Kaizen (改善), Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the best”, refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement. – Wikipedia
Way back in February 2014, our Senior Sales and Marketing Manager Toshi Iida mentioned during an interview with DPReview that the X-E2 would be due some loving from the R&D team in the near future.
“We will release new firmware for the X-E2 soon which will improve the refresh rate of the EVF bringing it to the same level as the X-T1 and also add an interval shooting function.”
EVF Refresh Rate
The new firmware version 2.00 has been released today and it includes the improved refresh rate on the EVF that Toshi mentioned. I’ve tested it quickly here and it is a noticeable improvement, but to be honest I didn’t find the previous refresh rate much of an issue to start with.
Selecting different colours when using Focus Peak Highlighting
It looks like the Interval Shooting feature didn’t quite make it into this one (lets hope for v 2.10), but instead we’ve got the ability to select different colours for the Focus Peak Highlighting – a feature that I really like on the X-T1.
In certain shooting situations (like ones that already contain lots of white), it can be difficult to see the white focus peak highlighting.
I personally tend to shoot on manual focus, using the AF-L button to Autofocus and then the focus ring to make minor adjustments. One thing I’ve been doing lately that makes it even easier to focus is to set the camera to B+W and then use the Red highlight peaking as it stands out hugely from the rest of the shot.
Here’s a couple of shots to demonstrate how easy it is to see the focal plane in this way. These shots are actually of an X-T1 screen so they’re for reference only. Also, please remember that these are shots of the LCD screen. When using the EVF the image is far more detailed.
I still shoot JPG+RAW so the final images don’t need to be in B+W. The reason I shoot JPG as well is so you can quickly use the playback mode to see a 100% crop to check you really did hit the focus bang on – handy when shooting at f/1.2!
Face Detection on Fn button
This is something I can see myself using, especially with the fast lenses shooting my kids when they are playing. I find the Face Detection AF very good at picking out their eyes, so to be able to switch it on and off at the single touch of a button when I’m changing between shooting them and shooting things without a face will be nice.
Conclusion
All in all I think this is a really nice upgrade for the X-E2. Perhaps some X-E2 users that were thinking about switching to the X-T1 might think twice now, but that’s OK – it’s all part of our philosophy of Kaizen to continually improve our products and hope that our users get plenty of joy out of their product before they feel they need to upgrade.
Any questions, Tweet me @Fujifilm_UK or leave a comment below.
Marc
Related links:
New firmware for X-E2 enhances performance, functions and the Real Time Viewfinder – Fujifilm UK
CP+ 2014: Fujifilm interview – ‘the only way is to keep innovating’ – DPReview.com
THIS is why I’m sticking with Fuji. I’ve had an X-E2 and it was a wonderful camera…and now it’s even better. And by the way, I currently have an X-T1 and love it.
Putting the user before the profit margin…let’s see the big 2 do that….nope, ain’t gonna happen.
Keep it up Fuji…the world is watching. 🙂
Thanks for this post, I’m shooting an XT1 but hadn’t realised until seeing this that I wasn’t getting focus check at 100% on RAW files.
I’ve switched back to RAW+jpg.
Would love for the XT1 to get the ability to assign exposure preview on/off on a function button, I always turn it off when working with studio flash and it’s buried in the menu.
Great to see such support from Fuji, wish all companies supported their existing products like this.
Thanks for your comment.
Yes the RAW / RAW+JPG thing was a surprise to me. I was tearing my hair out trying to work out why I could only crop to 40%!
I’ll pass on the comment about Exposure preview on a Fn button to the dev team. It sounds like it would be useful.
Marc
One thing that’s missing from the write-up is and is a big one for a lot of people is that View Mode is now assignable to the Fn buttons too.
Yes. Good point. I’ll update and add shortly.
Marc
Took me until a 3rd reading to spot that one! Would have thought it would be more prominent as a lot of people were asking for it.
The view mode update is pretty half hearted. I was hoping that a single button could be used to toggle between EVF shooting mode and LCD playback. All the update does is allow a function button to bring up the view mode menu. This means you still need to toggle through the view mode menu to change view mode settings.
I was hoping Fuji will fix “plastic” and “waxy” look of images taken with 3200-6400iso? They look terrible with no detail! I remember Fuji advertiseing X-E2 as “delivering better image quality than X-E1” but X-E2 gives worse jpg IQ already from 2000iso compared to X-E1. They look really awful, like were taken with “point and shot” camera, not the one that costed over $1000. it’s sad Fuji have not fixed it in this firmware.
Is there a firmware update for the X-E1 coming at some point too?
I’d love coloured focus peaking.
Nothing we are aware of right now I’m afraid. We will ask