Is the Fujifilm XT2 the camera in which i can rely both as a photographer and cinematographer?

The short answer is yes for me! let’s take  the long one.

From the first anouncment of the fujifilm xt2 I was almost sure that this might be the perfect camera for me. A body with a very good picture quality  for stills and also a very good video camera. When i started reading reviews and watching published results I was getting closer to my above belief. What was missing was a personal experience with the camera.

Thanks to Fujifilm Hellas I had the opportunity to test the camera for a bit more than a month the past August. At the same time I was getting ready with my colleague Vangelis Efthymiou for the filming’s of the 3rd Molyvos International Music Festival. We were fully equiped and i decided to carry also the Fujifilm  XT2  for testing reasons.

Not long after using the camera for the first time, I started filming with it more and more. On a tripod on a gimbal and on hand  and everything was going fantastic. I also considered filming the concerts with the same camera on 4k in order to have 2 different framings on one shot as the final editings will be FHD.

I am not an expert on technical camera reviews and pixel peeping I will give it a try . Whoever is being bored on these kind of details can skip this part and go straight on the conclusions

The following are conlusions after using the camera by myself. I also had the opinions of the director and the editor of the above video.

Dynamic range

The video clip above was shot entirely on Fujifilm XT2(except the aerials). The video quality and the high dynamic range of the camera helped us a lot in post production. We brought back the darks of the foreground( violas ) and also managed preserve detail in the highlights of the background. Due to the rush of the days I did not even find time to make adjustments on the picture profile in order to be more flat and have the ability of more corrections.

Another fact to consider is that the camera has the ability of F- log profile althow only externally for the moment.

I did not have the opportunty to record externally but I believe it is a big plus! The need of external recorder for the moment  changes the travel light by adding extra equipment on the camera bag and also removing a great amount of cash out of our pocket.  As we all want the f-log,  in the near future might be available internally with a firmware upgrade.

Iso sensitivity

I used the camera in low light situations and I saw that I can be confident by  bringing the ISO value up to 2000. Enough in combination with wide aperture lenses. I am sure I can go further if needed in more dark situations with no big issues.

Sound

I did not manage to test the sound on the camera. We were recording externally. I believe there are many solutions of budget preamps out there, which also offer xlr connections and make the camera capable to record internally. I will present the ideal set up of the camera in upcoming post.

Fujifilm application

This disappointed me a lot. The 1st day of the concerts i set up the fujifilm xt2 as a remote camera on stage. I was planning to make filmings and take pictures from a distanse. I ended up having all my video footage in 720p(not even FHD) and my images in jpegs. It is my fault because I havent read the manual and the app instructions. Now I know. Sometimes we learn the hard way. although the app is more for social netwrking,  If it will be able to capture in full camera specs in a future update it can be a very handy tool. Especialy in concerts, wild life etc.

In conclusion

As a photographer/cinematographer and production manager in many documentary productions I spend a lot of my time in search of camera capabillities and compatibilitty individually for every project. In documentary production you have to be as compact as possible and with the best image and audio quality. Nowdays we are challenged to have more than one roles in this kind of productions. So I confidently starting to believe that  fujifilm XT2 is a camera in which I can rely on.

If we consider tha the XT2 is the 1st serious atempt of Fujifilm to get into the video world, imagine what follows! Photographer  David Schneider, who is an X- cameras user for many years, commented on  a previous blog post I made

“One great thing about Fuji is how they update their cameras with free firmware upgrades. All my Fuji X cameras were better a couple of years after I bought them than when brand new.”

Let me know your thoughts through commenting. Am I in a wright path of thinking or not?

In the 2nd part I will follow with my experience of the XT2 as  a photo camera. Until then I will be posting some photos taken with XT2 on my instagram account!