performance: Sony and Canon are the clear leaders, with Nikon a bit behind.
Now let’s talk about Fuji. Despite their size, they are simply not a player in software. As far as I know, they’re the only major camera maker that couldn’t even build its own RAW converter. They still ship a rebranded SilkyPix built by a 3rd party that can’t match the output of Fuji's in-camera JPEG engine, or a clunky USB-tethered solution that relies on the camera itself to re-process RAWs. Even the GFX system isn’t truly competitive in a professional studio-tethered workflow because Fuji hasn't bothered building a working tethering software - the reason I sold mine. To this day they can't even figure out (or copy others) a non-convoluted UX to delete images in-camera. Well, of course their AF is subpar. Notice that it's not just the AF-C tenacity, but even the "simpler" stuff like an elegant user interface for the AF settings.
This trend has been on display forever, and it’s only going to get worse. Sure, Fuji might briefly catch up on certain software features like AF for a short time. But long-term, I fully expect them to always lag behind. Their desktop software, menu system, autofocus, smartphone integration, everything - will always be worse. Because fundamentally, software is not in Fuji’s DNA the way it is for Sony and Canon. Do not underestimate organizational DNA. Human systems are harder to evolve than tech.
And I think they know this. This is why they are not competing in the FF market. This is why they're doubling down on APSC, medium format, and niche designs like GFX100RF or X half. This is why they're doing dedicated dials. Those are the choices they're left with because sensor differentiation or software differention aren't in the cards.
All very true in terms of overall marketing. Fuji concentrates obviously giving us something unavailable from other makes, even tge Zf and Zfc fail as they don't give us a lens range that suits the camera.
We buy Fuji for other reasons than the fastest AF. AF is more than good enough fir the average amateur user.
What is missing for me from all of them is a good, quick manual focus experience, a focus aid as quick and precise as a Leica rangefinder or the split image on my film Nikobs, and auto diaphragm operation. That would do for most work where speed of focussing in milliseconds is mot required.
But it's not fashionable, customers clamour for better AF when they aren't going to ever challenge the abilities of what they get.
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