I’ve had the Fuji X Pro 1 less than 36 hours so far and I’m thrilled with it.  I’m still at the beginning of the “getting familiar with the camera” stage though, and this is something I learned this morning.

So, at 5:30 I rolled out of bed, got dressed, picked up a hat and my camera, gulped down some coffee, and went to walk for a few miles.  Before the sun came up I figured it would be a reasonable time to take a shot or two and see how the camera handled the lighting, so I shot this:

I liked the way that the camera captured the color — it’s a Fuji so it did a good job of capturing the feel of the lighting.  It could be worked on a bit, but it’s not bad for a straight out of camera JPEG.

Once I got to the computer I opened it up and saw this:

35mm f2.8 @ 1/100s. Are my hands that jittery?

Not terrible, but I expected a cleaner photo.  Part of the problem is the auto ISO settings making assumptions that aren’t really reasonable for early morning exercise, but no big deal — it takes all of 3 seconds to set the ISO appropriately and solve this problem

The bigger problem I noticed was this: that sure looks like a bit of chromatic aberration at f2.8, doesn’t it?

I decided to find out.  Below are quick and dirty tests from 5 feet outside the kitchen door, so don’t read anything more into them than the notes I”ll make on CA.  The process was literally:

• Scrounge around for a spare quick release plate.  I found an old generic Stroboframe mount so that worked.
• Grab a tripod and a cable release.
• Walk outside, mount the camera and angle it up
• Look through the viewfinder, squint because of the sun (note that the frame lines and focus point are much harder to find with early morning sun in the frame)
• Shoot some photos without looking at the tree branch (it was quite windy), or the camera, or anything else.

Quick and dirty and sloppy.  But enough to find what I was looking for.

The Test

I was trying to see if I was seeing chromatic aberration on backlit subjects.  So I framed the most difficult shot I could: backlit leaves, early morning sun in the frame, shot at big apertures.

Overall I’m very impressed with the performance of the 35mm lens and sensor here.  Very impressed.  I just need to be aware that if I’m going to push the camera this hard then I’ll see some purple fringing at the biggest apertures.  If I stop down to f4, then the problem essentially goes away.

I know that internet photographers like to criticize any flaw that’s perceptible at 400% or less, but let’s be reasonable here.  The best normal lens I’ve ever owned was a 50mm Summicron (non-ASPH), and it lost more contrast shooting into the sun than this.  There’s no ghosting across the frame due to reflections off the lens elements themselves, and while contrast is low wide open, everything is very well controlled.

This is still a good lens.  :)

The Photos: 35mm lens

Wide open:

ISO 200, f1.4, 1/4000s

This is straight out of the camera, as the in-camera JPEG processor tweaked it.  Lightroom puts up a 3×3 grid on the crop page, so I cropped the center section for all of the close-ups:

Center of the image. More CA than I was looking for, but this is also at f1.4, so my expectations were probably a bit too high

Not pretty when wide open in this situation.

Here’s f2:

Better than wide open, but not perfect

And the close-up:

Less purple, but still there

Things get a whole lot better at f2.8:

There is some CA when zoomed in

With the whole frame:

Contrast is much better, and no CA is noticeable when viewing the whole image

And, finally, here’s f4:

By f4 there's little to argue about. Great performance.

And the close-up:

Things look a whole lot better stopped down 3 stops, don't they? CA appears to be gone

One more

Finally, I redirected the camera and focused on a pine tree that was pretty backlit as well:

35mm lens, f1.4, ISO 200, 1/1900s. CA isn't near the problem in this frame as it was in the one prior.

Not bad at all there, and it’s more backlit than the photo I shot on the trail this morning.

How about the 18mm?

The 35mm was more interesting because its CA in this situation is less controlled.  The 18mm held up in this backlit situation much better:

Wide Open

Not bad at all compared to the 35mm, or to most lenses for that matter

And close up:

Some CA, but not enough to be objectionable. Even wide open

Here’s F4

Looks pretty reasonable to me

With the final close-up

Very workable

I just cleaned up years of cruft.  Not that wedding and portrait photos are “cruft” per se, but the content here was all fairly old and it was time for a fresh start.

If you were linking to photos here, or you’re just trying to get in touch with your old photographer, I’m still here.  Send me an e-mail.