REVIEW: Fujifilm X-T1 at High Speed

The 'Desi Braveheart' Dancers - image shot at 3200 ISO

Last weekend we visited the Edinburgh Mela, an international music, dance and arts festival celebrating its 20th year.  

There were three stages where musicians and dances from all over the world came to perform and while the stages were lit, the lighting was going to be a challenge for the X-T1 with the 55-200mm f3.5/4.8 telephoto that I was going to have to use to get some close up shots of the artists.  I did take the 35mm f1.4, which would've given me a 3.5 stop advantage over the f4.8 at the 200mm end of the zoom but I wasn't able to get close enough to the stage to use the shorter lens.  

Of course the 55-200mm has Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) but this only helps if the subject is static or slow moving.  I've handheld a shot of the Eiffel Tower at night using 1/8s with this lens and got a perfectly sharp image, but 1/8s is no good with dancers as they will appear blurred even with OIS enabled.  Even at 1/60 or 1/125 parts of the dancers are going to be moving, like their hands, but this is a plus point for the type of images of I was hoping to capture. 

Because of the relatively slow f4.8 aperture at the 200mm end of the zoom range, the only option was to ramp up the ISO to give me a shutter speed of at least 1/60th of a second.

During the performance of Kakatsitsi, a group of drummers and dancers from Ghana, I had to push the ISO to 6400 to give a high enough shutter speed (1/200s) to capture their high speed drumming.  However I decided to push the X-T1 to 12,800 to see how well it could cope with the extra boost.  

When set at 12,800 or higher (25600 or 51200), the X-T1 only captures the images in JPEG format instead of RAW and JPEG that the camera is normally set to.  The images above and below were both captured using 12,800 ISO and while the images are still noisy, they are still very usable.

The final shot below was taken at 6400 ISO, which allowed me to shoot JPEG and RAW, which gave me a lot more flexibility in post production in Lightroom 5.4.  However I am happy to report that the JPEG files are extremely good when you consider that most photographers wouldn't consider pushing a crop sensor camera past 800 ISO a few years ago, it just shows how far the technology used in the X-Trans sensor has progressed.

The second set of images were all shot at 3200 ISO because the lighting in the Dance Stage area was slightly better.  

These images are of the 'Desi Braveheart' dance group and once again underline the ability of the X-Trans sensor to capture colour and detail in poor lighting conditions where using flash either isn't an option or would kill the atmosphere.

Conclusion
The more I throw at the X-T1 in situations like this the more I am impressed by this camera's abilities to cope.  Ideally I would've preferred to use a fast lens and drop the ISO down to 800 or 1600, but at least I was able to utilise the reach of the 55-200mm by pushing the boundaries of the sensor speed.  

Later this month I get the 56mm f1.2, and this short telephoto lens will allow me to be able to shoot in low light in situations like the Edinburgh Mela.  I look forward to reporting back and comparing the differences.  However for now, pushing the ISO on the X-T1 to 3200 and beyond doesn't need to be avoided. 

The next MacLean Photographic blog update will be at 17:00 on Wednesday 10 September.

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