I finally got out to do some proper shooting today, and I had a lot of fun with the X-Pro 2. I decided to focus on trying about the film modes, and even though I was shooting Raw + Jpeg, my goal was to focus on the Jpeg, and in particular the Film Simulation modes. What I was especially keen to try is the new Acros simulation. I have read a lot about it since the X-Pro 2 first came out, so I was expecting good things. I was certainly not disappointed.

Let me cut straight to the chase. The Acros simulation mode, coupled with the film grain effect is amazing. It's the closest thing to film I've ever seen come straight out of any camera. I've shot a lot of Neopan in the past, and I think I can say, that this is pretty close. There are a few idiosyncrasies with the results, but I think that's partly becauseI'm still trying to find the best combination of setting, but overall, I'm really really impressed. Rather than keep going on about it, it's probably easier to just show you. Most of these were taken straight out of the camera. There was some minor exposure tweaks on two of the images (The ducks in the horrible canal water.) It's really impressive, and kudos to Fuji for pulling this off.

The settings I used for these were as follows:

Film Simulation Mode: Acros
Highlight Tone: -2 to +1 (Changed a few times to test out different settings)
Shadow Tone: +2
Noise Reduction: -4
Sharpening: -4
Grain Effect: Strong

If you want to view these full res and pixel peep to see the grain and so on, you can check out the full set on Flickr.

Acros for Video

You can use the film simulation modes for video too, and so I wanted to see how the Acros would work for motion. I didn't set any shots up properly, and this was all hand held, but even so, the results are promising. There was a few odd things going on when I was shooting video though. The highlight and shadow options didn't seem to be used when shooting video (I could be wrong on this, and I could be doing something wrong.) A few times, when I would hit record, the brightness would jump slightly. I still have a lot to figure out on this camera, especially when it comes to video, but for now, heres a quick sample shot in the Acros mode.

I'll have more observations from my first outing in the next diary post so stay tuned.

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