Just a quick article on how I shoot this kind of stuff. I still see a lot of moaning on various forums about how the AF on the Fuji X cameras is still way behind the competition. I really don’t think that is the case these days and a lot of reviews are written by people who don’t really get to know the camera and how to shoot with it. There is a definitely a steep learning curve with these cameras and practice makes a huge difference. These days I’m more confident shooting my son’s football matches with the X-Pro2 than I would be with a DSLR simply because I’m used to it and how it works. Give me 6 months shooting with the DSLR and I’m sure I could get better results, but the gap is not as big as it used to be. I’ve been shooting football and other sports with these cameras for a few years now and the frustration level used to be pretty high with the X-E2 and the 55-200 for example. Even with the X-T1 and the 50-140 when it first came out, it drove me nuts how low the keeper rate was.
Firmware 4 improved things greatly but I still found the tracking quite poor for football, but ok for people running in straight lines. Alot of reviews of the XPro-2 seem to think the AF is not much better than the X-T1. My personal experience is that it is a lot better for tracking movement, even football matches. I think it is down to the increased processing power, and the blackout between frames basically disappearing as the camera is now so fast. Which lens you use also makes a massive difference, the newer lenses are noticeably quicker, my favourite being the 50-140 f2.8. I use Tracking as my AF-Mode, put AF-C on the front ( continous ) and use high speed burst ( 8 FPS ). The buffer on the XPro-2 is quite deep, much better than say the D750, but no where near the top end DSLRs. Still, it’s plenty for most uses. Here are a couple of shot sequences. For the running one I shot 20 frames and 2 were out of focus. For the football, I get more out of focus but its still a very satisfactory amount that are in focus and I no longer wish I had a DSLR. I’ve not tested face detection yet, but I hear the Sonys do a much better job. For something like a wedding I still can’t trust the camera, no matter how good, to decide the focus point.
Now some shots of my kids running around the garden this afternoon. I used a mix of the 50-140 zoom and the 35mm f2. The camera nailed almost every frame. Granted this was good light, I know indoors it would be much harder, but that goes for most cameras.
Now I’m not saying this camera is as good as a DSLR at tracking shots, or better than the Sonys or other brands, all I’m trying to say is..
- it’s significantly better than the X-T1 ( I shot 100k plus frames on my X-T1 so I know that camera very well ) at tracking shots, probably due to the processing power bump
- it’s good enough for me. I prefer 5% less performance than a big DSLR for all the other benefits this camera gives me.