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Camera Controls: Drive and Metering

next on top. We have a function button, and this is a button that can actually do many, many different things. And right now it comes pre program from the factory as a face, and I detection. But and so if you would like to add that as an option on top of the focusing system that you are already using, the camera can do face detection. It can also do I detection where it's detecting the right eye, the left eye, or you can have it turned off. And it does a very good job at recognizing faces and focusing on them. And what I have found is that if there are multiple faces in there, it will pick up all these faces and it will try to work with all of them. And it's generally going to focus on whatever one is closest to you. And I tend not to like face detection when there are multiple people in there, because then you can't be specific about where you are focusing. So for solitary portrait's, I think it works out really well. For general purpose doesn't really matter if it's turned on or off,...

but with groups of people. It can be a little bit trickier, and so you want to be careful about when you turn it on and off. Now, if you don't use this or you would like to have that selected in the menu or someplace else, this is a function button and function. Buttons by their very definition, can be a wide variety of functions, and so you can go into the menu system and you can select which one of these options you would like to be on this particular. But now it's one of the more prominent buttons. So obviously you want to put something here that's pretty important to you. And Fuji has been expanding over the years the number of options that you can program onto this, and so this is a quick listing of them. We're going to take a look at more of this programming as we go through this class, but it is impossible for me to go through all of the options with you. This is something that you're going to need to sit down and really go through and figure out what are your priorities and what buttons do you like using for those most important features that you use. This camera has many different function buttons, and we'll be going through lots more of them here, all right. Few other little tidbits from the top of the camera camera does have a built in microphone when you're shooting video, so we do have two little ports on either side. For the stereo microphone. There's a little mark over on the left hand side that indicates the focal plane. If, for some highly unusual reason you needed to measure the distance from your subject to the sensor, perhaps in with some cinema lenses, you might need to do this or for macro photography. That is exactly where the sensor is in the camera for technical reasons. Next up we have our hot shoe so we can attach flashes to the top of the camera. So let's talk about some of the Fuji flash options. It does come supplied with this little E. F X eight for just a little bit of Philly and flash when you need a little bit of light very close in front of you, 10 feet three meters or so, it's not very powerful. The E f x 500 is a much more powerful flash. It's their most powerful, fully dedicated, fully modern flash for this particular camera. If you're gonna be photographing event photography and you're gonna be using a lot of flash subjects or further away, or you're gonna be shooting photos more rapidly, this would be the best flash to get a lot of good little features on it we're not going to dive into right now. There are a number of other flashes that Fuji has made. They've been a little bit more designed for other styles and types of cameras. They will technically work perfectly fine on this so you can use them. I probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy one of these flashes for the camera just because it's not built at least assed faras. The current style off camera and controls are a little bit different, a little unusual piece of thing. Canon makes an offshoot cord, and they have all the electron ICS in the same places Fuji does. So if you want to take your flash off camera but still have it fully automatic, you can use this Cannon Offshoot court because it translates transmits all the standard detail information and does so perfectly well. And it's not something that Fuji currently offers, and so it's a good option for anyone who needs it. For instance, if you just want a handhold, the flash a little bit further away from the camera, or you want to put it onto some sort of flash bracket so that the flash stays in one spot while you are rotating the camera. All right, below the I S O and shutter speed dial are some collars underneath. We can actually see it a little bit better if we kind of look on the back corner of the camera. The 1st 1 of these over on the right hand side is the meat oring mode, and this controls the way the camera reads the light coming into the camera. So let's talk about what options we have here. First up on the left, we have a little dot, and that indicates spot Metarie, and so this is good for measuring the light in a very highly concentrated center area of the frame. It's actually 2% of the frame now. If you want, you can interlock this spot meter with the focusing point that you have chosen by diving into the menu and choosing that option. And that was that has an advantage of also changing size to the size of the focusing point that you use. Next up is Thekla Lassic Center weighted Metering system. This is what was used in ah, lot of the earlier cameras back from the sixties seventies and eighties and so forth. And this just kind of measures light a little bit more heavily towards the center of the frame and slowly tapers out. And it's a good general purpose. One, the most popular one for most people is the multi, and this multi segment one is broken down into 250 segments and you might think of it as 256 spot meters, all comparing, contrasting and sending all the information through an algorithm to figure out what the correct exposure is. This one tends to do the best, with odd bits of light and dark area, giving you an even exposure. The camera also has an average meter, which is just an across the board averaging of the whole area. And so if you're not getting the metering and the exposure that you like. You may want to play around with the metering systems as there are some different options here for accomplishing different tasks. For most people, the multi system is going to be best for the for a wide variety of different types of photography. Next up over on the left side is the drive mode, and the drive mode has lots of options. So let's jump in and take a look at what all these options are s stands for single. And that means when you press down on the shutter, release your going to get a single photo. And so that is probably where most people are going to keep this most of the time. Basic operation for the drive mode. The continuous low setting will take a series of photos as long as you are pressing down on the shutter release and you can select how many pictures it takes per second, and so anywhere from 3 to 5.7 frames per second when it's in the low mode. Now, one of the advantages of being in the low mode is that you were going to get a live view between shots, which means that if you are panning the camera, you're following inaction. You're going to be able to see the live action and where that subject's really years. Because in the high speed motor drive that we're gonna talk about next, you don't always get this live You you'll get a picture of the picture you just took a moment ago. And for subjects that are moving very quickly, that's not fast enough. It's not a fast and of reading, and so if tracking a subject is very important, this is the mode that you would probably want to use on the camera. Now how do you change it between three and 5.7 frames a second? On the front of the camera is what's known as the Function to button, and you compress in on that button and a menu will pop up and you can select which one of these frames per second you would like to use while you are in the continuous low mode. You will also have the option of making this selection when you are in the Menu City, and so we'll go by that when we get into the menu a little bit later, on in this class. The continuous high setting has lots of options here. All right. And so this is gonna be where you get an image review rather than a live view between shots. So it's a little bit harder to track action if you are moving the camera around. One option is eight frames a second, which is pretty darn fast. 11 frames a second, which I would easily say is very professional here, but we're gonna have some more options. We have 20 frames a second, but in this case, you have to be using the electronic shutter which doesn't always work well with subjects that are moving. So there are very particular types of subject where this may work for you. We have 10 frames which is using the Elektronik Center and an Elektronik 1.25 crop. On the frame, we can do 20 frames a second with the Elektronik and the 1.25 crop, and the camera will do 30 frames a second with the 1.25 crop and the Elektronik shutter. Now, the big problem with these really fast options is that you're using the electronic shutter it iss scanning the image across the sensor. And so anything that moves significantly is no longer going to look normally. It's gonna be distorted. And so there are very unusual subjects that may or may not work out using this, and you might need to test the camera to see if it works. I will be showing you an example later, when I did use the 30 frames per second and I was able to capture something that was moving, that looks totally normal. But I was also using another. Features are going to save that for a little bit later in the class. Eso it can be useful, and it was amazing because it helped me get shots where it was virtually impossible to get the shot with any other piece of equipment on the market. Now, of course, to change between these different options, when you're in the continuous high setting, you press the function to button on the front of the camera menu will come up and then you can select which one of these options you want to use while you're in this mode. We'll also have an option for going through this when we are in the menu setting as well. And in order to get to the electronic shutters, the Elektronik shudder has to be turned on, which is a different place in the menu. But we will again once once again talk about that as we go through the menu settings. Next up is bracketing, and bracketing is actually the start of a rabbit hole down here where there's a whole bunch of different types of bracketing on this camera. The most common type of bracketing is auto exposure bracketing, and this is where you're controlling the exposure. But this camera has a number of others, and I'll talk about all of these. So once again, to choose these, you can use the function to button on the front of the camera while it's in the bracketing mode. Or you can dive into the shooting settings in the menu dr Setting and bracketing, and will be a bunch of sub menus for controlling all of the features that we're going to talk about. The most common reason that I use this is for exposure bracketing, and in this case you can take a series of photos very quickly, very automatically adjusting the exposure now We did an example of this demo of this where I was manually doing it. But sometimes it's nice to have the camera do it for you so that you don't have to go through the individual bits of setting everything up in taking and firing each additional photograph. You can also have it fired much more quickly. Now, there are a number of fine tune controls in here. You can select anywhere from 2 to 9 frames and you can select your increments of anywhere from 1/3 stop to three stops between them. And you could do all of this by going into the menu setting as well. But just for fun, let's go ahead and give it a try right here and now. So let's do a little demo. I'm gonna put my shutter speeds and automatic for this, and I'm gonna set the aperture myself. And so I have the camera set in automatic shutter speeds. I'm controlling the aperture here. I'm going to set this pretty wide open to F four right now. I need to move it over to the bracketing mode, so I'm gonna set my Dr Dial two bracketing. I'm gonna hit the button on the front of the cameras so that we immediately get a shortcut into the menu system. So frames and steps, Let's see. What do we want to do? I want to dio You can see you can go all the way up to a nine frame. I'm going to do a five frame bracket. But wait, I don't want to do third steps. I want to do one full step. So we're going to do one step, which is one stop of exposure between each one and I'm gonna have this done continuous. So when I pressed down on the shutter release, it's gonna shoot all five of them as quickly as it possibly can. And that's good, because that means my subject won't change in lighting or anything else very much. And the sequence setting is something you can also change. And I'm gonna change this, too, because I like this going from darkest toe lightest that ways I go through the Siri's and so what's hopefully gonna happen is not gonna press down on the shutter release, press it back to get out of here. Um, and it's gonna take five photos and it's gonna go from darkest to lightest. So let's see how this works out, and that went through very quickly. It's processing them all right now, so let's go back and play them through. All right? This one looks a little on the bright side. That's our number two stops bright. This is one stop spread bright. Our normal exposure one stopped dark and to stop dark. And so we've got our perfect perfect bracket. Siri's here, and you can do this between two and nine frames. And so this is a great tool when you are wanting to make sure that you have the right exposure. Or perhaps you're in a very tricky lighting and you'll decide later where maybe you're going to use multiple photos for HDR high dynamic range photography, where you're combining images later on, and so I'm going to switch it out of bracketing so I don't want to do it again. But it's a mode that you can very quickly and easily engages. You can see the next type of bracketing is I s O bracketing and I personally and not a big fan of this one right here. So what's going on here is that the camera shoots a photo at whatever given eso you have, and then it does kind of an automatic push pull to get you a brighter image and a darker image. And this is something that you could very easily do in any post production program by just making your picture lighter or darker. And so it just takes one photo and then it makes a copy of it and brightens it up in another photo darkens it. And so I'm not really sure as to where this would be most beneficial. It's just that it could be done in so many other ways very easily. I guess it's just that in case you didn't have a computer to do it, you could do it in camera film simulation bracket. One of the things that Fuji is well known for in the industry is their film simulations. They have a very good science of color ends. They have ah, number of different films that a lot of people have liked over the year, and they emulated digital versions of these, and one of the things that you can do is you can have the camera automatically shoot through several pictures of different film styles. Kind of film stocks on and have it very quickly, all right, taken and capture. And so it's kind of an interesting option. White Balance Bracket This is for J. Peg Onley. It doesn't really matter with white balance because with with raw because with the raw and white balance, you can adjust it after the fact. So in this case, if you're shooting J pegs, you're not sure what the correct color is supposed to be. You can shoot a bracket Siri's that shoots one picture a little bit warmer in another picture, a little bit cooler on that blue to yellow scale. Next up is the dynamic range bracketing, which is another option for the J Peg shooters. If you're shooting a J pic file on here, what it does is it tries to control the highlights to not overexpose them. I have found that if you shoot raw, you can do this on your own much more easily and with more capability. But if you are shooting J pegs and you wanna try to control those highlights, this is a good way of doing it. Focus. Bracketing. This is my second most used of the bracket e modes. This is one that I personally like a lot because I use it and I need it for some of my professional photography. And this is where the camera will shoot a series of photos, adjusting the focus of each. Once the bracket is with focus in this case, not exposure. And that way you can focus on subjects and get everything in focus by taking multiple shots and then combining them in a post production program. This is not something that camera can do on its own. You're gonna need an extra program. The program I uses Helicon. But there are a number of other programs out there that will take a stack of images. Look at all the sharp areas and combine them together. So let's let's look at a goofy little example as to what the problem is here. So when you shoot it shallow depth of field, you're not gonna have enough depth the field to cover things in front of it and behind it. So what do you do is you stop the aperture down, believing if you stop the aperture all the way down to F 22 you'll may find that subjects in the foreground and subjects in the background are not as sharp as you would like them to be. And if you want this to be totally sharp from front to back, you will use focus bracket E. I will usually set an aperture of around F eight. I will shoot a series of shots. It'll very depending on the size of the subject. And the first of those shots, as you'll see here, is focused on the nearest subject was, which is a nice, sharp focus. And the last of those shots is going to be with the subject in the background in focus. And then I take all the photos. I process them through my Helicon software, and I get this image here, which was combined from 24 shots taken at F eight Step 10. You'll see that here in a moment is to the step distance between each image and the front and the back subject are intact. Sharp focus. And so this works quite well for subjects that are clearly not moving and so architecture would be a good one. Product photography, anything that is stationary and shot from a tripod and so we'll talk a little bit more about this because there are some more settings that you can get into when we dive into the menu. But it's a very good system for getting infinite depth of field in some cases. So remember that the function to button on the front of the camera will allow you to get into those sub menus for any of these dr settings that we're talking about. You can also go into the menu itself into the drive setting and bracket settings to control the fine tune controls of these out at the end of the spectrum. On this, we have our movie recording, so let's talk a little bit about recording movies. Fuji, at first on some of their earlier cameras, was a little weak in the video department, And they have, I think, put a lot of R and D in there and a lot of time and effort to add better and better features. And these cameras have become quite good for shooting video. So first off you can get into the movie mode, and there's a whole section in the menu about movies that will be going through line by line. We have different frame rates. We have different resolution, including four K. It also has the D. C. I four K version, which is a 17 by nine aspect ratio. In fact, let's talk about some of these options here, So the standard frame on this, which is the size of the sensor of the aspect of the sensor three by two you have full HD and ultra high definition four K from the full coverage, 16 by nine We do also have a 17 by nine area that some people prefer. We do have a slight crop version when you are using four K at 60 frames a second, and that one has a 1. crop. So it's a light crop. Not too bad. If you do need that 60 frames per second, the camera can shoot in F Log and H L G, and this is a way to get greater dynamic range out of your video. This is for people who are going to be doing editing and grading on their video. If you want just simple basic video, you probably don't want to mess going in this far. We do have some high speed recording options. I got some examples. I'll be showing you later in the class on that. We do have a couple of different video recording modes in here. A swell and many different movie shutter speeds are available when using movies, and we will talk more about movies when we get into the movie section in the menu, going over to the other side of the controls on the Dr Mode, we have a multiple exposure mode, and so this is where you can shoot two exposures out in the field. And so kind of the classic example is to shoot a picture of the moon, put it in the frame where you want it, then take a picture of the city, which doesn't have the moon in it. But because of the double exposure, you can now get it all composited in there, so it's right where you want it in the frame there. So this is with J Peg images, and you can see this in camera, which is kind of handy, which is the advantage of doing it in camera rather than in post production. But it does only work with just two images and so it's a very basic multiple exposure mode. The advanced filter mode is Ah, it's the fund zone, and this is where you want to have a little bit of fun with your images and have a little goof with saturation contrast levels and the way they look or if you just want to give him a very unique look to him. And so these air some strong filter effects. Let's take a look at some of the examples here we start off with standard, but then we can quickly get goofy. And so it's gonna be playing around with the colors, the contrast, even the focusing on these and so not something a lot of people use for their base photography. But as I say, if you're looking for something distinctive, it is a way to make your photographs definitely look a bit different. The partial color will try to look for a particular color and just let that come through, and everything else can become will be black and white. So it's kind of a spot color, and it just doesn't automatically in camera, which is pretty interesting on how it could do that. So that is the advanced filter mode, another mode that I like, but I do need to caution you with using the panorama mode. This is a way of shooting quick, simple panoramas in camera. They, however, sometimes have artifacts that I have found that is not as good in professional is shooting individual photos. But if you're at a location and you say, Hey, I just want a real quick, easy panorama this. It's a very good system for that. And there's a variety of options on how wide have seen that you can get. You can pan the camera, holding it horizontally or holding the camera vertically, and when you do it vertically, you get a little bit more coverage from top to bottom. There is a medium and a large option, depending on how big a pan you want to make. My favorite options are panning the camera vertically, either with medium or long. I usually do medium because the long is so wide. It's about 180 degree coverage, and so you have to be twisting quite a bit for wanting to get all of that in. And don't forget, you can do panoramas vertically as well if you have the right areas, and so when you have it in the panorama mode, you'll use the controller on the back of the camera to decide whether you want a pan vertically or horizontally and with the U. N. A medium or a large version of it. And so you can see the pixel dimensions there that are preset as to what size of image you're going to get from that final pan. Most of the time, though, I think probably most of us are gonna be keeping the camera in the single mode so that we can shoot one photo at a time and that there is your drive settings and the controls on the top of the camera. John Awesome. Well, we've got a lot of people who are watching who some of them just pulled out of their camera from the box. And, ah, this is very, very helpful. Would you have a few questions that came in? So one of them was from Mike, who said that he is usually often doing exposure compensation a lot, and he found that when he was testing out the camera and the camera store, like using the top button was a little bit clunky for him. The top dial mode. So is there another way that he can program exposure compensation using a different dialled the top of the camera they have reduced to the size of the dial? And I think they've stiffened it up a swell. So it's not as hard, and so one would be. Just keep trying it. Just see if it will work. The other option is to move it around to the sea setting. And now the controls are with the front dial of the camera. So, yes, you can regulate it to another dial. And that will give you the option of going all the way to five stops over or under exposure. Great. Thank you for clarifying that. Check it out, Mike, and let us know how that that works. Better for you. Speaking of doing different controls, do you personally use the back button focus on this camera? Karen and some other folks were saying that she used to have a cannon. Now she uses this and she just doesn't find she needs it as much. So just curious. Well, I've gotten a little particular because I do like back button focus, but I like it for single focus, not continuous. And I think this is the only camera that allows me to set it up the way that I really wanted. The problem that I have found is that when I'm shooting action where things are really happening quickly, it's a little bit hard to get two fingers and pressing in the right place at the right time, because sometimes I'm I'm working with two cameras, and I just need to grab it and press down on the shutter release. And so on this camera, one of the things that you can do is you can turn off the focus on the shutter release if you want for a particular version of single or continuous focusing. So the way that I haven't set up is that when I pressed down for single focus, I do back button focus, focus and then take the photo. But when it's in the continuous focusing mode here on the front dial, I just press down on the shutter release and it continually focuses. And so I think it's a great tool because then I don't have to keep my finger locked into that position. And so the reason people like back button focus and there's some people who are new to photography. And I remember when I was new and somebody told me about back but focuses Michael, why do you want him two things when you could just use one thing? And the problem is, is that when you focus on a subject lock in recompose, you can't move your finger. You can't change your grip on the camera. You have to take the photo right now, whereas with back button focus, I can focus. Get that locked in. We're done with focusing. I can recompose the camera. I can stop. I can shoot whenever I want. And I can shoot again and again and again. And it justice less hassle when you're wanting to do more tricky things with the camera. And so it's something that not everybody likes. Um, most people that I know of who have gone to back button focusing have not gone back. It's extremely rare to find somebody who's given it a try, work through the initial phase of it and then said, No, it's not for me. I found a lot of people who tried it and didn't like it. But you really got a dig in and go through that learning curve. Great. Thank you. So, Karen, check that out. Let us know if it does work for you on the Fuji as well. Okay, we had a question from Darren Bates, who said when you were talking about the CH mode and he said, With that mode with the Elektronik shudder, if you're photographing like a helicopter and you're doing that fast action, he would expect that the bleeds to bend or something on that final image. But does that same thing apply when photographing humans running or any kind of action? Yeah, and so the problem with that continuous high speed in the Elektronik, the whole idea of the Elektronik shudder just is mostly in my mind for exposure control when you need a 32/1000 of a second. And if you have, let's say Fuji's 56 1.2 lands and you're shooting a portrait out in sunshine and you want to shoot it at 1.2, you need something faster than 1/1000 of a second. And so I think the real reason that those electronic shutters are on these cameras is so that you can get those lenses set toe 1.21 bright light situations. When it comes to shooting action, you could shoot a helicopter if you're kind of shooting it straight on. If you're shooting it from below, where you can really see the blades, Yeah, they're gonna band. And actually, I really want to try it, because I think it would look really cool. It might look like the blades are curved rather than straight, which could be interesting, but not very good for documentary work. Uh, the examples that I'm going to show you later in the menu section is with a bow and arrow, and because the arrow is so small, you don't notice any distortion on it. And so it worked out by chance for me in that situation. But I photographed cyclists where round wheels become oval and I've panned with cars. Were buildings become leaning in the background because of the scan system? And so, uh, the Elektronik Center just does not work with most moving subjects. And so that's something that Sisi Snow had asked, She said. She does a lot of fast action sports shooting equestrian events in particular. So would you steer her? Not necessarily from this camera, I would say that you just simply want to stay in the mechanical shutter, which is perfectly fine. You can shoot at 11 frames a second. Show me a camera that shoots more frames per second at less money. I don't think there is any. If you go down to 10 I think there's some but 11 frames a second. I don't know if you're going to find a better sports camera. You can spend more money and get top of the line Canon and Nikon that shoots 12 14 frames a second. But that's really not that much different s so I think it still does. Very good. But I would keep the shutter in the mechanical mode. Okay, great. We were just talking about a back button focused on. Another question came in. This is from Diane. She's wondering if the back button focus works with Fuji with things like a remote control. She on her Nikon D 7 50 it she found that back button focus didn't work with remote controls, and she uses that a lot. Do you know if it works with that, right? So if you're gonna use a remote control, I guess the question is, is which type of remote? Because if you have the cable release that plugs into the shutter and you're gonna have to do back button, focus and then go to the cable to take a photo, and that way it won't refocus when you're firing the shutter. There's the Elektronik remote, which plugs into the side, and I can't say that I have tried that one. I would assume that if you put it in back button focus, it would not focus when you press that button. But if you have focus on the shutter release, it would work on the electronic one. And then the third way is using your phone in its connection. Bluetooth connection. WiFi connection with the camera You can actually touch on the screen and focus where you want and then have a separate button for shooting photos. And so it depends a little bit on how you are connecting your camera up to its remote system. And she said, Elektronik Elektronik remote as they say, I haven't confirmed that I don't have the Fuji remote where I've confirmed it. But I would assume that if you put it in back button focus, it will no longer focus when you press down on the show delays.