Fuji X-E1 vs. X100: further observations

These are just a few things I’ve noticed now that I’ve spent more time with the X-E1. See also my first impressions.

New firmware, and handling

First of all, not long after I got the camera Fuji released firmware version 1.06 for it, which adds the ability to use the Down button on the four-way controller as a programmable function button. Furthermore, ‘Select AF Point’ is now one of the functions that can be assigned to such buttons. For those of us who regularly change focus points, this is a huge improvement, as it makes changing AF points with the camera up to your eye significantly easier, especially with a relatively heavy and ‘hands-on’ lens like the 18–55mm.

Another aspect of handling that is not immediately obvious when comparing the X-E1 and X100 is the shape of the body on the right hand side. They appear fairly similar, but in fact the X100 is much more rounded (X100 on the left):

It seems a minor difference, but it’s surprising how much more comfortable the X100 is when pressed into the palm of your hand, although with a lighter lens than the 18–55mm it might not be as much of an issue. I presume the X-E1’s shape is due to its thicker battery leaving less room for nice body contouring.

Raw versus JPEG

Almost always with the X100, I found the JPEGs the camera produced to be better than anything I could get out of Lightroom, Aperture or Capture One. For certain looks, I could get the included SilkyPix to give nicer results (it’s particularly good at highlight recovery and lush landscape colours), but on the whole the JPEGs were just plain nicer-looking, at least to me – I realise this is obviously a subjective thing. For reference, I shot Astia film simulation in Auto WB, with no WB adjustment, and with +2 colour, +1 highlights, and shadows at 0, in sRGB.

For some reason I’ve not quite pinned down yet, I can get much better results out of the X-E1’s raw files than I ever could out of the X100’s, especially in Aperture and Capture One, sometimes even better than the camera’s JPEGs. This was entirely unexpected, and it’s not because the X-E1’s JPEGs are worse either; it’s just that the raw files are… better, somehow. It seems to be because they have less baked-in contrast, and so are more pliable, easier to mould into what I want from them. Aperture, in particular, also does a really good job of the demosaicing – better, in fact, than the camera in some instances. Here’s a picture of my back garden:

And here’s a comparison of 100% crops from the X-E1 out-of-camera JPEG on the left, and Aperture on the right:

Slight colour differences, aside, the Aperture version is a little sharper and, at least on the red flower, more detailed. It’s also a little noisier, but I had noise reduction set as low as possible.

I’m still going to keep shooting raw + JPEG, as the camera does do some colours better than Aperture (orange and blue look nicer, I think), but it’s nice to know I have an additional very good option for processing my photos now.

White balance

The X-E1 seems to prefer a cooler white balance than the X100, so I’ve given mine a +1 nudge in the yellow and red directions.

This white balance tweaking is improved over the X100 in that you can set separate adjustments for each white balance setting, so for instance I’ve got Auto WB to be a bit warmer, and the Shade setting to be a little cooler (I actually rarely use the other settings, come to think of it).

This is especially handy as I’ve set up a couple of Custom Settings, with Astia/AutoWB on C1, and Velvia/Shade on C2, for easy switching depending on circumstance – C1 for most everyday shooting, C2 for landscapes. Being able to change the Custom Setting via the Q menu is also really handy.

Speaking of which, it’d be even nicer if the Color Space option was included there – changing it to Adobe RGB results in significantly more saturated images, even though it really shouldn’t make that much difference. I suspect it’s actually just tagging the photos differently, rather than converting the raw data into the specified colour space. Personally I don’t mind this – I see it as another parameter I can use when tailoring the look my photos.

Fujifilm X-E1: Initial thoughts

These are some really early thoughts on the X-E1, gathered during the short time between opening the box and the battery running out of its initial small amount of charge. There’s no real order to this – just things listed as they occurred to me. I’ve had a Fuji X100 for almost exactly a year now (I wrote about my first impressions of it, too), and thoroughly enjoyed shooting with it in that time, despite its idiosyncrasies. These thoughts, then, are frequently written with comparisons to X100 in mind.

First off, the 18–55mm kit lens is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. The only other similar lens I’ve handled is the Pentax equivalent, and that’s physically a little fatter and quite a bit longer. The Fuji lens feels much denser though, very solid. The zoom ring is stiffer than expected, kind of like it’s attached to a powered-off electric motor (turning it makes a noise like that’s the case, too).

I know several people have made a big deal about how loose the aperture ring feels, but honestly I quite like it. It makes a similar ‘snick’ noise to the X100’s aperture ring, only it moves more easily and of course simulates ⅓-stop detents. I have read a few mentions of how lens rings are all a bit close together; I imagined these complaints were a little overblown, but now that I’ve handled the lens I can see the problem. I don’t think it’s so much that the rings are close together – that’s no problem even for my pretty large hands – but more that the aperture and zoom rings feel fairly similar in texture. Having said that, I’m sure it’s something I’ll get used to pretty quickly.

The rubber grip on the front of the camera is much better than the slippery plastic front of the X100 – on the latter I actually resorted to glueing some grip tape to it to improve the handling:

My X100 with grip tape, a modification that’s thankfully not necessary on the X-E1.

Similarly, the raised ridge that holds the AE-L and Q buttons provides good purchase for my thumb, so all in all I feel quite secure holding the X-E1 with one hand, despite the additional weight with the 18–55mm lens mounted.

The EV compensation dial has had a bit of praise in comparison to the X100’s, because it’s recessed into the body more, so it’s less prone to accidental turning. Personally, though, I never found that to be an issue with my X100, and, at least for now, I find the X-E1’s dial to be a bit less convenient, with a slightly less grippy texture to it.

The four-way buttons on the X-E1 are a big improvement over the X100, almost entirely because they lack the annoying spinning dial around them. Even after a year that dial still annoys me a bit every now and then on the X100, and while it’s sometimes useful for quickly spinning through menus, that’s a small silver lining on a big dark cloud. I know it can be used to nudge manually-set shutter speeds, but I almost always shoot with the shutter dial set to A, so that’s not been relevant to me.

The top rear dial is also a nice improvement over the X100’s, in that it’s an actual dial now, not just a rocker switch. It pushes in with a more satisfying click, too – the X100’s felt a little mushy. In fact all of the buttons on the right hand side of the camera’s rear feel more clicky and less mushy.

The screen is… well, it’s pretty much the same as the X100’s as far as I can tell, except perhaps a bit more neutral in its colour rendering. Since I’ve never experienced the supposed glory that is the X-Pro 1’s screen I can’t really comment on how they compare. The EVF is quite obviously better than the X100’s, though – much better detail, and a generally more ‘solid’ look with no faint visible gaps between pixels. It’s also a bit bluer than the rear LCD. The refresh rate doesn’t bother me in the slightest – I use the X100 almost exclusively in EVF mode, and it never bothers me on that camera, either. The X-E1’s EVF is marginally smaller than the X100’s, but not enough that it really matters. I’ll see if I can get a comparison picture once the battery’s charged.

The EV +/− display is a little less obvious than the X100’s, due to the lack of a blue bar extending from 0 to the current setting. It’s already tripped me up once so far, but hopefully I’ll get used to it.

The menus look nicer than the X100, and they’re organised a bit better, too, with tabs down the left side so you can quickly jump to the required section rather than having to scroll through each page.

The Q menus is, as others have said, very handy. It remembers the last setting you were on, so you can spin through adjustments very quickly, and of course since the camera uses an EVF you can do this with it up to your eye.

One thing I like about the X100 is its in-camera raw conversion feature. It’s not particularly good in terms of user interface, but since the camera can very often produce better JPEGs than I can get out of Aperture or Lightroom*, I’ve found I use it quite a bit. The X-E1 has the same feature, although it’s slightly less convenient to use since there’s no handy ‘RAW’ button to bring up the converter. Not sure why the Q button couldn’t be used for that purpose, since it doesn’t otherwise seem to do anything in playback mode.

Finally, the battery/card door is not as good as the X100’s, because the way it hinges up makes getting the SD card out much more difficult, especially if you have fat fingers like me:

On the left, the X100’s battery/card compartment, and on the right the X-E1’s. Being so close to the compartment door, it’s difficult to get a good grip on the card.

So that’s it for now – just my initial impressions on how the X-E1 compares to the X100.

* I recently got Capture One Express when it was on sale for €35, and initial impressions with X100 raw files are very good – sometimes I even like the C1 conversions more than the camera’s!

Lion's Arch Asura Gate Guide

Because I got tired of waiting for the gate racial guards load to every time I went near the Asura gates in Lion's Arch, so I could tell which gate went where, I made a simple visual reference:

Learning to use keybinds

How do you control your character in World of Warcraft (or any other similar MMO for that matter)? There are two main ways: with keybinds and mouse turning, and with clicking and keyboard turning.

Bait

The latter is not efficient. It’s easier to start playing with, and people can become quite proficient with it, but it has two major drawbacks:

• Attention – every time you need to click an ability, you’re diverting attention away from what’s going on around you and focusing on your UI.

• Speed – it takes time to move your mouse and aim it correctly at a button, and turning with the keyboard also takes a lot longer than with the mouse.

Many ‘clickers’ know this, but after up to eight years doing things the same way, it can of course be very hard and uncomfortable to change.

By using keybinds and mouse turning, you can avoid both of these major issues. With the right UI setup, you can even hide your main actionbars completely and track cooldowns via other means. You can also react to things much more quickly and calmly, and you can cast your spells in the correct with barely any thought; it becomes an automatic response, something you can do with your eyes closed.

Switch

It’ll be hard at first, and your performace will be terrible while you get used to it, but the benefits are worth it.

The first suggestion I have regarding specific bindings is to try to limit the keys to those which are easily reachable, i.e. `, 1, 2, 3, 4, Q, E, F and Tab. Those, combined with Shift, Ctrl and/or Alt, should give you more than enough to control all important abilities.

Ideally, to practice you’d start a new character and start from the beginning with keybinds, but obviously that’s not always practical. Instead, I’d suggest clearing your bars of all your main abilities, and building things up gradually. Start with your main ‘filler’ ability, and bind it to something like 1. Practice pressing it and moving around, switching targets, and most importantly, not looking at your keyboard or actionbars. This is important. The whole point of using keybinds is so you can keep your attention on important things like where mobs are, whether you’re standing in fire, etc.

Finally, since you’ll be using the mouse to turn, re-bind A and D to strafe left and right. It’s a quicker way to move out of bad stuff, and you can also cast spells at mobs whilst strafing away from them, if you turn in a very slight circle.

Dummy

Training dummies are invaluable when learning keybinds. I used them all the time, even though I only play with keybindings, because the practice is so valuable. It’s useful to use Recount to measure your performance on them, although obviously the numbers you generate are only meaningful to you personally, as a way of measuring your progress.

See

I mentioned ‘the right UI setup’ earlier – this is another factor that’ll help you stay on top of what’s happening. Addons like Fortexorcist, PowerAuras, NeedToKnow and TellMeWhen are really good for letting you keep track of important things like cooldowns, DoTs and so forth in an easily monitored way.

The general idea is to put the most important things near the middle, then less important things further out. As an example, if you’re a shadow priest you’ll want to keep track of Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain, and the cooldown on Mind Blast, so you’d put those near the middle. Something like Shadow Fiend, on the other hand, has quite a long cooldown so you could relegate it to a lower level of attention.

Go

As I said, I know it’ll feel horrible and slow and uncomfortable, especially at first, if you’ve never played this way before. I truly do believe, though, that it’s a better way to play, and the only way to reach optimal performance.

Guild Wars 2, from a WoW player

I bought Mists of Pandaria. Pre-ordered, in fact, and yet since it was released, I’ve played WoW exactly no times. Moreover, I stopped playing WoW a couple of weeks before MoP came out, and it’s all because of Guild Wars 2.

It seems I’m missing out on quite a fun time in Pandaria, too, since by all accounts this expansion is so far really good; Zoe is certainly enjoying it. Thing is, I’d been looking forward to GW2 for a long time, and conversely, getting less and less enjoyment out of the tail end of Cataclysm, to the extent that I only really logged in to level my mage a bit, and occasionally and begrudgingly help guildenfolk get their Iron-Bound/Rusted Proto-Drake from Ulduar.

Guild Wars, though. I like it a lot. It’s very pretty, but in a more realistic way than WoW, although this does mean places that look somewhat less diverse than Azeroth – one grassy hill looks much like any other. Still, natural-looking pretty is still pretty, and there’s enough variation in both scenery and architecture to keep it interesting.

Fight!

I find combat much more interesting and exciting in GW2, with lots more movement and reactive use of abilities. You really have to pay attention to the mobs you’re fighting, and what they’re doing; there are no enemy castbars or DBM-style timers or anything like that, so you need to respond appropriately based on their actions. One particularly memorable example is a boss in Ascalon Catacombs explorer mode (which is a bit like WoW’s heroic mode). He has an ability where he raises his sword to charge up a spell that pulls everyone in line of sight to his feet, then he does a lethal whirling attack that will almost certainly kill you. Generally you have two ways of avoiding this: use your dodge skill right at the critical moment before he pulls you in, or get out of LoS. As a mesmer I had a third option: my Feedback ability, which reflects ranged attacks back on the caster. Turns out the boss’s AoE pull counted, so I pop that on him just before he does it, and he knocks himself over instead :D

Combat in dungeons also differs from WoW in that there’s no specific ‘tank’ or ‘healer’ role – mobs will attack whoever they feel like, and everyone has a decent self-heal and other survival-oriented abilities they need to make use of. Certainly you can orient your traits (sort of like WoW’s talent points) and skill points (also sort of like WoW’s talent points) towards survival or crowd-control, or towards group-focused abilities like buffing and healing, but everyone is expected to do damage. If someone gets downed*, anyone can revive them; if a mob’s attacking you, don’t expect a tank to taunt it off you.

These differences mean fights feel a lot more frantic and desperate, and playing well is much more about utility and awareness compared to playing WoW’s more narrowly-focused specialisations. It means that even on my level 52 mesmer, I could still be useful when grouping with three level 80 characters, although clearly GW2’s level scaling† meant they were much less overpowered than otherwise.

* ‘downed’ means you’ve lost all your normal health and are sitting on the floor with a ‘reserve’ health bar that slowly drains. You have a few basic abilities, including a weak channelled self-heal, and if you’re lucky you can fill your reserve health bar and rally, i.e. get back up and join the fight again. Other players can help to revive you, too.

† your level is scaled to be appropriate for the zone you’re in, so in the starting areas you’ll be down to level 3 or so, and in dungeons you’ll be at the minimum level required for them, e.g. 40 in Ascalon Catacombs. However, you still keep all your weapons, armour and abilities, albeit also scaled down, so you will likely still be more powerful than someone at-level.

Mine!

Another significant difference in GW2, that I noticed most when watching Zoe quest in Pandaria, is that there is no mob tagging. Instead, if you make a significant contribution to the damage on a mob (the wiki says between 5 and 10 percent), you get loot from it, and credit for killing it if an event or quest asks for that. Likewise, there is no competition among players for gatherables (ore, herbs and trees), since collecting from one does not deprive others from it. All of this, plus the way you can partake in quests just by being in the right area, mean there is a very strong feeling of cooperation, with everything designed to encourage it naturally.

Of course, since everyone is on the same side, there’s no Horde-vs-Alliance–style world PvP – you’re never in danger of accidentally attacking someone who’s flagged, and getting trounced by them as a result. Player vs player in GW2 is an entirely separate thing, so it can’t interfere with the cooperation aspect.

Wrap!

So, those are my impressions after playing Guild Wars 2 for a couple of weeks, from the perspective of someone who has played World of Warcraft since just before Wrath of the Lich King was released. I still haven’t hit 80 on my highest character, and even when I do, I want to level a few others just to see how they play. Maybe by the time I’ve done that, an expansion will be nearing. We shall see.

In the meantime, if you want to drop by I'm on Blacktide (EU) server and my display name is Caer.1605, and I’ll probably be on either my mesmer, Yalaera, or my guardian, Aerlocke.

K10 again

I’ve not used my K10D in quite a long time, as I couldn’t trust it to focus accurately. I’d tried adjusting it using the debug menu tricks, but couldn’t ever get it to work satisfactorily, and to even adjust it meant faffing around with downgrading firmware temporarily.

Recently though, for reasons I can’t recall, I decided to see if I could improve it, and found some useful information about how to enable the debug menu (to adjust AF) even with firmware 1.3 on the camera. After much faffing, and the eventual discovery that the magic text file you put on the memory card needs to have CR + LF line endings (i.e. need to be in Windows format, not Unix or Mac), I got it working, and now my camera focuses properly most of the time with the F 50mm f/1.4 lens shown in the picture. It still struggles with backlit things, but I think that’s more an issue with the lens – it flares pretty badly when there’s light shining into it, so the AF sensors probably have a hard time seeing what to focus on.

So anyway, turns out, the K10D can still produce some nice images! In good light it’s quick to focus and with the 50 the pictures are plenty sharp (I’ve yet to try it again with my 35 and 50–135). In low light it’s not so good – noise at ISO 1000 is about the level of my X100 at 3200, and there’s a noticeably weaker response in the blue channel compared to the X100. Still, if I stick with good light, the camera can produce some very nice images, especially with the 50–135 lens.

All of this means I now feel like I have more options, photographically: although the X100 will remain my primary camera, I can now also trust the K10D when I want to use a longer lens. I don’t anticipate needing to do this a lot, at least not in the near future, but perhaps something will come up. Either way, it feels good to shoot again with a camera I’ve grown so familiar with over the years.

Godmother's Guild Questions

The Godmother recently posted about Blizzard’s announcement of the Guild Mentoring Program, wherein select guilds on each server will take in and ‘train’ new WoW players, the idea being, I guess, to improve the overall standard of players.

She also posted a list of ten questions that applicants to her guild are asked, and while I originally was going to answer them in a comment on her blog, it turns out I have quite a lot to say in some answers, so I’m posting them here instead.

What’s your favourite joke?

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The barman says, “Is this some kind of joke?”

What’s the best 5 man instance currently in game?

First instinct is to say Vortex Pinnacle, just because it’s so pretty, but I’m also partial to the ‘subterranean city’ aesthetic of Blackrock Depths and Grim Batol. I think I’d like BRD more if it was a normal zone, rather than a dungeon that you always feel pressured to complete quickly.

What has been the best show on TV over the last 25 years and why?

Everyone says The Wire. I’ve only seen the first few episodes so I don’t know. Really enjoyed Warehouse 13 and Game of Thrones, but they’re both fairly recent. Going back 25 years… well, that’s tricky cos 25 years ago I was only 6 ;)

As for why: WH13 because it’s just really good lighthearted entertainment. Also Joanne Kelly. GoT firstly because it’s so well made, and second because it’s unusual to see a fantasy series be so popular, and may help get people to take the genre more seriously.

If you had a choice what would it be: cake or pie?

Pie. I love pie, and pie can be sweet or savoury. So versatile!

Should Blizzard put more crowd control back into dungeons?

Yes. No. Maybe. I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand it’s a way to make dungeons harder, but on the other hand, I don’t think it’s a very good way to do that. It doesn’t require skill to perform, and it disrupts the flow of a group. Some players may be fine with that, taking each pack of mobs one by one, working out the best way to tackle them. Others, though, might prefer the high-speed thrills of doing a dungeon as fast as possible, and when these two opposing ideologies meet, QQ ensues.

I think dungeons should be harder, generally, and I like where Blizzard is going with the Challenge Modes – if they incorporate crowd-control, then it’ll be OK because players will need skill to pull it off quickly.

Have you left Trade/General chat channels at any point, and if so why?

Only until I got a monitor big enough that I could have guild chat separate from everything else. On a busy server it got annoying having trade/general break up conversations in guild.

Also a couple of times when idiots started up with the ‘anal’ spam :-/

Who would you choose as the next James Bond?

I can only think of Michael Fassbender at the moment, and for no good reason.

What’s the best change Blizzard has made to the game in the last twelve months?

Probably Raid Finder. I know it almost always has a few morons, but letting more people access raid content is a good thing, and it gives ‘non-raiders’ something else to do at endgame. I’m quite excited to see what Blizzard do with it in Mists.

Who was better: Blur or Oasis, or some random third band you may now name.

Oasis. They had more good tunes.

If you had to ask me one question, what would it be?

When is Mists coming out?