So a week or two ago Fujifilm announced its new middle of the range camera, the X-E1 which apparently resolved all the AF issues that the X-Pro1 has AND also announced that the X-Pro1 would get all of these AF improvements by way of a firmware upgrade on 18 September. That’s today incase you had missed it!

Having rediscovered the amazing IQ of the X-Pro1 in the last few weeks I was really hoping for big things. All too often this would be what awaited me when using the X-pro1:

 

I do think it is now much better. As to whether it is m43s fast… well it isn’t. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be. I upgraded my X-pro1 and all 3 lenses this morning and headed off to work with it. In some preliminary testing before I left I noted  that the low light performance was better but not smokingly so. Think Sony NEX but probably more accurate.

At lunchtime I headed out to give it a go.

I started out with the 60mm macro since that was the lens that had the worse performance with the previous firmware. It’s better, much, much better.

The shots above just wouldn’t have been possible before.

Not because of shutter speed but because of the awful lag while the lens went back and forth to acquire focus. It’s still there, but nowhere near as bad.

I switched to the 35 to see if there were improvements there. The 35 was already tolerably quick, so it was less of an action issue and more of a speed of use thing.

I started out tracking people walking. I noticed less improvement with this lens but it was still better.

Finally, I just decided to take advantage of the quicker write times also offered by the firmware upgrade and have some fun with the camera. I would note I appreciated the improvements to manual focus which make the macro lens much more usable and promise to offer a real alternative to AF in low light and action situations.

My final thoughts would be that Fujifilm have done a good job improving the X-Pro1 with this firmware update. However, those who were keen to see M43s focus speeds will be disappointed.

What I would be keen to see is the body paired with one of the new lenses with faster, linear motors. Apparently focus is lightning quick. If so, Fuji should release revised versions of the 35 and 60 incorporating those changes.