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A Second Look at Fuji X-Trans (X-Pro1, X-E1, etc) and Aperture – Not So Good After All

By thomas on April 21, 2013 in X-Pro1, X100

I was pretty excited the other day when apple released an update to its Camera Raw software that enabled raw support in Aperture for the XE1, X-Pro 1 etc. I had taken a quick look and my initial reaction was that it was pretty good. It seemed to be better at handling fine details, at the extent of a little artifacting. It was great to finally have support in Aperture and at first I was pretty happy. But I had only taken a very quick look. Now that I’ve had time to do some proper analysis, I’m not as impressed. In fact I’m down right depressed.

First the good news

Apertures rendition does a reasonable good job at rendering the shapes of fine textures and fine details. Things like patterns in concrete, trees, bushes etc. In my opinion, Lightroom smears these details too much. Even after the improved 4.4 processing, it still softens and renders these details in an un-natural form. Aperture renders these in a more natural way. At least the detail side of it. there’s a big but though, and I’ll get t that in a minute. The other thing that Aperture does well, is it handles colour much better. The default conversion seems to render colours with more saturation than Lightroom, which seems to be so aggressive in it’s anti-moire algorithm that it’s de-saturating the image. There’s a but here too though… which leads us nicely on to…

The not so good news

While the colour might be more saturated, it doesn’t seem to be that accurate. Yellows are a bit “off”, and I don’t know what’s going on with the blues. There’s a strange mottling pattern introduced if you try to push the blues, that is not present in any other raw converter I’ve tried.

Then there’s the detail issue. Sure, it renders textures a bit more naturally and a little sharper, but it’s covered with chromatic noise to the point of being ridiculous. There’s random speckles of colour that I presume are as a result of weak anti-moire algorithms. There is also significant colour fringing, much worse than there is isn Lightroom or any other converter, even with their fringing options turned off.

Here’s Aperture’s attempt at a raw conversion. Note the noise and speckles. this is with the Moire turned fully up and sharpening actually reduced in a feign attempt to minimise the effects

And here’s the nice clean Jpeg version.

At the end of the day, it depends heavily on what’s in the scene. Some scenes render quite well, where as others are just unusable. It’s a real shame, and hopefully Apple will improve it in the future once they get some public feedback.

Conclusions

I did a little photo walk on Saturday with my XE1 and I had intended to process all the shots with Aperture as a trial, but I ended up mostly using the jpegs, with only a few raw files processed. Aperture is still useable and produces good results in some circumstances, depending on the subject. I did get some good results, but in the end I went back to Lightroom.

When all is said and done Lightroom is good enough most of the time. I still don’t think it’s 100%, but I know a lot of people don’t have any issue what so ever with Lightroom’s interpretation, so if you’re one of those people then this really doesn’t matter to you. Personally I find Lightroom’s softening of details a bit much at times and it really doesn’t live up the the potential that Fuji claims the x-trans sensor is capable of, at least in terms of sharpness. It does depend on the subject though, but people will see what they want to, and many people swore blind that there was nothing wrong with Lightroom’s rendering before they improved in in 4.4, so it’s really not worth arguing over. I know there are a lot of people who are very passionate about both Fuji cameras and Lightroom and won’t have ill spoken about either, and I respect that passion, so you know, carry on as they say!

If you have been using Aperture to process Jpegs from one of the fuji cameras, at least you now have the option to switch to raw if you need to recover highlights or something similar. I don’t think it’s acceptable for commercial work in it’s current state for certain types of images, as the fringing and colour noise is too high, and you can see it even when shrunk down to web sizes. I think all of the main raw converters have both pros and cons at this stage.

SilkyPix

Pro: Very Sharp and Very Clean. Best at extracting detail

Cons: Very poorly written software. Very poor at recovering highlights. no way to bring up shadows. Not very user friendly

Lightroom

Pro: Clean files, reasonably sharp on high contrast areas. Very good highlight and shadow recovery. Wide range of creative options.

Cons: Still smears fine details and textures, even in “improved” 4.4 version. Sharpening introduces a lot of off patterns and artefacts.

Capture One

Pro: Very clean files. Sharp and clear. Much better at fine detail retention than Lightroom. Saturation is stronger at defaults.

Cons: Slow to use. Workflow takes a bit of getting used to. Lacks many of the creative options of Lightroom and Aperture.

Aperture

Pro: Sharper in detail areas. Retains textures and fine detail well in certain circumstances. Sharpens up well with some careful edge sharpening. Good saturation. Ability to switch between Raw and Jpeg very useful.

Cons: Unacceptable level of chroma noise. Strange mottling in the blue channel, Moire is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Random scattering of pixels in detail areas. Initial sharpening can be a little weak, and the raw fine tuning sharpening is not great – you need to know how to use edge sharpening to get the best results.

In- Camera Jpeg

Pro: Sharp and clean if the settings are right. Probably still the best all round. Holds up surprisingly well to post production.

Cons: Usual problems of Jpegs – no highlight recovery etc. Can still look a little “digital” depending on the subject. You can get sharper results with silky pix.

Comments { 6 }

A Very Quick first look at Aperture’s X-Pro1 / XE1 Raw Support

By thomas on April 17, 2013 in Aperture, News, Post Processing, X-Pro1, X100, XE-1

As mentioned earlier, Apple have updated their camera raw support to finally bring Aperture and iPhoto support for Fuji’s X-Trans camera’s raw files. I’ve downloaded the Camera Raw update and I’ve been playing around for the last little while, and I have to say, I’m extremely impressed. I haven’t given it a full run through, but already I like what I see. The files seem to be much sharper and retain much more detail that Lightroom’s efforts, and it doesn’t mangle fine detail like Lightroom does. It’s really impressive, and I’m glad Apple took the time to do X-Trans support right.

Here’s a quick example of what I mean. This is an image that I took recently. This is at the default settings.

Here’s the full image first:

DSCF2410

Now, here’s a crop of the trees from Lightroom:

Lightroom

Notice the trees are smeary and soft.

Here’s the same image in Aperture:

Aperture

It’s sharper and more natural and there’s none of the smeariness. You can’t see it as dramatically from the crop, but when you’re looking at the full image on a big screen you can see the difference quite starkly. Aperture also seems to retain far more colour, although it’s at the expense of some artefacts. Here’s another example that show’s what I mean:

This is a crop from Lightroom:

Trees LR

here’s the same image processed in Aperture:

Trees ap

There’s much more colour in the trees, where as Lightroom’s version is mostly grey. Again, these are both default conversions. You can see some of the speckles that have been introduced though. You can minimise these by turning up the “moire” slider in the raw fine tuning tab, but I’m amazed by the difference in colour.

Here’s the full image so you can see the area:

DSCF2443

Anyway, that’s it for now. It’s late here, so I’ll have a better look tomorrow and do some more detailed analysis, but my initial reaction is very positive and I’m actually quite impressed!

More to come!

Comments { 13 }

Aperture Gets Fuji X-Trans Support. XE1, X-Pro 1, X100s and X20 Raw Files Now Supported

By thomas on April 17, 2013 in Aperture, X-Pro1, X100

Camera raw

Well, I’ll be darned! I honestly didn’t think this was ever going to happen, but Apple have finally added X-Trans RAW support for Aperture (and iPhoto). The latest camera RAW update just popped up in Mountain Lion’s software update panel. I’m downloading it now, and once I have a chance to play around with it, I’ll write a full report, but it’s great news for Fuji users who like Aperture.

More to come!

Comments { 1 }

Fuji XE-1 vs Sony Nex7 – Can you tell the difference?

By thomas on March 11, 2013 in Nex-7, X-Pro1

If you’ve been following what’s going on in the digital camera world recently you can’t have missed out on the buzz and hype surrounding Fuji’s mirrorless cameras, and its X-Trans sensor technology. Fans and reviewers have raved about Fuji’s imaging prowess and people are claiming that the x-trans is the best sensor out there and that Fuji’s cameras are superior to even the venerable Canon 5d and D800. I’ve seen these claims time and time again. I was an early adopter of Fuji’s X-Pro1 but sold it after a month because of the terribly slow firmware and the abysmal raw support. Since then Fuji have released both a new firmware upgrade for the X-Pro1, but Also, a smaller sibling, the XE-1. Also, Adobe have gone a good way to addressing concerns over the raw processing issues. So, last weekend, I made good on my promise to take another look at Fuji’s X-Trans system if the issues ever got resolved, and as it was on special, I got myself a Fuji XE1.

I’ll have a report of my opinions on the camera in general in a little while once I’ve gotten a good bit of shooting time under my belt, but I wanted to do a little test to see how the claims hold up. So I took the same shot with both my new XE-1 and the widely regarded Fuji35mm lens, and my trusty Sony Nex-7 and much less expensive Sigma 30mm lens. Both are using default sharpening settings in Lightroom, and both have default settings. The Sony is a higher resolution, but these are 100% 1:1 views so that shouldn’t be an issue. Also, the Fuji has no AA filter and is using a much more expensive and well regarded lens. As the Sony’s lens is slightly wider, the field of view art 100% is essentially the same. Both were taken using aperture priority at f/4 the exposure as suggested by the camera, with no exposure compensation. Light is coming and going all day here so don’t hold the exposure up as a comparison) Raw files haven’t been touchd, just a straight conversion.

Considering these facts and that that the Fuji has the reputation for being superior, I’m genuinely curious to see if people can actually tell the difference. Below is a side by side comparison of both shots in Lightroom. Click through on the image or download the image to view it full size, and let me know in the comments which you think is which?

This isn’t an attempt to do a scientific level comparison either, it’s just a quick little experiment, so those who are getting hot under the collar because the testing methodology doesn’t meet your requirements, calm down, ok, it’s just a bit of fun. You know who you are! For everyone else, here’s the image…

(Update, I re-took one of the images so it lined up better and re-posted the image)

Comments { 1 }

Lightroom 4.4 Finally Fixes Fuji X-Trans Support

By thomas on February 26, 2013 in Lightroom, News, X-Pro1

Adobe released a release candidate (i.e. beta) version of the next version of Lightroom and Camera Raw this morning and there was a nice little tid-bit in the read-me notes…

Lightroom 4.4 RC includes a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Fujifilm cameras with the X-Trans sensor. This specifically impacts the following cameras:

Fujifilm X-Pro1

Fujifilm X-E1

Fujifilm X100S

Fujifilm X20

Thank You

No Adobe, Thank you! Fuji Rumors had alluded to a murmur that this happening and sure enough, here’s it is. As my regular readers know I’ve been very critical of Lightroom’s handling of the Fuji Raw files up to this point, and to be honest I was sceptical that they would improve anything. I’m very VERY happy to be proven wrong.

So, what are the results then? In a nutshell: “Sorted !”

The raw conversion engine no longer suffers from the dreaded water-colour effect and is as good if not better than Capture One, and pretty much on par with the Fuji Jpegs. Where as previously any amount of sharpening would cause the raw files to fall apart, now you can sharpen away. Adobe have done a great job and I have to say,fair play to them, because, as DPReview pointed out, the Fuji X-Cameras have a relatively small slice of the overall market share, and yet Adobe put a fair amount of effort into addressing this issue.

Mind you,on the other hand, it should never have been put out in the state it was in, but hey, we’re all good now, right?

Anyway, here is the obligatory before and after shot. This first one is from Lightroom 4.3

LR Crop

And now here’s the 4.4 Version.

New raw processing

I know it’s kind of hard to see from a small crop. But look at the logs on the people’s jackets, and the cranes in the background. See how much more natural they are. But even more prominent, note the birds visible in the 4.4 shot that are completely gone in the 4.3 version (thanks to commenter hexx for pointing this out when I did this comparison with the Capture one version).

I have only had a quick play around this morning with some of my Fuji Raw files, and overall my impression is that the problem is gone. There was one shot I had where there was some granite in the foreground, and the stone pattern looked like a bad photoshop filter experiment. Now it looks like granite again. Trees look lie trees rather than cotton wool. So once again, kudos to Adobe for doing a great job.

Some more Coverage….

Lightroom Journal Post (Basically the press release)

DPReview Tests the Raw Conversion

Comments { 1 }

A First Look at Capture One’s X-Pro 1 Support

By thomas on January 14, 2013 in Lightroom, News, X-Pro1

If you’re a fuji user or even just a fan you’ve probably been reading the reports of upcoming X-Pro1 and XE-1 support to be added to Capture One, the high end Raw converter from Phase One. Reports had been steadily leaking out from people using the beta and the general consensus was that it was an improvement over Adobe’s implementation in Lightroom. They released the final version today, and I decided to have a look and see if it lived up to the hype.

In case you’re not following this blog regularly, let me just tell you where I’m coming from with regard to this subject, just so you can put my opinions in context. I had been a relatively early adopter of the X-Pro1 but I had eventually sold mine, partly due to the lack of a good workflow for handling the raw files. It was actually the Lightroom support that pushed me over the edge. I was very critical of it, and found the “watercolour” artefacts to be completely unacceptable. Needless to say I got a lot of criticism for those comments (from both die hard Fuji fans who think the X-Pro1 is perfect in every way, and die hard Lightroom fans who believe the same thing about Lightroom.) I’ve done a lot of testing and playing around with settings trying to find a way to live with Lightroom’s conversions, but I stand by my opinion, that the quality of the raw processing of X-Pro1 files in Lightroom is seriously sub par. To be fair, I am hyper-critical when it comes to image quality. I have worked for years in broadcast television, and a critical part of my job is making sure the images I produce meet broadcast standards, so quality control is drilled into me. Anyway, I just want to put that out there, because I was so critical of the raw conversion to date, that it says so much more when I say that am blown away by the difference with Capture one.

DP Review did some initial testing today and they were somewhat skeptical of the differences, but I have to disagree with their findings. I’ve spent a few hours with it now and I have to say the difference is night and day. There is still a degree of the watercolour effect with capture one, but it is much less obtrusive than Adobe’s. Images are also much sharper even with the default settings. In fact, in my opinion you need to turn the sharpness down a little. I don’t want to go mad with lots of comparison images because there are lots of them out there on the web already, and you can download a 60 day trial and try it for yourself if you want to do your own comparisons. But I do want to point out a few things. It should be noted that it’s not just the smearing that Capture one does better. The whole image seems to be much sharper, and also there is much better colour in details too.

Here’s one quick example…

Firstly, look at this 100% crop for this shot of these cyclists on the bridge. I’m not attempting to do a scientific comparison, because frankly, they’re bullshit in these circumstances. I’ve tried to get both images reasonably similar, and I’ve processed both to make them look the best. I’m sure someone will complain that I’m skewing the results one way or the other, but, I’m not…so..you know…go away….

Here’s the Lightroom version:

LR Crop

It’s not too bad. But pay attention to a few things. The cranes in the background and the logos on the sleeves of the two guys on the right of the frame. Here’s the same image in capture one. I’ve actually turned the sharpening down a little from the default in this one….

C1 Bridge Crop

It might seem like splitting hairs , and it’s hard to see the difference properly when you see it like this on a web page, but when you see the whole image on a big calibrated display the difference is quite stark. You’ll just have to trust me on this.

Here are a few more images. (Just straight conversions with capture One… these aren’t comparisons)

Green wig

Lips crop

Green wig crop

Black and white river

Galway Bay

I’ve looked at lots of different images but you can’t properly demonstrate the differences in a web page so go download the trial and try it for yourself.

The downside is that you need to learn a new piece of software, and it is quite slow, but I really think the difference is worth it. The one thing that this has really shown me though is just how bad Adobe’s implementation is. I hope the people behind Lightroom at Adobe consider improving their support in Lightroom, but I’m not overly optimistic because I’ve talked to someone from the Company and I got the impression that they don’t think that there is anything is wrong with it. But you never know, maybe this will spur them one.

It’s not completely perfect. There are still some weird de-mosiacing artefacts, but it’s substantially better than what Lightroom was producing.

Anyway, I’m delighted that someone has finally unlocked the true potential of the X-Trans sensor. I’ve been quite hard on the X-Pro1 in the past, but it’s because I could see the un-tapped potential of the sensor to be really truly great (I know lots of people will say it is already), and this goes a long way to getting there. I’m definitely going to take another look and once I offload some old gear I’ll certainly be jumping back on the X-Trans train.