Fuji XT-4 and 200 F/2 with Hummingbirds - Field Notes from Costa Rica

The Fuji 200 F/2 is a unique and interesting optic for wildlife applications. That’s because at the time of my writing this, there’s nothing quite like it. It’s a mirrorless lens with an image roughly equivalent to a full-frame 300mm F/3. If you want the look offered by a shorter super-tele on other systems, or even a telephoto of this range faster than F/4, you’ll simply have to adapt DSLR glass. So for now, this unique glass stands on its own.

I suspect that could change in the next couple years as the full-frame marques flesh out their mirrorless lens lineups, but right now there’s no evidence that that will happen any time soon. For example, a 300mm prime is nowhere on Nikon’s current roadmap. In its history, Nikon has had 11 different versions of the 300 F/2.8 and even two 300 F/2’s. It used to be a staple in the lineup, but no more. Not really sure what is going on there. In the meantime, Fuji has something special here. 

I would hazard a guess that the Fuji 200 F/2 is often overlooked for its shorter focal length in favor of other more versatile options like the 100-400 or other systems all together, but I’d argue that a lens like this deserves serious consideration for certain wildlife applications. Personally, some of my favorite photos are those that show not only the animal but also the environment in which it lives, and to demonstrate to the viewer they are not looking at a captive animal. The 300mm-equiv focal length is perfect for this.

The X-T4 is similarly not at face-value a body that a wildlife enthusiast would gravitate to with its retro styling, but dig a little deeper and one finds what a well-rounded body it is for wildlife applications. A few key specs that matter in practice include the UHS-II support with 15 FPS mechanical/30 FPS electronic burst, pre-shot mode, amazing viewfinder with 100 FPS refresh rate, really stellar low-light ISO performance, and weather sealing. 

Setup and Settings Used

My setup with the X-T4 for hummingbirds essentially includes the EF-X500 flash mounted off camera using a magic arm attached to the tripod foot. From there I attach the flash using a flash extension cable connected to the hotshoe. I am not a flash expert since I don’t use it all the time, but what I will say is that flash is tricky to get right. For me, I don’t want so much flash that it is obvious the photo was taken with flash, and I don’t want too little flash making the subject underexposed or inadequate to stop motion blur. This is a careful dance, because you are more or less adding another node to the “exposure triangle” of ISO, shutter speed and aperture. The X-T4 / EF-X500 combination also limits the frame rate to 3 FPS in TTL, which is not really great for fast moving subjects, so I instead opt for manual mode which opens it up to the full 15 FPS mechanical. 

For autofocus modes, I settled on zone focus. I tested wide/tracking as well, but for some reason (perhaps processing bottlenecks) this mode seems to be slower to react to fast scenes, maybe because it is processing a lot more focus information on the screen. I have the FN button on the front of the camera set to quickly swap between these AF areas (having it function sort of like the dedicated AF button on many Nikon DSLR cameras). I maxed out the tracking AF-C custom settings because I was dealing with rapidly accelerating and decelerating subjects with a lot of obstructions. 

I chose fast shutter speeds of 1/2000 and greater because I wanted as many keepers as possible and to eliminate motion blur to the extent possible. In hindsight, I would have liked to have used an additional off-camera flash so I could increase the shutter speed even more and stop wing blur. Some people like the wing blur as it conveys movement, I like to see the detail on the wings. 

Feedback on the Lens and Body

My overall feedback of using the camera and lens combination in this situation is that it is well up to the task. After messing with it for hours, I settled on Zone AF, because there the camera is responsive and snappy. In the All Area mode the camera is too slow to focus correctly on these fast subjects.

I’d also like to point out that I took several thousand shots at a time and I still couldn’t exhaust a single battery. The newer style batteries Fuji are using are absolutely fantastic. 

From an imaging standpoint, I am very pleased with the output from this camera and lens. Some of the subjective things like color and bokeh really impressed me with this setup, and in general I felt like very little if anything needed to be done in post-processing to finalize the images. 

I also greatly appreciated the focal length and the brightness of the lens. I could easily shoot at 1/2000th and greater in overcast conditions without crazy-high ISO values. At one point, I took off the teleconverter due to rain and overcast, and I was thinking that the tiny hummingbirds might be too small in frame to make any good pictures. Turns out these were some of my favorite photos from the trip. The acuity and sharpness of this lens, even with distant subjects, coupled with the giant aperture, means you can really isolate the subject even amongst the clutter and across great distance. The lens offers a level of 3-dimensionality I don’t see on other lenses I’ve used.

Fuji is currently working on a 150-600 lens, which would really round out the system well for wildlife shooting since no lens over 400mm is currently available on the X System. That super-tele zoom, along this wide aperture prime would be a compelling kit for most wildlife endeavors. It will also be exciting to see what Fuji brings in the future in terms of AF updates, and while the X-T4 is certainly up to the task, there’s always room for improvement to tackle extremely demanding subject like flying hummingbirds. AI-subject tracking and faster responsiveness in the larger area modes would be two key areas for improvement.