Quick Thoughts After 24 Hours: Fujifilm X-T2 v4.0 Firmware

Just a quick little non-review of my first 24 hours with the v4.0 firmware for Fujifilm’s X-T2.

I went out to Wallace Falls State Park for a hike to shoot the falls. The firmware was released the morning of, so, instead of playing it safe and shooting with v3.0, I played with fire and installed v4.0 before heading out. Fortunately I ran into zero problems with my camera while out in the field. The main reason I was willing to risk losing a day’s worth of shooting is due to my excitement for the improvements to autofocus. Fujifilm touted a 1.5 stop improvement to phase detect autofocus in low light, from 0.5 EV to -1.0 EV. Since I knew I would be shooting with smaller apertures, with an ND filter of at least 6 stops, and under the forest canopy, I wanted to put these claims to the test.

For landscapes, I shoot in manual focus mode but use the AF-L button to get initial focus automatically, fine tuning using the focus ring and focus peaking. What I found was the new firmware allowed me to get the initial lock quickly and confidently, consistently. Using the 10-24mm ƒ/4 lens most of the day, I was able to get that initial focus via back button with a 6 stop B+W ND filter and the lens drilled down to ƒ/16. Certainly, due to the presence of high contrast edges, the presence of focus peaking highlights and the use of a hybrid autofocusing system (contrast + phase detect), it wasn’t just the phase detect system enabling focus surety. However, no matter what the aperture was set to, the camera got consistently accurate locks and was far less temperamental than it used to be, using the same technique.

Anecdotal? Obviously, but it’s an update that seems to work favorably, as advertised, from my single day of experience. More importantly, I didn’t run into any bugs throughout the day, and despite the long list of changes, all of the new features I played with all functioned as expected.

I don’t care to review the features I have no intention of using, so I won’t. I also don’t care to review my primary camera again just because a few new features were added. I will from time to time speak to my experiences with the new features for the near future.

Mind you, there’s a new version of X Acquire and Silky Pix RAW Converter that support the new features included in v4.0 so make sure you update those while you’re updating your X-T2.