One of the reasons Fujifilm cameras are so popular aside from the Hipster-Retro styling is the prospect of being able to shoot Jpegs straight out of camera, with great colours and no post-processing. Vibe cameras basically.
Having spent many a long day-out doing fun things and taking lots of photos, often the last thing I want to do when I get home is to go through a couple of hundred images, sort through them and edit them.
I've recently moved from shooting Fujifilm (and Sony) to Nikon (and Sony) and after this, maybe you will consider giving Nikon a look aswell, because Nikon has solutions to this problem, and is superior to Fujifilm in many regards.
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| Nikon Z5II with Nikkor Z 24-120 f/4 S - image credit Amy Davies |
Fujifilm Jpegs & Recipes
This was one of the things that drew me to Fujifilm over a year ago and I quickly found it to be overrated. There is a large community online of people who are obsessed with Fuji 'recipes' which they hold in such deference like it is some magical combination of settings. In reality, the built-in film simulation is 95% of a 'recipe' along with a custom white balance (which is almost always used in the wrong situation making images yellow) and the other settings make barely perceptible differences to the image anyway. Then they add softness (negative sharpness and clarity) and noise (grain) and end up with a photograph that could be taken on any old potato camera and not a setup costing thousands of dollars.
Why not just shoot film if you are that obsessed?
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| Fuji colours are never in doubt - Fujifilm X-H2 with Viltrox 28mm f/4.5 (edited in Lightroom) |
Rant over, sorry. Anyway, I have a few issues with Fujifilm images (SOOC) straight out of camera. The film simulations is one, they create some cool creative looks, but you cannot edit those profiles if you like the colour grading but want to tone it down a bit for instance.
The next issue is one that any camera has, and that is dynamic range. In post processing you can bring down the bright areas and bring up the dark areas (I'm being simplistic). SOOC you can't really achieve that, so you have to make a compromised choice of how you expose your image, likely meaning a lot of white, blown-out skies. Fuji has a feature to help with this (DR modes) but it means shooting at a higher ISO and somehow never seems to get it right.
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| I always struggled with Sony colours, I could never get them to my liking. |
I've used Sony Full-frame alongside Fuji for the past year and the Full-frame system has noticeably cleaner and sharper images than Fuji. I've never been truly happy with either system though which is why I shot with both. Sony has Autofocus so good you can take photos without looking and with outstanding image quality, but the RAW files are harder to work with to get good colours. Fuji is almost the opposite, OK autofocus, OK image quality but the files are easier to edit for colours.
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| Sony colours, still not happy with them even in this shot. |
Enter Nikon
In my review of the Fujifilm X-T5 you'll see I enjoyed the retro experience but was disappointed with the build quality, and not overly impressed with the image quality and autofocus, they were just 'fine'.
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The Nikon ZF blows any Retro styled Fujifilm camera out of the water completely, in every way.
The build quality, autofocus and image quality are all far superior, even with the cheap plastic-fantastic SE primes lenses! And the colours - wow! skin tones are amazing and need no work whatsoever. It has 'only' a 24MP sensor which seems low nowadays but actually it's plenty, with the advantages being cleaner images in low light and smaller file sizes.
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| Look at that colour! Fujifilm X-H2 with 16-55 II (edited in Lightroom) |
The ZF was a fun camera but the retro style and handling really isn't for me. I was completely convinced by Nikon as a system though so I replaced it with a Nikon Z5II, which is basically the ZF inside a modern style body.
Being a recovering sufferer of Camera GAS I don't want large camera kits anymore, I want quality and simplicity and nothing I don't need. A major draw card of the Nikon system is the 24-120 f/4S lens. It is incredible. My first day shooting and nearly every shot was a keeper. That expansive zoom range coupled with the sharpness and image quality is just the perfect blend for a one lens solution, not once did I feel I needed much wider or much longer. f/4 on a 24MP sensor with great stabilization is hardly a limiting factor too unless you are shooting moving things in poor light. Combined with the Nikon Z 50 f/1.8S, I have a great versatile 2-lens kit. 50mm is my favourite focal length and this prime is one that everyone who has ever used it raves about how good it is, and it does not disappoint.
From a gear point of view I'm smitten with the value in Nikon. The Z5II is quite possibly the best value proposition in photography right now. Nikon priced it as entry level yet it's lacking nothing important for general shooting and just about any photographer would be able to shoot anything with it.
To give you a quick value comparison with Fujifilm and comparative lenses.
- Nikon Z5II, 24-120 f/4S, 50 f1/8S - $5,568 NZD
- Fujifilm X-H2, 16-55 f/2.8 II, 33 f/1.4 - $7,780 NZD
.JPEG "Melbourne waterfront") |
| Melbourne shot with the Fujifilm X100VI (edited in Capture One) |
Nikon Jpegs
Circling back to shooting Jpegs without editing, believe it or not this was a draw card with Nikon too. I want good images out of camera for many situations, and only have to edit when I really want to get the most of out an image. Nikon does this better than Fuji yet Fuji is the one with the reputation for it.
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| Nikon SOOC Jpeg - Z5II with 24-120 f/4 S |
In-Camera RAW Processing
In-camera RAW processing is an incredibly underrated feature and both Fujifilm and Nikon have it. Basically you can shoot in RAW, and then edit the photos in-camera using all the available parameters. With Fujifilm you change the parameters and then generate the image, meaning you are unable to see the effect of each adjustment as you make them. Nikon does, and for that it's gold. I've actually sat and whizzed through a whole days photos, editing them in-camera. I would not recommend it if you haven't paid much care to your exposure and composition at the time of shooting, as extensive editing in-camera would be quite laborious. Great for choosing a look, basic change to exposure, and then generate the Jpeg.
The images below were all edited in-camera on the Nikon ZF (click to enlarge)
Active-D Lighting
The most useful feature that Nikon has for Jpeg shooting is the Active-D Lighting setting. It does a similar thing to what Fujifilm's DR function aims to do, but does it much much better. This makes SOOC shooting with Nikon possible in my opinion. Active-D Lighting has 5 different levels and it works by measuring the contrast in the overall scene and controlling highlights and shadows to be balanced. My experience with it is that it boosts the shadow brightness without touching the bright areas, but in such a way it looks how it should. Apparently it automatically adjusts the mid-tone contrast and that's why using the function looks so natural. You can apply different levels of Active-D lighting during in-camera RAW processing as well as in NX Studio later on. For SOOC Jpeg shooting you can actually bracket the setting meaning you can shoot images simultaneously with the setting on or off so you can choose which one is best. Handy.
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| Nikon ZF SOOC - Filmic Fabio Creator Recipe |
Nikon Picture Controls
Nikon have had 'Picture Controls' for many years for Jpegs and you can create and share custom ones. They are a bit crude and limited though. However in recent times Nikon introduced 'Flexible Color Picture Controls' which promise a whole lot more and has leaned into the whole 'recipe' thing. This is limited to a select few Z series cameras so far (including the ZF and Z5II). See here for further details from Nikon.
To get the most of our Nikon's new Flexible Color you'll need to use NX Studio (I'll come back to that shortly) You can actually download recipes direct to your camera - people can make their own and share, or you can download direct to camera from a growing library created by Nikon Creators via Nikon Imaging Cloud. I started by downloading and playing with a lot of the recipes loaded on here.
Nikon Imaging Cloud is an online service where you can connect your camera directly to update firmware, sync recipes, and even upload photos to Nikon Image Space; a free service with 20gb of storage that I'm now using as a quick and easy way to keep my favourite photos for the world to see. Everything works great once setup and it really adds value to the Nikon system as a whole.
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| Nikon Imaging Cloud Creator recipes page |
NX Studio
But the value doesn't end there as we come back to Nikon's NX Studio. It's a free photo editing software from Nikon and is powerful enough to be all that many people will ever need and more. The advantages of NX Studio (aside from being free) are that it renders the Nikon .NEF files better than any other software and fully integrates with Nikon Picture controls and the new Flexible Colour.
The below video from Nikon's website shows some of the settings for editing and creating Flexible Colour Picture Controls.
You can import recipes directly into NX studio, either via a shared .np3 file or simply by extracting it from an image imported into the software. From there you have the ability to completely customize the colours at a really advanced level and even create your own recipes that you can apply in NX Studio, or download as an .np3 file to then share or load onto your camera to shoot SOOC - Fujifilm can't do that!
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| NX Studio showing some of the standard RAW adjustments |
In addition to the colour stuff you've got a suite of standard RAW editing adjustments available such as exposure, cropping etc. Masking is a large omission but I've found Active-D Lighting to work very well for the situations I would often use masking for.
NX Studio isn't as snappy and responsive as Lightroom but it's perfectly OK. Every now and then i'll change a setting and my preview won't refresh for some reason and I'm not sure why. Fujifilm's X RAW Studio by comparison is an abomination - the software runs on your computer but processes everything through the camera, so every adjustment needs to travel through the USB cable to the camera, the camera to process and send the preview back, meaning every single parameter you change has a very noticeable delay. It was awful even on good hardware and a current generation Camera such as the X-T5. Proprietary software is another win for Nikon.
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| Nikon's monochrome is excellent too (edited in Lightroom) |
Workflow
Workflow is an important aspect of Photography whether you are a Pro or Hobbyist - it's never as straightforward as just taking photos.
I'm hoping Nikon will continue to be a game changer for my own workflow. The goal is to continually develop my own recipes in NX Studio and load them into my camera, then shoot RAW and import everything to NX Studio - where I'm hoping most of the images will need nothing other than exporting to Jpeg, and at most, very minor tweaks. One day I may even have the confidence to just take the jpegs straight off the SD Card, leaving the RAW's on the other card 'just in case'.
I've been using Lightroom mobile on a 13'' Ipad Pro with the Apple Pencil, which is a great combination, but what is a better combination is the Nikon ecosystem of camera + flexible color + NX Studio, so I'm subscription free for now but on a Macbook Pro, as NX Studio isn't available on Ipad.
In closing
Thanks for reading about my revelations and switch to Nikon. This was never intended to be a review of any of the things mentioned, rather broad strokes about the system in general and the value it provides not just in the equipment but the supporting services too. It really is great and I could have saved myself tens of thousands of dollars of constantly buying and trialing gear if I had just given Nikon a look earlier.
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