I'm Really Liking My New Fujifilm X-T3! First Real Test

Over the weekend I had the opportunity, for the first time, to use my Fujifilm X-T3 in a real world situation.  This situation is one in which I've used all of my other cameras in the past.  What situation?  Photographing a child's birthday party!  It was my youngest granddaughter's 3rd birthday and I always have a camera to document those occasions.  I've photographed many of these birthdays over the years and I'm still not very good at it as these types of events have never been my forte, but being there is always fun.  Also, I was interested to see how my X-T3 would compare to my previous cameras.  In fact, last month, I photographed my oldest granddaughter's 9th birthday party.  How would my success rate compare between these two cameras in similar situations?  Read on.

Imagine a place full of three year old girls in a setting with toys, climbing apparatus, slides, etc., a place kind of like what you would find in a McDonald's restaurant playroom only much larger.  It was controlled chaos!  But all the kids were having a lot of fun.

There is a local business which has made their store into a play place for kids.  In addition to being a play place, you can rent it to hold various events, such as birthday parties.  It really is very well done and a very good idea.  This business seems to be enjoying great success.  

My daughter-in-law and son planned their daughter's birthday party in this establishment.  Evidently, you reserve and rent the facility for a couple of hours, invite your kids' friends, have your party and the business supplies all of the toys, slides, swings, climbing apparatus, etc. for the kids to keep busy.  They also provide two small side areas, one with a table and small chairs for all of the children to sit, sing Happy Birthday, eat, open gifts, etc.  The other is for the parents and grandparents to sit and enjoy the fun the children are having.  I thought the entire affair was very well done.

Unfortunately, photographically speaking, the facility is commercially lighted, meaning rather harsh and uneven fluorescent lights from above.  It is also not very bright for photography but is certainly fine to the human eye.  That was the conditions under which I photographed the party.

I attached my 23mm f/1.4 lens to my X-T3, the same lens I used for my other granddaughter's birthday party last month.  I then set the camera on Auto White Balance, Auto ISO, 1/125th sec. (I didn't plan on capturing kids in action as the play area was surrounded by safety netting and it would have been futile to try to capture anything meaningful behind the netting.)  Aperture was set at f/5.6.  Exposure adjustments would be made using the exposure compensation dial.  Autofocus was set to AF-S and a large single point.  Eye AF was enacted and set for the camera to automatically choose which eye was closer to the camera.

At the end of the event, I shot almost 300 RAW + JPEG images.  All but 2 were in sharp focus.  In fact, the 23mm f/1.4 focused more quickly and hunted much less if any than it did with my X-T2.  Images were made from ISO 800-3200, depending where the image was made within the building.  When I returned home, I placed my battery in my Watson Digital Duo Battery Charger and the charger indicated that the battery still had 60% charge.  That is better than expected and better than published specs.

I can't yet make a definitive judgment based only upon this event, but my initial sense is that the X-T3's 26mp sensor shows just a little more noise at equivalent ISOs than does images from my 24mp X-T2.  I had read that this may be the case.  I'm going to be watching this over time and I'll report back when I can evaluate noise as I use this camera in more circumstances.

As I mentioned in a previous post about my initial thoughts about this camera, which you can find here, the X-T3 does everything faster and better than my X-T2.  It is turning out to be a wonderful photographic tool.

Not that I would be biased in anyway but one human being should not be allow to be this cute!

(Note:  The white balance settings are still screwed up for the X-T3 in Lightroom Classic as well as Camera RAW.  I did my best to get these images close but I'm no expert in "people pictures" when it comes to skin tones, etc.  I have no idea when Adobe will release a "fixed" version of LR to correct the white balance settings.)

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

All content on this blog is © 2013-2018 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.