I have had the 2 variations of the H2 cameras working together for a few months now and for my work, they compliment each other very well. So what am i finding out about this pairing?
This shows the number of images on each of the cameras I have delivered in 2024 so far (It is to be expected that the H2s image count is far higher as I have owned it months longer).
Taking the balances of two recent jobs.
The Girls on Film Awards
2 Day Conference
Of course the image balance could be just down to the lens I prefer to use and which camera body they ended up on at the time.
It is no surprise that the higher ISO images are far cleaner on the H2s as opposed to the H2 but the addition of DXO to clean them up means the issue is a non-issue.
The biggest difference between the two is the processing power needed to edit the RAW images. Having owned a 50MP GFX for a while, I have been used to working on large images and was therefore not too worried about the H2 Raw files. However I had failed to consider that X-Trans files are far more processor intensive to process (demosaic) than Bayer files, with the 40MP H2 X-Trans Raw files pushing Lightroom far harder than the 50MP GFX Bayer files.
This issue came to bite-me-on-the-bum when I first used the Raw’s at the Girls On Film Awards.
I was struggling with the ever changing lighting as I moved through the venue and the slides altering the colours in the main auditorium as they changed. Trying to cover everything and move fast I made the unusual (for me) decision, not to preset a number of white balances but to sort it in post.
This was the first time I had ingested H2 Raws on to my 2018 Intel MacBook. I had to deliver a set of select’s within 30-60 minutes and processing was sloooowww…… The speed of working with the 26MP–H2s images was fine, it was just the 40MP–H2 files that were the problem.
Running the same files through my M2 Studio produced no such issues, the M2 processor deals with the files as if they were JPG’s (I cannot recommend the Mac Studio highly enough). I have yet to test these larger Raw files on my M1 iPad. (I will follow this up).
This Raw file processing issue is really the only aspect of owning the H2 that has been more negative than my expectations. The ISO performance is fine for my work (being roughly as I expected) with the speed and accuracy of the auto-focus exceeding my expectations considerably.
My take-away for you if you are considering any of the newest Fuji cameras based on the 40MP X-Trans sensor is “Make sure you have a system that is up to processing them”. As I say my 2018 Intel MacBook pro with 16GB Ram is up to the job but only when not in a hurry!
The next post will cover a little more on how I handle the slightly noisier images when I need to and should I have changed my workflow when I hit the go-slow.
J x
Julie Edwards-X 