FIA WEC (World Endurance Championship) Silverstone 2018. This year they moved the event from it’s usual April slot to a much warmer slot. In the past I have turned up to the track to find it snowing or chucking down with rain so it was refreshing to not be freezing my butt off this year.
I took with me an X-H1, 16-55 XF f/2 & 55-200 XF f3.5-4.8 lens’s as well as 5 batteries.
I have in the past taken a Nikon D800, a Canon 5DS & a Nikon D7100 – all very good cameras but not really suited for sports shooting.
I was really interested so see the X-H1’s IBIS (In Body Image Stabilisation) at work in the field, there has been so much hype & comparisons on YouTube so it was good to see for myself.
I have to say the X-H1 doesn’t disappoint, the focus tracking was good (well better than some of my previous cameras) and the fps (frames per second) shoot rate was fantastic. I had it set to 11fps as I didn’t want to fill up all my memory cards on the first day.
Here are a few examples using the 55-200 lens.
I really wanted to check out the video features though to be honest I was only really interested in the 120fps @1080p. I have to say I was very impressed with the image stabilisation, some of the video I shot I used the 16-55 f/2 lens which isn’t a stabilised lens yet you’d be hard pressed to see any real camera shake.
Here is a short video I cobbled together made up of some of the clips I shot over the weekend.
Fuji’s 16-55mm f2.8 R LM WR lens is a monster! The image quality is just amazing, so sharp you could cut yourself.
Here are a few examples.
This was my first real opportunity to use Fuji’s X-H1 in the field and overall, I was pleased with the results though there were a few problems.
• My nose kept moving the focus point on the touch screen so I had to deactivate it
• The Q button is in a different position to the X-T2, quite close to where I place my thumb when I am shooting the camera which lead to me accidentally pressing it several times
• When shooting through the wire fencing quite often I had to pre-focus manually because the camera kept locking onto the fence wire in the foreground rather than the track & cars
• Weight, the X-H1 isn’t a light camera especially when I added the 16-55mm lens
• Battery power, I have to admit I did run through my batteries though to keep them going longer I did take advantage of the X-H1’s fast start-up speed by turning the camera off between shooting
So to sum things up the X-H1 is an excellent camera with some quirks. I would say that if you are a DSLR user wanting to go mirrorless without breaking the bank but still want that DSLR feel then X-H1 is something to consider. Image quality is fantastic & the video functions are far better than any DSLR’s in it’s price range.
