Fuji X camera settings help needed

273K

Prominent Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Messages
1,697
Reaction score
1,765
Points
711
Location
Merseyside
Need help with a minor but frustrating niggle with my X-E2.

For general use, particularly when trying to get shots away quickly when out and about, or of moving subjects, I have the camera set to shutter priority, usually somewhere around 1/250 or so to try to avoid movement blur. The camera automatically sets the ISO and aperture.

However, in doing so it tends to keep the ISO low as possible and open the aperture, so I’ll end up with 1/250s, ISO200, f2 when I’d much prefer, say, 1/250s, ISO 1600, f5.6. In other words I’d rather have a bigger DOF than low ISO. In these situations I don’t want to use aperture priority and risk the shutter speed going too low. Is there some setting to get it to do this? I can’t seem to find anything in the menus.

I know I can work around it by manually adjusting ISO or aperture as well as shutter speed, but I find this is too tricky to do quickly enough for many situations. Thinking about it I’m not sure what it does first in aperture priority mode - raise ISO or lower shutter speed - I think it’s the former, but I’ll check it out later. It has the latest firmware installed, and it might be my imagination but I don’t think it always did this!
 
Do you have the option of auto ISO in manual mode?
 
Do you have the option of auto ISO in manual mode?

Manual mode, as in setting aperture and shutter speed myself? I find doing that to be a bit slow but yes auto ISO is an option for that, and usually what I resort through when shutter priority's not giving me the settings I want.
 
Need help with a minor but frustrating niggle with my X-E2.

For general use, particularly when trying to get shots away quickly when out and about, or of moving subjects, I have the camera set to shutter priority, usually somewhere around 1/250 or so to try to avoid movement blur. The camera automatically sets the ISO and aperture.

However, in doing so it tends to keep the ISO low as possible and open the aperture, so I’ll end up with 1/250s, ISO200, f2 when I’d much prefer, say, 1/250s, ISO 1600, f5.6. In other words I’d rather have a bigger DOF than low ISO. In these situations I don’t want to use aperture priority and risk the shutter speed going too low. Is there some setting to get it to do this? I can’t seem to find anything in the menus.

I know I can work around it by manually adjusting ISO or aperture as well as shutter speed, but I find this is too tricky to do quickly enough for many situations. Thinking about it I’m not sure what it does first in aperture priority mode - raise ISO or lower shutter speed - I think it’s the former, but I’ll check it out later. It has the latest firmware installed, and it might be my imagination but I don’t think it always did this!
TBH I'm pretty sure this is how all cameras work, ISO is the last thing it will adjust. Same as aperture priority mode, it will decrease shutter speed first and when that reaches the minimum (which you can usually set in the menus) it will then adjust ISO

Manual mode, as in setting aperture and shutter speed myself? I find doing that to be a bit slow but yes auto ISO is an option for that, and usually what I resort through when shutter priority's not giving me the settings I want.
It shouldn't be any slower than shutter priority. Set shutter to 1/250, aperture to f5.6 (or whatever) and then fire away, you don't have to touch settings again as the camera will take care of the exposure due to Auto ISO.

If you have custom modes you can even set one of these up as this so you can be even lazier and don't have to set either shutter or aperture. Save your settings (1/250, f5.6, ISO Auto) to say custom 1 and then all you have to do in future is rotate the dial to custom 1, or choose custom 1 from a menu if that's how your camera works.

I rarely use shutter priority for this reason, I usually want control of shutter and aperture, but I'm usually the other way to you, I want the aperture as wide as possible ;)
 
FWIW and I know this isn't a popular opinion on photography forums but this isn't TP so I doubt I'll need a flameproof suit...
I use P for almost everything I shoot, I leave ISO on auto with a limit of 3200. A quick spin of main adjustment dial will select a combination of shutter/aperture/ISO that will result in a reasonably exposed image.
In general I tend to use the settings the camera has chosen and if I know I need to deliberately under or over expose then I use the exposure compensation dial to go up or down a stop or so. My camera will cycle the aperture and shutter alternately before it strays into increasing the ISO for exposure compensation.

Under certain circumstances - night city shots etc. - then I'll fix the ISO at 200, let the camera choose the shutter/aperture and see if I think it's possible to take the image.

If I'm really slowing down and I want to isolate the subject from the background or get the maximum depth of focus, then I'll put the camera into A and be a bit more careful with everything but it's rare.
If I'm shooting something I know is fast moving (odd motorsport event) then I'll use S and pick a shutter speed and leave the rest to the camera.

I take pictures when I go out - I rarely go out to take pictures as a goal.
I'm usually with other people and so worrying about composition, focus and having the horizon level-ish is enough. In my heart I know I should be caring more about the settings but as a default I find P mode with a tweak of exposure compensation gives me results I'm happy.

I know some other photographers who leave their cameras set in full auto mode for grab shots.
 
FWIW and I know this isn't a popular opinion on photography forums but this isn't TP so I doubt I'll need a flameproof suit...
I use P for almost everything I shoot, I leave ISO on auto with a limit of 3200. A quick spin of main adjustment dial will select a combination of shutter/aperture/ISO that will result in a reasonably exposed image.
In general I tend to use the settings the camera has chosen and if I know I need to deliberately under or over expose then I use the exposure compensation dial to go up or down a stop or so. My camera will cycle the aperture and shutter alternately before it strays into increasing the ISO for exposure compensation.

Under certain circumstances - night city shots etc. - then I'll fix the ISO at 200, let the camera choose the shutter/aperture and see if I think it's possible to take the image.

If I'm really slowing down and I want to isolate the subject from the background or get the maximum depth of focus, then I'll put the camera into A and be a bit more careful with everything but it's rare.
If I'm shooting something I know is fast moving (odd motorsport event) then I'll use S and pick a shutter speed and leave the rest to the camera.

I take pictures when I go out - I rarely go out to take pictures as a goal.
I'm usually with other people and so worrying about composition, focus and having the horizon level-ish is enough. In my heart I know I should be caring more about the settings but as a default I find P mode with a tweak of exposure compensation gives me results I'm happy.

I know some other photographers who leave their cameras set in full auto mode for grab shots.
I don't use P mode as P's for pros innit ;) :p
 
TBH I'm pretty sure this is how all cameras work, ISO is the last thing it will adjust. Same as aperture priority mode, it will decrease shutter speed first and when that reaches the minimum (which you can usually set in the menus) it will then adjust ISO


It shouldn't be any slower than shutter priority. Set shutter to 1/250, aperture to f5.6 (or whatever) and then fire away, you don't have to touch settings again as the camera will take care of the exposure due to Auto ISO.

If you have custom modes you can even set one of these up as this so you can be even lazier and don't have to set either shutter or aperture. Save your settings (1/250, f5.6, ISO Auto) to say custom 1 and then all you have to do in future is rotate the dial to custom 1, or choose custom 1 from a menu if that's how your camera works.

I rarely use shutter priority for this reason, I usually want control of shutter and aperture, but I'm usually the other way to you, I want the aperture as wide as possible ;)

Thanks, yeh, in general I'd also go for wide aperture when I have time to focus accurately, or just genrally use A-priority. But when I'm trying to get a shot away quickly, my logic is first to avoid motion blur, then go for reasonable Dof as insurance in case autofocus picks the wrong subject, then worry about ISO. However the camera tends to switch the latter two. I'd prefer it to say "what's the highest aperture I can get away with for this shutter speed". Obviously I can do this myself given time but when I'm trying to be quick it would help if it was automatic.

If it's the same for all cameras maybe I'm asking a bit too much from the camera, to be honest, though I find this one the best to use in this respect compared to others I've tried in the past, even though it's not perfect I like everything else about it maybe it's as good as I'll get. I

FWIW and I know this isn't a popular opinion on photography forums but this isn't TP so I doubt I'll need a flameproof suit...
I use P for almost everything I shoot, I leave ISO on auto with a limit of 3200. A quick spin of main adjustment dial will select a combination of shutter/aperture/ISO that will result in a reasonably exposed image.
In general I tend to use the settings the camera has chosen and if I know I need to deliberately under or over expose then I use the exposure compensation dial to go up or down a stop or so. My camera will cycle the aperture and shutter alternately before it strays into increasing the ISO for exposure compensation.

Under certain circumstances - night city shots etc. - then I'll fix the ISO at 200, let the camera choose the shutter/aperture and see if I think it's possible to take the image.

If I'm really slowing down and I want to isolate the subject from the background or get the maximum depth of focus, then I'll put the camera into A and be a bit more careful with everything but it's rare.
If I'm shooting something I know is fast moving (odd motorsport event) then I'll use S and pick a shutter speed and leave the rest to the camera.

I take pictures when I go out - I rarely go out to take pictures as a goal.
I'm usually with other people and so worrying about composition, focus and having the horizon level-ish is enough. In my heart I know I should be caring more about the settings but as a default I find P mode with a tweak of exposure compensation gives me results I'm happy.

I know some other photographers who leave their cameras set in full auto mode for grab shots.

Good point, I do sometimes go out to take pictures as a goal and in those cases I'm more deliberate in planning and generally have an idea of settings in mind beforehand, and have time on my hands to play around.
It's really the second case - taking pictures while I happen to be out - that I'm trying to improve. Both P-mode and full auto or something like (1/250, f5.6) mentioned above works a lot of the time. But it occasionally lets me down, say if going indoors from bright sunlight, or vice versa. I'm not mindful enough to think ahead as I change environments and then the time it takes to change settings which occasionally catches me out as I miss a grab shot. I guess I need to work out which of these works best for me as a 'set and forget' option and then get quicker at making adjustments.
 
Thanks, yeh, in general I'd also go for wide aperture when I have time to focus accurately, or just genrally use A-priority. But when I'm trying to get a shot away quickly, my logic is first to avoid motion blur, then go for reasonable Dof as insurance in case autofocus picks the wrong subject, then worry about ISO. However the camera tends to switch the latter two. I'd prefer it to say "what's the highest aperture I can get away with for this shutter speed". Obviously I can do this myself given time but when I'm trying to be quick it would help if it was automatic.

If it's the same for all cameras maybe I'm asking a bit too much from the camera, to be honest, though I find this one the best to use in this respect compared to others I've tried in the past, even though it's not perfect I like everything else about it maybe it's as good as I'll get. I



Good point, I do sometimes go out to take pictures as a goal and in those cases I'm more deliberate in planning and generally have an idea of settings in mind beforehand, and have time on my hands to play around.
It's really the second case - taking pictures while I happen to be out - that I'm trying to improve. Both P-mode and full auto or something like (1/250, f5.6) mentioned above works a lot of the time. But it occasionally lets me down, say if going indoors from bright sunlight, or vice versa. I'm not mindful enough to think ahead as I change environments and then the time it takes to change settings which occasionally catches me out as I miss a grab shot. I guess I need to work out which of these works best for me as a 'set and forget' option and then get quicker at making adjustments.
I'm still not sure why you're against manual mode though with auto ISO though, it does everything that you want and takes no time at all?
 
I'm still not sure why you're against manual mode though with auto ISO though, it does everything that you want and takes no time at all?


Haha, no, nothing against it at all! My 'default' S&A setting is usually somewhere around what you said with auto ISO. Sometimes I'll end up with a shot focused on the wrong place with low ISO and think, hm, maybe with more Dof and a higher ISO it might have turned out ok? Like I said it's just a minor niggle, not really a big deal at all, just something that I ponder occasionally.
 
If I'm understanding your post correctly you want to set a shutter speed but set aperture and iso on auto with the system prioritising iso before widening aperture? That makes complete sense on a large sensor camera since a shallow depth of field is more likely to spoil a photo than more high iso noise but I'm not aware of a camera that lets you do that, reading the link above about Fuji auto iso (which I'm not familiar with) it doesn't sound like that's possible.

I always stayed away from manual mode as it sounded like too much work but when you use it with auto-iso it effectively becomes a more customisable auto-iso mode. I started using it on a Sony camera which had a very limited auto iso mode and set a minimum shutter speed of 1/80 even though the lens is a fixed 35mm and 1/40 would make more sense to gain a stop back. I normally use aperture mode to control the depth of field so now I put it in manual mode, set the shutter to 1/40, continue to set the aperture as I want and then set the iso to auto.

The main issue is if I go into a bright area and the camera is maxed out at iso 100 then it will over expose but then it's easy enough to just change to aperture priority mode when the 1/80 speed minimum isn't an issue. I realise it doesn't quite do what you want but with a larger sensor I think it's good to keep a control of the aperture as you're the only one that can tell whether a wider aperture is suitable or not.
 
Does the XE3 have the three auto iso settings? If so just follow this Fujifilm X Settings: What is AUTO ISO and When to Use It and see if that helps

That article's interesting, a couple of things I don't agree with, but it's good to see other ways of thinking about it. One good point it makes is how being able to adjust iso is such an advantage over the days of film when your iso rating was effectively fixed for the next 36 shots (though I suppose you could also push/pull film). Otoh in a way that was a simpler time and now you have makes one more factor to think about (I know autoISO takes the thinking out of it but there is an aesthetic aspect still attached to the iso setting)(I also disagree that really high iso's are absolutely fine, at least on my body, I find 3200 is the highest I usually like to go).

Interestingly, the article says that in auto ISO mode with auto shutter (equiv to P-mode I guess?) it will first set ISO to minimum, and select and appropriate shutter speed. If the shutter speed reaches the (user defined) minimum setting then it will increase the ISO up to the maximum. Fine, but then,
If it’s still underexposed, the camera will then slow down the shutter speed below the minimum you’ve set to get the proper exposure.
This checks out, and is what gets me. Why have a minimum shutter speed then disregard it (ok, I can see the logic)? It's probably the reason I ended up using shutter priority, as you can easily correct for a bit of underexposure, but not motion blurring.

In any case, I 100% agree with the last part: Practice. And then practice more.
 
If I'm understanding your post correctly you want to set a shutter speed but set aperture and iso on auto with the system prioritising iso before widening aperture? That makes complete sense on a large sensor camera since a shallow depth of field is more likely to spoil a photo than more high iso noise but I'm not aware of a camera that lets you do that, reading the link above about Fuji auto iso (which I'm not familiar with) it doesn't sound like that's possible.

Yeh that's exactly what I want to do, don't know why no cameras have this option, maybe something to do with firmware, or mechanics, or maybe I'm just the only person who would ever use it.

I always stayed away from manual mode as it sounded like too much work but when you use it with auto-iso it effectively becomes a more customisable auto-iso mode. I started using it on a Sony camera which had a very limited auto iso mode and set a minimum shutter speed of 1/80 even though the lens is a fixed 35mm and 1/40 would make more sense to gain a stop back. I normally use aperture mode to control the depth of field so now I put it in manual mode, set the shutter to 1/40, continue to set the aperture as I want and then set the iso to auto.

The main issue is if I go into a bright area and the camera is maxed out at iso 100 then it will over expose but then it's easy enough to just change to aperture priority mode when the 1/80 speed minimum isn't an issue. I realise it doesn't quite do what you want but with a larger sensor I think it's good to keep a control of the aperture as you're the only one that can tell whether a wider aperture is suitable or not.

I think for me 1/40 is too slow to hold steady, but I can see what you're getting at.
 
I was meaning 1/40 purely for my use but you could use 1/250 or whatever you need to suit your use.

I guess there's probably a variety of reasons why auto iso doesn't allow more complexity in setting how it works, many of them are still quite basic and going back a bit when high isos weren't great. I had an Olympus DSLR which in auto iso wouldn't change iso past 100 unless the flash was open or it was in the sports preset at which point it would increase it to 400. I quickly got used to choosing aperture myself so there's perhaps not a huge demand for such a configurable auto iso.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom