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Table of Contents   Page 1: Fujifilm X-E1 Overview Page 2: File Size, Bit Depth Page 3: Fujifilm X-E1 Usability Page 4: Fujifilm X-E1 Behaviors That Kill Images Page 5: Fujifilm X-E1 Focus Creep Kills Sharpness Page 6: Where is Aperture Priority? Page 7: Fujifilm X-E1 Size vs Sigma DP1 Merrill Page 8: Fractal-like Artifacts: Dolls Still Life Page 9: Fractal-like Artifacts COUNTERPOINT: Dolls Still Life Page 10: Fractal-like Artifacts: The Close-Up View Page 11: Aperture Series: 55mm (Dolls, X-E1) Page 12: Examples: Bristlecone Graveyard at Dusk Page 13: Shootout: Fujifilm X-E1 vs Rioch GR and Sigma DP1 Merrill (Dilapidated Green House) Page 14: Shootout: Fujifilm X-E1 vs Rioch GR and Sigma DP1 Merrill (Bristlecone Graveyard)

Fujifilm X-E1

Fujifilm X-E1

Fujifilm X-E1 Usability

For walk around use (point and autofocus and click), skip this page. In that working mode, the X-E1 is fine, and a pleasure to use.

For deliberate careful work, the X-E1 is one of the most frustrating cameras I have ever used because of operational design flaws. I wasted many hours on do/redo/redo/redo/redo/.../redo trying to deal with its insane behavior. See my comments on field use.

Here is a sampler of what made the X-E1 a non-starter for any kind of deliberate meticulous work.

• The lens focus resets when cameras is powered off (or it powers down), even when set to manual focus. This wrecks any carefully set up comparison, series of images, etc. Accurate focus is non-trivial for a comparison or aperture series, so a focus reset is “start over” behavior (studio or macro work could be affected here).
• The Live View zoom-in feature is somewhat better than useless: it does not allow scrolling around the frame.
• In Live View, the sharpness (apparently enhanced) is so deep that accurate critical focus is impossible. I never knew what I’d get; the images did not correspond to what I saw while focusing.
• The autofocus won’t focus on 3D targets properly; I finally gave up after seeing constant backfocus on my target.
• The self timer disables itself with power off, so one has to constantly re-enable it.
• The X-E1 resets its focus when the SD card is removed, so it is not possible to shoot an image, check it, then put the card back in and adjust— the focus has been reset to some arbitrary distance.
• The camera resets its focus under other conditions; at times deleting an image would reset focus.
• The camera makes strange unsettling focus-like noises from the lens that undermine confidence that it has kept the manual focus as carefully set.
• In manual focus mode, the camera overlays its idiotic distance scale on the image, so that it becomes difficult to see the bottom of the image. There is apparently no way to disable this behavior.
• Because the SD card cannot be extracted without removing the camera plate, one has to constantly screw/unscrew the camera plate (solution: a Really Right Stuff plate when available). Anyway, the camera resets focus when the SD card is removed.

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Fujifilm X-E1