I picked up the Fuji X-T3 again this past week
and after my recent run of going nine levels deep on Sony menus,
there were a few things that immediately jumped out at me
about the Fuji that I adored and felt required
to make a video about. Let's get undone.
[offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald undone
and it's not Pantene, it's the lighting.
So, this isn't a Sony bashing video, but rather
a Fuji appreciation video focused on some features
that exist on the X-T3 that I wish every camera had.
Now, a couple of these features did
come out in firmware updates,
but that still counts in my opinion
and I'm currently using firmware 2.10.
Also, I just wanna take a second to thank Camera Canada
for supplying me with the X-T3 that I'm using in this video.
Camera Canada is my go-to store for Fuji bodies and lenses.
So, if you're interested in getting an X-T3,
or any other camera for that matter, make sure
you check them out. Links will be in the description below.
Alright, so first up, let's talk about
the most recent improvement via firmware update:
the removal of the 4GB limit on the SD card.
If you've watched any of my videos in the past,
you know that I constantly complain when my exFAT cards
are forced to break up my video files into 4GB chunks.
Well, thankfully the Fuji X-T3 no longer does that.
So, good job, Fuji.
Number 2, some cameras have weird button layouts
that require you to reach across the camera to change
something in the menu or to access the menu itself.
Well that isn't the case with the X-T3, and I really
appreciate this: not only is the menu the OK button,
but the controls for changing the options in the menu
are just around that button, and then back button
is just below it. So, you can literally
do everything that you might need to do inside the menu
just by moving your thumb just a little bit,
and you never have to reach across which is great,
because I find that when I do that I'm constantly
tripping the sensor on the EVF,
and then the screen turns off and switches back and forth,
and it's really tedious and it makes no sense.
Group the things together. Fuji does a great job of this.
You don't really have to move your thumb at all,
and you can do anything that you want in the menu.
Number 3: the Fuji X-T3 has dual mic-level adjustments.
One of the first things that people do when they get
an external mic is usually turn the mic level
inside the camera as low as possible,
so that they don't have to rely on it as much
and just use the gain on the microphone itself.
This generally produces a cleaner sound.
But the problem with that which I've encountered
is that when I'm not using the external mic,
then you can't really hear what I'm recording at all.
This happens when I try to record test clips.
I don't bother attaching a mic for that. I'll just take a shot
and I'll say out loud what I'm doing, like, "this is
ISO 800." But then when I take those clips into edit,
I can't actually hear what I said that the samples were,
so they weren't really helping me at all.
So, you'd have to go back & forth and turn the mic level
up and down depending on what you were doing.
You don't have to worry about that with the Fuji X-T3
because there's two separate adjustments
for both internal and external mic.
So, you can set the internal mic to a good volume,
you know, when I would just be talking at the camera.
Then you can have the external mic turned all the way down
so that when you attach your shotgun mic or whatever
you wanna use, it's not gonna be using the in-camera
preamp too much and you can rely on the microphone.
This is an awesome feature and I wish that I saw it
more often in other cameras. Good job, Fuji.
Number 4: multiple tally lights
and multiple options for those tally lights.
Now, this is something I've really come to appreciate
recently when I was recording all those samples
of myself using the Sony, because you can't really tell
even when you're recording, when recording on the Sony.
I don't know why I keep pointing; this is the Gh5,
but when I would have the Sony there recording myself,
I couldn't even tell when it was recording half the time.
This isn't a problem with the Fuji because it has
tally lights on the front and the back.
And you can control them, you can either have them
on all the time or blinking in either configuration
you want and which one you want on or off.
And the best part is the front tally light is this soft,
muted white light that you can also make not blink,
So, it's not gonna cast a blinking red light
on your shots when you're shooting up close on a subject.
Number 5 is another one that's been updated recently
with a firmware update, but it's the ability
to customize your recording options
when it comes to internal as well as external over HDMI.
First off you can choose any combination
of HD and 4K that you want.
You can do HD on both, 4K on both,
HD in one and 4K on the other, vice versa.
Or you can turn it off so you're only sending HD
or 4K just to the external recorder.
And this is a far cry from what I've been?
experiencing lately while shooting on Sony
where changing these settings which are already limited,
can cause other features to completely stop working.
And Fuji's improved this further by allowing you to change
what gamma profile you wanna send to each source
so you can send F-Log to both or Eterna both
or mix and match by sending F-Log to one
and Eterna to the other, and now you can use HLG as well.
This is a brilliant set of features. Amazing job, Fuji.
Number six, while speaking about some of those issues
of Sony turning things off with HDMI,
one of the biggest ones that troubles people obviously
is the fact that when you're using an HDMI monitor
and you're in 4k, the face detection turns off
and I've made videos about this before, as well as a workaround
for it, but it is one of the most annoying features
when it comes to hooking up an HDMI device to your Sony.
Fuji doesn't have this problem at all.
It doesn't matter what combination of HDMI settings
or resolutions that you use, your face detection
and eye detection will always work.
Lastly number 7, HDMI info display.
This is one feature that's lacking
in pretty much every brand except for maybe Panasonic,
and that's the ability to display
your on-screen information over HDMI.
Some brands don't even offer this feature
and then other brands like Sony have it,
but it has weird limitations, like can't use it in 4K,
or when you do enable it and you go into the menu
one screen turns off-- just weird things like that.
The Fuji's version is super simple.
It's either on or it's off, and when it's on,
it always works regardless of what other settings
you're using and you can even see your face detection
tracking through the external monitor.
And what's better still is it has separate controls for that
for the photo and the video side.
So, let's say that you wanna have a clean HDMI out on video
which just means that none of your on-screen
display information is going over the HDMI,
which makes sense if you wanted to record.
But maybe you wanted to still have it on for photo.
You can just turn it off for video and then when you switch
to photo, it'll come back on. Which makes sense
'cause you probably want it on for photo to be able
to see your information a little bit clearer.
and there's no issues in any combination
of any of things that I was talking about
where one screen turns off or goes black.
Both screens are on all the time and showing exactly
what you want them to show regardless of how you change
your settings and it's this combination
of customization that's just so great.
You think of something in your head that you wanna do,
you go into the menu, it's there,
the options are there that you might have thought of,
you can tweak it however you want,
And then it performs exactly how you want
without any weird quirks that you might not have thought of.
That's something that Fuji is really, really getting right
with this X-T3, and something that I think that
we should really appreciate of how well implemented it is.
So, that's it. Those are the seven things
that I think Fuji is doing terrifically
when it comes to video, and that I think
that we should definitely acknowledge.
And when I've made videos like this before,
I've said the same idea: that it's easy to get
bogged down with critiques of cameras
and pointing out the things that aren't quite
up to snuff because you see them so easily,
that sometimes we don't really take the time
to acknowledge when a company gets things right.
And we definitely should
because not only does it encourage them to keep doing it,
but it might encourage other brands to follow suit.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining
and if you did make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
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Alright... I'm done.