In my Fujifilm said What?! article, I stated that the number one thing Fujifilm could do to quiet the autofocus critics is to make the AF settings more intuitive, and have it programmed to work well for most straight-out-of-the-box. Fujifilm offers a lot of customization to maximize autofocus performance for each person’s specific use-case and preferences; however, a lot of people are unaware that not only can they do this, but they’re expected to. Even if they are aware, they’re unlikely to know what the settings should be for their photography or videography needs. If Fujifilm never improved the AF algorithm or the hardware, and only did this one thing—make it more intuitive—it would be seen an a major improvement by many.
My epiphany came from two places: 1) Camera Conspiracies, who was highly critical of Fujifilm’s AF until he found the right settings for him, and 2) the large number of people who have stated across the internet that they just want it to “work” straight-out-of-the-box. In other words, a lot of people want to power on their brand-new camera for the very first time, and, without making any adjustments to the camera settings, want it to perform perfectly for them. They want it to be much more simple and intuitive than it currently is. In my opinion and estimation, this is where the majority of the AF complaints actually come from, the root cause.
There’s nothing wrong with Fujifilm’s current approach. It works well for a lot of people. Just because the Canikony brands do something a certain way doesn’t mean that Fujifilm should, too. There are certainly pros and cons to the implementation of anything, including AF. Obviously, the cons are not appreciated by a very vocal subset of the community, and they have made this well-known. If Fujifilm is interested in addressing the issue (and I assume they are because they’ve said so), the simplest and most affective way is intuitiveness. Make it as simple as practical.
So how would it work? There are a number of ways that Fujifilm could tackle it, and I’m sure they’ve already made some steps towards this on whatever they’ve designed for the upcoming sixth-generation X-series cameras. But, if I were a Fujifilm employee (which I’m not), I would suggest this: at initial startup, when the camera is first powered on, after prompting the date and time, I would have a short questionnaire. Skip the questionnaire, and the default autofocus behavior is as it currently is. Answer the questions, and the camera (based on those answers) sets AF up in what should be more ideal settings for that person. The questions could be: Do you usually use AF-S, AF-C or M? Are you primarily a photographer, videographer, or both? Do you most often photograph fast moving subjects, slow moving subjects or stationary subjects? Do you most often photography people, animals/birds, cars/trains/bicycles, or other objects? Do you most often use wide angle lenses, telephoto lenses, or mid-range lenses? Do you typically use zooms or primes? I’m sure they could refine that into fewer questions. A total of three sets of questions would probably be sufficient.
Whatever someone answers, that would determine the default autofocus settings. The camera could still be custom set to whatever, but it would give those who choose the questionnaire a better starting point for their specific needs. The camera’s AF would work better for them straight-out-of-the-box. That simple change would likely make many people believe that Fujifilm has improved their AF without making any other improvements. Why? Because Fujifilm’s autofocus system isn’t nearly as bad as some would have you believe—in fact, it’s pretty darn good. Yes, the Canikony brands are better, but not being super awesomely amazing doesn’t make it bad, it only makes is awesomely amazing (instead of super awesomely amazing). The main issue is that people don’t want to set up their AF parameters, they’re largely unaware that they’re expected to, and they don’t really know what settings would work best for them, anyway. Fujifilm can and should do more to help educate their customers on this. But making the camera’s AF more intuitive with a simple questionnaire at initial startup would solve this issue for many.
To your point, simple firmware changes.
At the gear wrench global settings they could simply make an easy and advanced mode selection. Easy mode gives the basic choices like a point and shoot… people, action, cars, pets, etc.
I would love to also have the option to turn off all video functionality in that same menu way. Just hide it away for those of us just making stills and keep our menus more clean.
Well done.
Personally, I have never shot video nor have any urge to.
Many of my rigs are completely Manual.
Most of the remaining, MF only. Good enough for Zeiss.
Large Format Rules OK.
Yeah, they could make an easy mode with basic choices and an advanced mode with all of the options. They have to make sure that the basic modes are actually ideally programmed, and not necessarily intended for beginners, but will give great results to even advanced users with high-demand situations. Because this isn’t so much about amateurs vs advanced users, but those who will dig through the menu and spend time setting things up vs those who won’t, and it’s a big mix of experience on both sides.
Probably I’m too radical, but I think that if someone doesn’t want to think and use the brain, he shouldn’t buy a Fujifilm camera nor any other high level gear. Buy yourself a point-and-shoot compact camera with a wide “scene” selection or use your iPhone, but please stop complaining with an autofocus that sucks…
There are high level photography gear products that exist today that don’t require the user to “think and use the brain” as much as you would think. People buy this gear, believe they’re good, then buy something else that does require a little more brain use and maybe what would have been considered very basic camera skills for much of photography, and now they’re lost because their previous camera gear did all that stuff for them. But they’re still convinced that they’re good, it’s the gear that is the problem.
They could just default it for pets and kids. Anyone wanting to shoot sports or wildlife knows how to figure out their settings.
You would think that, but you might be quite surprised that those who shoot sports or wildlife are the primary group that doesn’t want to figure out their settings. It is certainly a subset of sports and wildlife photographers and not all or most, but the complainers are primarily sports and wildlife photographers, as well as videographers.
The current setup is confusing and difficult to understand, how to best setup the camera for various subjects/scenarios.
I would suggest reorganising the subject detection options, so that they have the “best” settings for afc or afs, area more and custom settings for a given subject. Fujifilm must know these settings?
With this you would have a good starting point for each subject/scenario. Then the 3 parameters under custom settings should be an option on the menu. Same for afc/afs, area mode, focus point size.
This way you would only have to choose your subject, tweak the other paramters, if you wished, but knowing you had the best starting point.
You then can allocate the subject detection, custom settings parameters, area modes etc to function buttons to change on the fly.
Finally, get someone who is good at explaining stuff to write a manual/ make a YouTube series about it. I’d suggest Pal2tech.
You could replicate this for video too. Although, my experience is AF is easier to setup for video. I’m a wildlife photographer.
It is cumbersome and confusing. I think there are something like 45 different possible configurations for AF-C, each “best” for a different use-case. That seems “too much” but, of course, if you are trying to achieve the perfect performance for you, it is possible. Fujifilm should have years ago made a series explaining all of it, with recommendations. They tried to—I think it was about a year ago—but the backlash was (sadly) quite strong because people aren’t willing to accept that they could fix most or all of their issues with a little work, they’d rather childishly mock and blame the gear instead. But if Pal2Tech did a deep-dive series, that would probably be quite well received, and extremely helpful to many. I think John Peltier has some resources for this, but are behind a paywall.
I came from Nikon and despite many years as a wildlife photographer, found the settings difficult to understand. It’s taken a couple of years, endless googling and YouTube videos to get to a point where I feel confident with the AF. Do I still miss focus? Of course, but that could be IOE, Incompetent Operator Error😀