Fujifilm Firmware Update - My Thoughts

Fujifilm’s Notice of Firmware Availability
Original Firmware Notice

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#fujifilm #pal2tech #photography

[mrsparkle]

This is actually not a macOS specific issue. It’s Fujis implementation of the exfat file system. The Fuji firmware writes the wrong size information for a directory so when it is read out by macOS it does not know there are more files. This wasn’t unique to macOS. There are workarounds in the exfat driver that account for the misreported data. Windows probably has this workaround or ignores the size parameter. Linux also patched around this one issue a while back. Apple could also implement this workaround but the root cause is Fujis to fix.

[LimitedWard]

As a software engineer who works on products that support macOS, let me tell you it can sometimes be extremely frustrating to work with them on bugs. Whenever you submit a bug to them, it sits in a limbo state (often for months or even years) waiting for a response. If you're lucky, they'll get back to you, but usually it's just to request more repro data.

Here's the kicker though: if more than one person submits the same bug, whoever submitted the bug second has their ticket closed as a duplicate. The problem is that you have no way of knowing if or when the original ticket is resolved, so you'll never know whether apple actually addressed the problem or not. You dont even get to see the other ticket to tell if they marked the duplicate correctly. They also never provide any detailed change logs with bug fixes.

So ultimately, I can definitely see why Fujifilm chose this as the lesser of two evils. Likely they'd be waiting indefinitely for a proper fix.

[brownbear]

Thanks a bunch Apple, from a Windows/Android user.

I usually dump all files into a single folder on my windows laptop. One per year. There organisation gets done on capture one. Ocaisionally I have to deal with silicate file names. Now I am guaranteed to have duplicate file names on a regular basis. Great.

[jameskurzynski]

As always, excellent video!!! I hope you can review the Viltrox soon! at 13mm, I'm looking at it for astrophotography, but waiting for some more reviews to come out. Keep up the great work!

[bjrn-andre]

Love your videos man, almost watched them all while waiting for my x-t4 to arrive in the mail 😂

[BrasicOne]

I always shied away from video and GoPro type shooting because never done any but after watching your excellent video, I’m very inspired to get some kit and give it a go.

[robbiedewaegenaere]

A big thank you for all your helpful video's! Finally my Mac will recognize the SD cards!

[senior_ranger]

Well done. I use an XT2 and X100F and have never done a firmware update. I've never seen a compelling reason to do so, and I get what I need from my system. Oh, and I don't use Apple either.

[ocphish]

Thanks Chris. Helpful AND entertaining. As always!

[TheCoomer]

Would love Fujifilm to get back to their firmware updates for their older Camaras.

It made me recommend fujifilm as I knew software and features on firmware would improve

[bjoernsviews]

Thanks a lot for all your explanations. You're doing a great job.

[ninacleven]

Thanks Chris from a diehard Mac user. Love your channel and how well you explain things.

[Argolich]

Really great perspective on this and dare I say it, a very "timely" topic. Thank you for your great content. (from a Mac guy). ;-)

[Bradum]

Was it necessary to update the firmware to limit the number of images in a folder? I feel like they could have just added the option to limit it, and that would have allowed Mac users to work around their shitty OS, while Windows users could continue to do as they pleased.

[metalmick]

I thank you for your candid and reasonable views, Chris. I too, was wondering why Fujifilm stepped-in when the majority of their users would have had no issue reading the card as the camera originally wrote to it, and I applaud Fujifilm for their willingness to go that little bit further with customer service. Sad though that Apple's hubris and arrogance prevents them from attempting a fix for the situation.

[TimvanderLeeuw]

It's a fix / workaround that did just what I expected. However I don't understand a few things here...

Fuji cameras have been doing this for a while now I believe, filling up folders to 10.000 images. Why did this take so long to come up?

Older Fuji cameras however always wrote only 999 images to a single folder. Why did Fuji ever change this? What was the rationale for this?

How about other camera brands? No other camera brands that write over 999 images to a single folder?

[SCEmissary]

I'm a bit surprised. On my X-T30 (old version) I get a new folder every 1000 (or 999) pictures by default. So is this problem maybe limited to some camera models? Would explain why the firmware was released for the mentioned models only.

[mamu]

I also hate that MacOS cannot preview RAF Files from my X-E4. I always need to open Lightroom to view my unedited photos.

[alexandrerosenberg]

Chris, I really appreciate your content and have a lot of respect for what you do, however I am fairly sure the information in your video is misleading. This does not appear to be a Apple issue but a problem with how Fujifilm cameras writes invalid index information to the exFAT filesystem.

I asked on the comment section of your previous video [1] about the technical detail. Martin Andersen responded and provided a reasonable explanation that this had to do with the Camera firmware not updating the folder index past 4096.

The reason MacOS (and apparently Linux exFAT driver based on other comments) has issue with this and not Windows is because the later somehow can work around the folder index being incorrect - is less strict. This doesn't change the fact it is the exFAT filesystem information on the card that is the fundamental problem.

To be clear I have not personally verified this technical detail however this explanation make much more sense that MacOS exFAT driver not supporting more than 4096 files in a folder. If this where the case this would be happening with other devices. The explanation of this being Fujifilm firmware writing incorrect information to the exFAT filesystem past 4096 files make much more sense.

If anybody is being lazy here it is Fujifilm not fixing the actual issue with how their Camera firmware write to the filesystem and instead limiting the number of photos.

I have not problem with you making fun of Apple when it's even remotely warranted but in this case it really doesn't seem to be the case and I think a retraction would be the right thing to do.

[Shashi_Nag]

dear pal, is the fuji x-t4 water resistant, if it is, please do a resistant test.