Fujifilm still searching for its Kaizen mojo

It’s official. Fujifilm has revived its ‘Kaizen‘ reputation after several years of providing lacklustre firmware upgrades. Well, that’s what the company wants you to believe, but perhaps it’s not yet time to crack open the champagne.

Fujifilm lifted the embargo on a press release on January 12 that announced a major firmware upgrade that enhances the X-H2S autofocus system. A camera that’s not even six months old has already graduated to Firmware 3.00. A camera described just six months ago as having ‘dramatically/substantially evolved AF performance’. This is an impressive technological leap.

And while the pace of technological innovation is undoubtedly quick, it’s hard to accept that something labelled ‘dramatically evolved’ just months ago is now outdated. It seems more plausible that Fujifilm didn’t properly finished the camera prior to release, or perhaps withheld features to re-ignite the Kaizen perception.

Kaizen. A term frequently associated with Fujifilm, which Inside Imaging explored in last year’s article, ‘Has Fujifilm lost its Kaizen mojo‘.

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy focusing on gradual, continuous improvements to produce a better work environment. It was adopted to explain Fujifilm’s free ‘gradual continuous improvements’ via firmware upgrades to produce better cameras in the same body.

The article highlights how Fujifilm built a solid reputation for firmware updates adding major features that other camera manufacturers would reserve for next-gen models. But with many years passing since one of these famous updates rolled out, Inside Imaging was among many publications asking whether Kaizen is history.

‘It sounds like Fuji is losing their way a little bit,’ said DPReview TV co-host, Jordan Drake, in 2020. ‘It almost feels like there is that camera segmentation going on that we always complain about.’

We don’t know how the Kaizen business philosophy was co-opted and re-imagined to fit Fujifilm’s approach. Perhaps it stuck due to a lack of a better term. And Fujifilm is probably quite happy about that. No other camera manufacturer has a virtuous business philosophy term attached to their product release output.

The reputation came from a few noteworthy firmware updates. This includes:
– The X100, released in 2010, receiving a major AE and AF performance boost in 2013 after the release of a successor;
– The X-Pro2, released in January 2016, was given 4K video capabilities in December 2017;
– and the X-T2, release in 2016, copped a major update in 2018 that added 120fps video.

Note the considerable time between the camera release and the major firmware update. It seems like Fujifilm actually wanted to improve an ageing model for camera owners, rather than adding new features as a marketing stunt.

Although the Inside Imaging article garnered two interesting reader comments that proposed these updates were a necessity and not a gift.

‘At the end of the day Fujifilm did offer this service mainly because the first cameras were THAT buggy,’ commented Andreas. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I just love them, always did – but as a matter of fact they had to do Kaizen in order to keep the ball rolling. Now, since they seem to be more professional, everyone is complaining [there are no more major firmware updates]. Kind of funny – in fact we get now what we expect: great working cameras with FW version 1.0 (okay, maybe 1.06)’

And a reply from Charlie Ribeiro: ‘I’m kinda with Andreas above. Kaizen is all good and well, but it’s more of a gold plated plaster than something biblical. Yes those updates were great, but it did highlight a product that wasn’t really ready for market. Surely a camera that is great straight out of the box is better than something average that becomes good. I don’t know, the market seems to always want something that isn’t really necessary. Seems like tech for tech sake.’

They aren’t alone with these thoughts. Online chatter suggests Fujifilm’s generosity is something of a myth, and perhaps the company was even using customers as a focus group.

Firmware 3.00

Anyway back to the X-H2S. Fujifilm pulled all stops to get this news out about Firmware 3.00. As well as an international PR campaign that includes professional sample photos, the company also released a six-minute Japanese-language promotional video.

This is far more energy than a typical firmware update receives. Even a major one for a flagship camera.

It’s welcome news for X-H2S owners and Fujifilm fanboys/girls. The X-H2S owners now have a better performing and more reliable AF system when shooting in difficult-to-detect scenarios, such as ‘backlighting, subjects looking sideways, and small subjects. The subject detection function can be used in more situations than ever before.’

And the AF subject detection now extends to insects and drones. Fujifilm has quite bizarrely placed insect detection in the ‘Bird’ mode, and drones less bizarrely in ‘Airplane’. We aren’t die hard naturalists, but insects are not birds. Surely these wonderful little creatures deserve their own subject detection mode?

The AF tracking algorithm has also been improved.

‘The motion prediction algorithm has been improved and enables stable tracking of subjects moving at high speed within the frame. It will provide improved accuracy in genres that require high subject tracking performance, such as sports and bird photography.

‘The AF focusing speed has been improved when continuous shooting is started by simultaneously pressing the AF-ON button and the shutter release button while the camera is out of focus. The AF will be in focus faster than before, allowing you to capture the moment even in a challenging environment such as sports, where the situation changes from frame to frame.’

This is an undeniably good firmware update for the X-H2S. But we’ll hold back from celebrating the return of Kaizen until a few of the older models receive the same love.