Lessons

Lesson Info

Autofocus & Manual Focus Menu

Select Custom Setting and so this is where you can go in to each one of these seven and pre-program this in the picture style that you like so you might have a certain contrast or a film mode that you like to use. And so if you have different styles of shooting, so for instance, I like to shoot in black and white with a Fuji camera and so I have a couple of these set to black and white mode. And so this is something that's worthy of a few of minutes of time on your part to sit down, go in, explore and setup a few favorites so that you can quickly adjust from one to the other. And so the first one is where you would select it, this is where you actually go in and get to edit and save it. And so just go into this, look at all the different options, play around, see what works for you. It can be quite fun to have a lot of these different options very quickly handy. Another feature that we've been talking about is the focus area. This was a shortcut button on the back of the camera but tha...

t can be moved someplace else. This just simply lets you adjust where that focusing frame is by moving the cross keys on the back of the camera. The AF mode which we saw before, there is a shortcut key, right now I believe it's the up button on the back camera. It allows you to go from single zone to wide and tracking. Normally, I'll leave the camera in the single mode. I use zone for action subjects. And I just don't use wide tracking very often unless it's like a bird in the sky where it's going to be nothing in the foreground in front of me. So it's just got too many points looking for focus for my taste. All right. AFC custom mode, and so if you do a lot of action photography tracking subjects that are moving, there is a very careful balance between speed of focusing and accuracy of focusing, because the more you want one to work the less the other one of those two works. And so this is where you can choose slightly different parameters depending on the type of subjects that you're shooting. So if you do a lot of sports photography and you find that either you're not getting enough pictures in focus or something is not right about the way the camera is tracking, you might want to take a look at changing which way your camera is set. Set one for multi-purpose is definitely a good place to start for general purpose action. But if you are doing specific types of action you may find that the focusing system isn't as fast as it needs to be or it needs to be slower in the way that it's changing. And so these will allow you to go in and it's going to kind of automatically change things for you. How quickly it changes from one focusing point to the next, how quickly it adjusts for something that is changing in speed towards you. And so there's a number of different parameters that it's taking into account but as I said to start with, you're probably fine with the multi-purpose until you notice a regular occurrence of similar types of action not being probably focused on. And so it is a way to get in there and customize that to another degree. AF point display. When you're looking in the view finder, how much do you want to see in there, how much clutter do want to see? I prefer having it turned off. I like less clutter, but if want to see where all those focusing points that are being activated are turned on, you can do that by turning it on. The number of focusing points I mentioned before that a lot of Fuji users take it from 325 down to 91. It's not that you're reducing the number of focusing points, you're just reducing the number of areas that you select for focusing points, and it depends a little bit on how accurate you need to be. The camera is still using all the focusing points for focusing. Pre-AF, not something I'm a big fan of. What happens here is that the camera is automatically focusing even before you press any button on the camera at all. The camera will be a little bit quicker to focus because as you pick it up it starts to focus on whatever is in front of it, but it does eat up a lot of battery power and a lot of times photographers want to focus on something and then leave it there while they work on some other aspect of the photograph. And if you leave this turned on, it's going to suddenly start changing again. And so it's something that not a lot of photographers like, but it does work for certain people in certain situations. One of the things I talk about is making your camera discreet and not making a lot of noises and buzzes and lights turning on and so forth. And so the AF illuminator which helps the camera focus under low light conditions on subjects that are very close to the camera, only helps out a little bit, and if you know how to focus and where to point your camera for focus, it doesn't really do you much good at all. And so I turn this off just to not be a distraction and make a nuisance of myself, you might say. Face and eye detection. So this is a cool feature for the camera's auto focus. If you do a lot of people photography you probably want to focus on their face, you may want to focus on their eyes in particular if you have a shallow depth of field lens. And so here you can turn on a number of different options for facial detection. If you're not doing a lot of people photography or if it's only hit and miss where you're kind of doing that, you probably want to leave it in the standard mode with this turned off. But if you do a lot of people photography I recommend that you give this a try and see which mode works for you because sometimes you want to focus on the right eye or the left eye priority, and so play around with this and see how well it works for you. It does an amazingly good job at picking up that facial recognition. - All right. Auto-focus plus manual focus allows you to manually focus after you have pressed down halfway to auto-focus. And so if you like to do a little touch up focusing, I don't let the camera focus but then I may adjust it a little bit. Some of the more advanced users like this option on the camera. More basic users are just fine letting the camera do the focusing. I am actually most of the time because it's incredibly accurate for general focusing. If I do want to manually focus I usually throw the camera into a complete manual focus mode. Manual focus assist. This is a very good assist system where the camera, it has a very high resolution view finder but it's not high enough to really discern sharpness and focus. And so there's a number of options in this sub-menu. First up, is a standard magnification. So what happens is, as soon as you start turning the manual focus ring, the lens zooms in so that you can see your subject really closely as you manually focus to get the sharpest possible view. You can then turn the dial on the back of the camera to get an even closer magnified view of what's going on. And then when you go to take a picture it's going to be the full picture but it just zooms in so you can see very carefully if you are properly manually focusing. Another option is called Digital Split Image, and this sounded really cool when it came out because it sounded like a lot of the traditional cameras, SLRs, that had split image view finders for focusing. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to line up vertical lines, and in some cases it's just really easy to see if that vertical line is off set, and so there we are, lining up that center line. And so this is more cool in theory than it is in practice in my opinion. I don't really use it. It's a little hard to see and you don't always have that perfect vertical line to work with it. Now, it is available in monochrome and color, so you just get to choose here which one of those two works with and color seems to be fine, some people prefer monochrome. But it doesn't work as well as the traditional old school real style. - Focus peak highlight is something that I talked about before. And this is where the camera will shimmer in brightness where you're getting the greatest sharpness from focusing, and you can see as I'm focusing this lens from the background to the foreground, what I'm focusing on where that red area is. And so you'll be able to choose the color and the intensity of that color in this option here. And so this is a good way of manual focusing. My preference is the standard way but I've used focus peak highlight from time to time because it's so clear about where you are focusing in many situations. Now, if you want a shortcut, when you are in the manual focus mode, what you can do is you can press and hold the rear dial on this, and it's going to activate those options and then you can switch between those three different features very quickly and easily. And so if you want to quickly go from standard to focus peaking, then you can do that really quickly without diving into the menu systems. And in case you're wondering, yes, this camera has lots of secret shortcuts on here. Focus check. So on this one what happens is, when you are in manual focus, the camera will automatically go in to its focus check system to make sure that you're getting the sharpest focus and so it's going to magnify that image in and then you can turn the ring to change the magnification, and I like to have this turned on in most situations. There are other situations where you want to keep a view of the entire scene and you just want to adjust the focus a little bit. And so it depends on what type of shooting you are doing as to whether you want this turned on, but in general I kind of like it turned on to make sure that you're getting proper focus and just turn that back dial to change the magnification. If you're the type of person that likes to use a spot meter, you're probably going to want to lock it in to the focusing area. You can adjust the size of the spot and the exact location that you are reading the light. And so this matches location and size but it will only work in the single point or manual focusing option. And so if you do spot metering it's a great feature to have. Instant auto-focus setting. This deals with the camera set to the manual focus mode on the front of the camera and you using the AFL button for focusing. When you press down on that, do you want it to be single focus or continuous focus? If you mostly shoot standard subjects it's going to be single. If you shoot a lot of action, you probably want to have this set to AFC. Depth of field scale. We can do this with pixel based or film-format based. One of the dirty little secrets of modern photography is that the film scales that you see on a lot of lenses is based on 1920s, 1930s, 1940s reference charts about what was in focus and what was out of focus. Well, needless to say, our standards have gotten quite a bit higher in the last 70 years. And so the pixel based is designed for people who are going to be examining images on high resolution devices. If you're going to make a basic print and you want to know how much depth of field you're going to have, you could use the film based, but I recommend going into the pixel based that you are a little bit more discerning about how much depth of field you are going to get. Now, you're still going to get the same amount of depth of field whether you use the pixel based or the film based, it's just that with the film based you don't see as much when you get the final print and it's not that big of a deal, and so it's just being a little bit more critical about what's in true sharp focus. Release and focus priority leads us into a submenu here. And so when the camera is in the AF single focusing mode, what's the most important thing? Focus or Release? Kind of the standard in the industry is focus, which means the camera has to be in focus before you release the shutter, and the camera will not allow you to shoot a picture until it's in focus. And that works out pretty well for most people because it forces you to have your picture in focus before you take it. With AFC, its release priority is more important. For action photographers, what happens is, you don't want the camera to be too fussy about trying to find the right focus, because an overly fussy camera will never shoot a photograph because in action it's always moving around. And so what you're trying to do is get the camera to be really close but then take some pictures. And so in this case the release is more important than the focus which means that you may occasionally get some out of focus pictures that will be timed right and the camera will be trying to kind of catch up and get on speed as best it can. And so that's actually where most sports photographers leave their camera. The touch screen mode. Do you like using the touch screen? How do you want to use it? And so you can go in here and touch it. It was also available for programming right from the back of the camera with that little touch symbol of the finger.