Tornado X-T1 Tracking Test

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On Saturday evening the 'Tornado', a steam train that was completed in 2008, travelled through East Lothian as part of its journey up the East Coast Mainline.  I am a fan of anything mechanical from a bygone era, whether it is planes, trains or automobiles, so I headed out to towards Torness Point to find a suitable piece of track where I could get a good shot of the locomotive without the overhead powerlines above the track getting in the way of the shot.

 Tornado was named in recognition of the RAF Tornado crews that fought in the Gulf War and the locomotive carries the crest of RAF Cottesmore, the station in Rutland I served between 1983 and 1987 and 1990 to 1996.

 The passing of the 60163 Tornado also presented me with an opportunity to test the new autofocus tracking software on the Fujifilm X-T1. Setting the camera to wide 'Wide/Tracking', 'AF-C' and the drive to 'CH' (8 frames per second) I was able to capture the following sequence of 22 images using the XF16mm f1.4 lens.























The test proved that the new AF software could track an object at speed and it wasn't confused by the pole or other stationary objects in the frame or the contrasty lighting caused by the sun in the later images in the sequence.  The 3 second burst also didn't fill the memory buffer on the X-T1 despite the fact I set the camera to capture RAW + JPEG (N).

Once again the new Firmware 4 software came up trumps and produced a set of images that were all sharp and useable.

CLICK HERE for the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust to find out more about the 60163 Tornado

All images taken on a Fujifilm X-T1 + Fujinon XF16mm f1.4R WR

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ALL IMAGES (UNLESS INDICATED) ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION

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Jeff Carter is an Official Fujifilm X Photographer and was named as a Fujifilm brand ambassador in June 2015. In 2016 he worked with the company on the launches of the Fujifilm X-Pro2 in Tokyo and the Fujifilm X-T2 in Paris in July 2016.  You can view his profile and gallery on the Fujifilm website HERE

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