My Fujifilm X-T4 Continues To Pleasantly Surprise Me!

All photos made with a Fujifilm X-T4 with a Fujifilm 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 lens attac.
All images are from JPEG files.  (click to enlarge any image)

Last Saturday morning, I had the opportunity to travel to watch and photograph my youngest (of 3) granddaughters play a soccer game.  My son asked me if I would photograph the contest and, thinking that it was an opportunity to watch and take pride in my granddaughter, as well as good practice for my upcoming winter wildlife/bird weekend, I was more than happy to agree.  

DISCLAIMER:  I am not, in any sense of the word, a sports photographer.  Just sayin'.  The images illustrating this post are my feeble attempt at a very difficult skill.  So bear with me.

Now, taking into account that my granddaughter is a couple weeks shy of her 6th birthday, you have to understand and put in context the words 'soccer game.'  We're not talking about teenagers nor adults here. Surprisingly, for the most part, the little ones did a pretty good job in actually looking like they were playing soccer and avoiding the event resembling chaos.  It was clear to me they understood the basics, actually (mostly) played their positions and some aggressively pursued the ball.  Of course, you had a few that were standing and daydreaming, not paying attention and some who were reticent in trying to kick the ball when one of the other kids was already kicking it.  After all, one doesn't want to be rude and take something away when someone else who already has it.  Lol.  Manners.  But I think that was the mentality of some of the kids.

On Friday afternoon, to be as prepared as I could be, I started thinking about photographing the game as well as checking the predicted weather conditions, I pre-set my Fujifilm X-T4 for manual exposure with a shutter speed of 1/1000th sec., RAW + JPEG, film simulation set to Provia, in-camera sharpening set to +1, Auto white balance, and high speed advance—15 fps.  ISO was set to auto—from 160-6400.  Focus set to continuous with the smallest zone activated and the custom AF-C setting was set to #5.  I planned to start out with ‘eye/face detect’ AF.  I felt, knowing the quality of Fujifilm JPEGs, that the JPEGs would more than suffice but, just in case, I had the RAW files as a backup.  In the end, the JPEGs were excellent, sharp, detailed, colorful and there was no need to have to process a single RAW file.

My intention was to only use my Fujifilm 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens set to wide open and handhold the camera and lens for maximum flexibility.  The weather was predicted to be cool with little or no wind and not a cloud in the sky.  In other words, full daylight.  Plenty of light.  Additionally, when looking at the soccer field in Google Maps, the sun would be directly behind me from where I would have to stand to photograph.

I always think backup plan.  I came up with some alternate settings, based upon what I would see after my first several exposures.  If I wasn't stopping action sufficiently or my depth of field was too shallow, I would increase the shutter speed and/or stop down the aperture based upon the light and let the Auto ISO compensate.  Additionally, I wanted to pay attention to the custom focus setting and, if not serving me well, switch from #5 to #2.  I was ready to go!  One setting I did change early on was the eye/face detect AF.  The kids were just too far away most of the time for that to be useful so I just turned it off.

Due to the pandemic highly restricting opportunities to photograph subjects in motion as well as past experience with my X-T3, X-T2 and X-T1, I was prepared for a significant number of my frames to be out of focus.  Was I surprised!  I made 430 exposures, most all of them while panning, and I only found 17 of the exposures out of focus.  That includes significantly out of focus (locked onto the background for some reason) or just missing sharp focus but still being usable at normal viewing sizes and distances.  That is a 94% usability rate.  I'll take a photographic success rate like that any day.

As I pointed my camera at my granddaughter as she ran, fought for and kicked the soccer ball, the lens locked on instantly, stayed locked on and didn't waiver.  I found myself shooting in bursts of 5 or so frames.  The exposure meter did a great job of maintaining a perfect exposure for the JPEGs.  All in all, I was very pleased with the results.  This is the first camera that I've had this high of a rate of success when tracking objects.  

When bringing the image files up in Lightroom Classic, initially I looked at both the RAW images and JPEGs.  In the end I only used the JPEGs.  They were excellent.  They were detailed, sharp and had great color.  All highlight and shadow detail (the images were made on a sunny day just before noon so the conditions were at their most contrasty) was captured and editing consisted of little more than slightly adjusting exposure.  Of course, some needed cropping as well.

I can't say enough good things about the experience.  I got to see my granddaughter play a fine soccer game and my gear performed perfectly allowing me to bring home satisfying images for lasting great memories.  One last thing.  I am really delighted with my Fujfilm100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens.  It was flawless!

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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