If You Have Hesitated Buying A Fujifilm Camera Because Of The X-Trans Sensor, I Think That Worry Has Now Passed

I know many of you may be intrigued by Fujifilm cameras as a lot of photographers rave about what a pleasure they are to use, the color palette, dials, menus, film simulations, etc., but have hesitated in buying one due to past issues with the configuration and problems of RAW conversions of the X-Trans sensors.  

There were issues of so-called 'worms' and 'mushy greens' in the past.  These were seen mainly when using Adobe's Lightroom Classic image editing software.  Lightroom is the most popular and widely used software for editing photographic files so this issue was a serious one for many photographers.  However, I think now there are several viable alternatives to the standard Lightroom demosaicing algorithms that, if you want to buy a Fujifilm X-Trans sensor camera, you should have no worries.  Let me explain.

The X-Trans sensor has a much different filter array than other sensors, which are called Bayer Array sensors.  I won't go into it as there is plenty of information on the Internet.  This caused a fundamental issue with Adobe's algorithms not handling the Fujifilm RAW files very well.  Mainly, they had to be sharpened differently than Bayer sensor RAW files.  Even with that, sometimes 'wormy' looking outlines surrounded small objects such as gravel, twigs, etc.  Greens sometimes were also mushy looking and lacked fine detail.  The good news is over the years Adobe has largely fixed those issues and most Fujifilm users no longer complain about them.  In my experience, I rarely see any issues with my Fujifilm RAW files when using Lightroom.

Adobe, tacitly acknowledging the issues, then went on to add another feature specifically targeted to make Fujifilm RAW files even better.  That feature is called Enhance.  Right click on an image and 'Enhance' can be selected from the menu that appears.  Clicking that gives you two options.  The first enhances details in the RAW files and the second enlarges the file size by 4x—2x linearly in each of the horizontal and vertical sides.  The Enhance Details, by all accounts, works very well and improves the RAW conversions of Fujifilm files.  That said, there are no controls or adjustments.  That is option one to just using Lightroom as in the past.

Option two is a small plug-in called 'Iridient X-Transformer.'  This is an excellent Fujifilm RAW converter that allows you to send your RAF file to it and the program converts the file into another form of RAW file called a DNG.  In this small, inexpensive program, you can set several parameters for noise reduction, sharpening, file naming, etc.  This program was my 'go-to' program before Adobe's option as well as some other options I'll mention below.

Option three is DXO's PhotoLab 5.  It is a full featured editing software.  In my tests, it does an excellent job in converting Fujifilm X-Tran's files also into DNGs.  (Just to be clear a DNG is as editable as the original RAW file.  You don’t lose any versatility.)   In fact, if you fully edit your original RAW file in Lightroom, then send it to PhotoLab 5, it will convert it into a DNG and apply your same editing settings to the newly created file when it is returned to Lightroom.  As I mentioned, this program does a really good job with X-Trans files.  As an added benefit, DXO PhotoLab 5 also has one of the absolute best noise reduction features.  It is called 'Deep Prime.'  It works about as well as Topaz DeNoise AI but without all of the sliders.  That can be a benefit for ‘ease of us’ of fine-tuning your noise reduction efforts—just reduce the noise without effort.  Additionally, PhotoLab 5 has highly specific and expertly engineered camera/lens combination modules that, as you open a file, will automatically download (free) to your computer (however, you can prevent this if you desire but I don't know why you would)  These camera/lens modules are very specific and improve the sharpness of lenses (they usually are less sharp as you get to the edges and corners and this feature improves that), vignetting, distortion and aberrations.  I find the modules rather remarkable in improving the inherent flaws of a particular lens.  DXO PhotoLab 5 is an excellent alternative to Lightroom.

Lastly, Capture One Pro is another terrific program that some say does the best at converting Fujifilm RAW X-Trans files.  This, too, is a full featured editing software program. I tried this program many years ago, before it worked with Fujifilm files and I found it comprehensive, complicated but excellent in rendering photographic files.  Not having used it for Fujifilm files, I'll take the word of several professionals I follow who say it does an excellent job.

There are now a number of viable alternative and/or augmentations to Adobe Lightroom for conversion of Fujifilm X-Trans sensor files.  If you've been tempted to buy a Fujifilm camera (I still say my X-T4 is the most satisfying camera I've ever used for several reasons), I no longer think you should worry about image quality, worms or mushy greens.  My finished files are excellent and, frankly, I'm a 'pixel peeper' when it comes to quality. 

If you are really intrigued by Fujifilm, I suggest you rent a camera and lens for a few days, then download a free trial of one or more of these programs to see what results you get.  You may be quite surprised.

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

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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