Ok, I've had four hours of sleep, and looked at some nurse pics!
So how does the adjusted focus patch work with that extra AF focus patch the lower right of the centered one? The closer I am to the target subject, I should focus closer and closer to the adjusted focus patch? Thanks for the help anyone.
I am still groggy ...
I've had the update for about 10 minutes now. To me, the really functionally nice thing that will improve the camera's operations is the ability to reprogram the fn button without going back into the menu. This is not quite as good as another programmable button would be, but its good enough. I can switch between film types (I go between astia and velvia from time to time) and the ND filter on the fn button MUCH more quickly and easily now, which means I'm apt to DO it much more often and use both features when I want 'em rather than only when I absolutely need them. I won't use it for iso until they fix the damn auto iso thing and put it on the iso menu (btw, Andy Westlake had a pretty good explanation of why that would be a really difficult fix for Fuji over at dpreview, even though he'd like to see it also), so I'll just keep trucking along with auto ISO which has caused me zero problems to date - it's handled everything I've thrown at it. I WANT the flexibility to pick my own ISO from time to time without diving into the menu, but I don't NEED it. The other fixes/improvements don't really affect me much one way or the other unless the AF really is faster, but I was fine with the AF speed before.
Armando, the little trick it does with the two focus boxes in the OVF is really just a learning tool to understand how parallax impacts where focus actually happens. Yes, the upper left one is for distance and the lower right box is for close up, and near/middle distance shots (4-6 foot range) is gonna be somewhere in between. And when you half press and it figures out the distance of what you're trying to focus on, it superimposes the green box on the ACTUAL focus area for that shot. So, move toward a subject from a distance of about 20 feet all the way down to about 2 feet and give it a half press every few feet and you can see where the ACTUAL focus box is relative to the two extreme hypotheticals and you'll get a really good feel for how the parallax between the viewfinder and the lens actually affects what you're gonna have in focus. At 20 feet, the actual box is gonna line up perfectly with the upper left box, at 10 feet its still pretty much the same, at 6 you'll start seeing it move notably to the lower right, by 3-4 it will be about halfway between the two, and in at around two feet, the ACTUAL box will line up almost exactly with the lower right box. Then you can leave it on if you want confirmation on the actual focus location for each shot or you can turn it off to avoid the distraction once you're comfortable enough with the concept and how it affects the actual focus area.
I agree with Don on almost everything about how we use this camera, but having tried the MF-AEL button thing and the AF-half press thing both pretty extensively, I keep coming back to the half press. It seems to avoid the aperture lag thing that can happen in bright light and I find it more than fast enough. And for street shooting, which is about the only thing I do with this camera where speed matters, I find the half press an integral part of the anticipation as the shot comes together. And I really like that the AF box in the OVF turns green to confirm focus, which it should do also using the MF-AEL button trick but doesn't. So I find the camera is just as alive using the half press with AF, with the MF-AEL thing as a useful alternative if you're doing a fair amount of close work and don't want to have to go to macro mode (although that's where I want the focus confirmation MOST because its where it messes up the most, even IN macro mode).
A great camera, now slightly better!
-Ray