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Flash Mode

Lesson 26 from: Fujifilm X-T2 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

26. Flash Mode

If you have a flash mounted to the X-T2, adjust the different settings inside this menu, from choosing to shoot TTL or manual, to adjusting flash compensation.
Next Lesson: Movie Mode

Lesson Info

Flash Mode

Next up are the flash settings. Now a lot of these are not gonna make any sense and you're not gonna see these unless you have the appropriate flash hooked up. They may or may not show up with the built in flash. And so flash function dives in to a lot of mode settings that you would normally set on the flash if it has that option. First up is our flash control mode. We have things like TTL where the camera is controlling the power of the flash, you can choose it to be manual, you can have it be a commander where it's working with remote units. There's also a repeating flash. You can turn the flash off here or you can just use the switch for the flash which makes more sense. You can also hook things up in groups as part of the commander mode, I'll show you more about that in a second here. You can control the compensation of flash which is the power of the flash. And so in this case if you're not happy with the power you can power the flash down for a more natural look. This might chan...

ge depending on the mode that you have the camera set in, to controlling the power of a manual flash or of a repeating flash. So you'll kind of see a sub control in that second big box. There's a bunch of lower boxes on this, the TTL mode. We have a variety of modes that uses either an auto or a slow TTL, auto TTL is where the flash would automatically fire. TTL is where the flash is gonna be force fired every time but with an automatic setting in all three of those cases. The sync mode allows you to synchronize either the first curtain or second curtain, depending on the effect you want to get, can be very effective with motion subjects. And there's also an FP setting and this is where the flash fires multiple flashes very, very quickly during a very fast shutter speed and will allow you faster shutter speeds than the standard synchronization speed of one, two fiftieths of a second. The downside, two big downsides. Number one is you can't have it do automatic FP flashes at high speed and they're relatively low power flashes so you can't flash anything that's really far away. And so it is highly limited, kind of a special effects mode that it gets in to. The zoom setting will match the zoom of the flash with the zoom of the lens that you are zooming. So even if you're using a prime lens you switch from a to a 23, the flash automatically covers that area just right so that you have even coverage. If you want you can set it up manually and you can go in and select this but it's kinda nice to have it done automatically. But if you wanna get in and do it manually you can set any one of the specific focal lengths that they have set in to the flash. Never seen this one before but we have an angle which is very much related to the zoom on this. And what's going on here under flash power priority, it means the flash has, the flash power is the priority and rather than covering the scene it wants to give you the most flash coverage possible. And so what ends up happening is it doesn't illuminate the edges of the frame quite as much, hoping that by concentrating the flash it's gonna get a little bit further, which it will do. Under the standard the flash will very much match the angle of lens that you have on your camera. If you want extra even coverage, because sometimes it gets a little dark to the edge under using a normal flash coverage, you can kind of overshoot, over coverage your area in light so that everything is very evenly lit. And so normally you're gonna be leaving it on standard but you might want to play around and see how it works with your flash photography. The LED light is on the EF-X500 and it can be used as an auto focus assist light, it can be used as a catch light, or a combination of them. And so this is something that you'll have to determine if it works for you. It sometimes may show up as master and so if you are working with multiple flashes the idea here is that you're gonna have a flash on the camera and one or more flashes in a remote location. Now it does need to be within line of sight of the flashes for them to be able to communicate back and forth. But you can have up to three groups of flashes that you are individually controlling the power from. And so you might have one that's a little bit higher powered than the other and then you can control all of that from your camera without having to go out to the flashes themselves to turn the power on and off. If you are in a multistrobe mode where it's firing numerous strobes during one photo for special effects you can control how many times that flash will fire. It essentially becomes a very fast strobe light and you can do some interesting things with motion, things moving, if you can think about somebody juggling three balls and using a flash that fires once every tenth of a second. You can get some interesting results. The channel allows you to change the frequency. So for instance if there are two people or three people or four people with Fuji XT2s and flashes all firing at the same time, you could say, okay, I'll be on channel one, you choose channel two, and that way our flashes are not gonna interfere and be firing each others' cameras are not gonna be firing the other flashes off. It's for multiple photographers using the same equipment in the same environment. If you are shooting a multi flash you also get to choose the power, or excuse me, the cycles per second of the flash. So not only before was the number of flashes but how fast does it fire, how many hertz? How many times per second? One per second, 500 per second would be very, very quick. If you are hooked up to multiple strobes you may get a graphic that looks a little like this. So as you have different groups of flashes you can control the individual power of those groups. So you can be shooting photos and say, you know what, group B is a little too bright, let's bring the brightness down. And there's a number of ways that you can do this. You can do exposure compensation, you can change it manually, you can change it percentage wise. It's really gonna depend a little bit on how you have this set up. And so this is probably not a complete tutorial that I'm doing here on the flash because this is not a flash class, the camera doesn't even have a flash. We shouldn't even be talking about flash in here. But this is what you're likely to encounter when using one of the more advanced flashes. Alright, red eye removal, we mentioned this before. You can remove red eyes, there's two different ways that you can do it. You can do it either by flash which uses a preflash which can be a little distracting to your subject, or it can do it by digital removal in which case it may or may not do a good job. So both of these have, kind of, potential problems. And there is plenty of software out there for fixing red eye. And so it depends on how much you shoot as to which one's gonna be best but I tend to wanna leave that one turned off. The TTL lock mode is kind of a new mode on this camera for use with flash and what it does is it locks the TTL setting, the meter reading end, with either the last flash or the next one you take it locks it for the subsequent flashes. And so it depends on how you use the flash but using it for the last flash makes sense in a lot of situations. The LED light setting, I know it just seemed like we saw something but that was in the flash function settings. We also have access to it here. It can be used as a shortcut elsewhere in the camera. It's used as an AF assist, a catch light or both. Normally you'd want to leave it turned off. So once again we're kind of seeing duplicate controls and this is simply so we can set a function button for shortcuts and so if you do have those setups for remote flashes you can have very quick access to controlling which ones are turned on and how they are set. Under the channel settings you can quickly set which channel you are using as well.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Fuji X-T2 Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

John Simpson
 

I highly recommend this class! Been shooting Nikon for 40+ years and decided to give my Nikon gear to my daughter and go the smaller and lighter Fuji X-T2 for travel. Excellent camera and this course was outstanding in helping me learn how to use the camera. I have watched a number of Nikon oriented instructional videos. This video by John Greengo is the best organized and informative presentation I have ever watched.

a Creativelive Student
 

Really appreciate John putting these Fast Start Series together. Went through part of the training waiting on my Fujifilm X-T20 to arrive, which did today. That allowed me to dive into the menu settings and get the camera ready to use. I found that we are on Firmware 3.0, so, I have some updates to get installed. The training was great and informative as always. Don't hesitate to look for his Fast Start for your particular camera, and the in-depth training on Photography Fundamentals. It is well worth your time and money to get this training, especially if you are an amateur like myself, but, thanks to John Greengo I am quickly learning to use my camera in Manual Mode, most of the time.

Monroe Nevels
 

We all learn from different methods. I, for one, learn best by watching you while teaching, and being able to work along side you, with my camera in hand, and then follow you. I highly recommend this class if you really want to know how to use your camera. Thank you John for helping me to relive my film days, and integrating into Digital. I now have my Fujo X-T2 programmed and I LOVE IT!

Student Work

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