Remember the good old days when Fujifilm would give us firmware updates on older cameras just because? Well, I wouldn’t say it was for no reason. However, it was a nice bonus for those of us who had older cameras but would receive a significant feature upgrade a few years after its release. The best example I remember was when Fujifilm engineers figured out a way to give the X-Pro2 4K video after saying it would be impossible to do so. It was firmware version 4.0 and it was a huge firmware upgrade for those who invested in the X-Pro2 vs the X-T2. Even though it was 4K internal (no HDMI output) and it was line-skip 4K (and not oversampled), it showed Fujifilm engineers were committed to offering additional features in their firmware updates and not just fixing errors or backwards compatibility issues.
However, in recent years, Fujifilm rolled back these kaizen firmware updates. For instance, if a newer camera was launched with a new film simulation, Fujifilm wouldn’t offer it to older cameras, even within the same generation. You had to upgrade to the newest camera to receive the latest firmware updates. The worst example of this was when Classic Neg. was first offered in the X-Pro3 (a fourth-generation X Series camera) but Fujifilm would not give a firmware upgrade to allow the X-T3 or X-T30 (also fourth-generation X Series cameras) to receive this new film simulation. To make it even worse, they re-released the X-T30 as the X-T30 II with slight hardware upgrades and the latest firmware, including the new Classic Neg. film simulation! Any early adopters of the X-T30 were essentially penalised for getting the camera too early within the same generation cycle. This one still bothers me to this day…
This is an excerpt from an article by Take Kayo in issue 100 of FUJILOVE MAGAZINE (July 2024). Subscribers, you can find this article by downloading this issue from your subscriber area.
You will find the remaining part of this article in FUJILOVE MAGAZINE.
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