Can Fujifilm actually fix the autofocus issues?

I just got up and the first video in my feed was from Edvard, a very well-known controversial figure in the Fujifilm community –  for some a hero, for others a habitual complainer.

The fact is that he was the first one to truly dig deep into the autofocus issues of his X-H2s camera, showed how the autofocus was hunting and how unreliable the AF-C was with video/stills. His video triggered many “Fuji fan boys” as he calls them, who tried to discredit his findings, attributing them to user error and/or inexperience.

Despite the opposition, he continued his quest and many other Fuji users confirmed his findings. The community actually figured out how to downgrade the firmware (FW), as the 1.03 version worked much better than the latest 7.00. And it wasn’t only the X-H2s that had these issues, other models including the X-T5, X-H2, X-S20 and GFX100 II, all had similar problems using the latest versions of their corresponding firmware.

Gradually other content creators did and published their own tests, confirming the AF problems. Many of them resorted to downgrading their cameras firmware or just simply switched to a more reliable camera system (Sony and Nikon can thank Fuji for their new customers). Fuji autofocus just wasn’t reliable for professional work. There were also other FW issues, such as the camera freezing or the resetting of the custom audio volume settings.

The November firmware should address AF issues – for video

As I already wrote in this post , Fujifilm announced a FW update for X-H2s, X-H2 and GFX100 II, that should be coming out in November, that would address Subject tracking and Face/eye detection while in video mode.

Can this be the answer to all the AF problems, at least for video? We will have to wait and see, Fuji’s track record defiantly doesn’t do them any good. There was no mention of improvements for stills, which for many professional photographers are a big issue. Depending on the performance of this FW update on the pro series of Fuji cameras, other models (X-S20, XT5…) should also be getting a FW update till the end of the year.

Is it just a software issue or something more?

I believe that all Fujifilm camera owners want their cameras to work at their best – we all love the Fuji system – and pretending there isn’t a problem doesn’t help anyone. So what is causing these issues? Is it just a software issue or something more? Reverting to the 1.03 version of FW does prove that the AF got worse with the newest FW updates, but it didn’t fix all the problems. Reverting to 1.03 also took care of the camera freezing error, which was/is a big problem, as this professional photographer mentioned in this video:

An additional theory, mentioned my Edvard and a few others, is that the AF problems partially due to the X-mounts process of communication with the lens. It seems to be flawed in some way, causing the lenses to move in a jerky, non-linear manner, preventing smooth aperture changes and smooth focus transitions. If this is the case, can any FW update actually fix these issues? Or is the X-Trans Processor that is causing these issues? Will we have to wait for the next generation of Fuji cameras to have reliable as it happened with Panasonic? Time will tell.

The X-M5 will be shipping on the 14^th of November so Fuji has less than a month to get things fixed. I do hope they sort out these problems and that the X-m5 will be the turning point for AF problems.

To end on a happier note, in this live-stream Thomas tested did a 2.5-minute head-shot vlog with the X-M5 (not sure which FW version he had) and the footage seems promising (although I never had AF issues with static head shots, so this type of test might not show the whole picture of the AF reliability).