Lessons

Lesson Info

Class introduction

All right. Well, welcome, everybody to the Fuji. X t three, fast start class in here. We're gonna be going over the entire camera. We're gonna be going through all the dials and controls on the outside about talking about what they do and how to set them for different types of photography. Second, half the class, we're gonna go into the menu system. We're gonna look at all the different options and features in there, and I'm gonna help you set up your camera so it's designed and ready for what you want to dio before we dive into the class too far. I thought I'd give you a few thoughts that I have on the camera because I've been using it for a while. I actually took it on a very significant overseas trip to Bhutan. And it, in my opinion, is probably the best travel camera out there on, and I know you can do a lot of other things with it, But travel does include a lot of landscapes and portrait work and action photography and does a little bit of everything. And I think this camera is re...

ally good at that. I like the smaller size. I like the tactile controls. The, uh, the X T. Siri's has always been one of my favorite line of cameras from any manufacturer. I've had X t. and three. This is obviously the latest, best version of the camera. They've made relatively small upgrades between the two and the three. It's a bit more of a performance upgrade than anything else, because ah, lot of the buttons and dials are all in the same spot. It's ah, it's a question that I don't like to try to answer is to whether it's worth the upgrade from the x t two to the three, because I don't know what features you use, and I don't know how much money you want to spend on your cameras. But it is a camera that I think a lot of different people will get a lot of great enjoyment out of. One thing to know is that there are even more ways to customize the camera, and so that if there's anything you don't quite like the way that it works on the camera, there's a button that you can re program it so that you really like the way that it works for you. So let me show you what we're gonna be doing in this class here. I've broken it into a number of bite sized parts. First off, we're gonna go through a little overview of what Fuji is and so forth will spend a few minutes on photo basics. For those of you who might be new to photography, the majority of the class is the camera control section, and the menu functions in here. We're going to be going through. As I say, all the dials and buttons will be going through all the menu settings and then finally will end with camera operation, which is my suggestion on how to set the camera up for some of the major types of photography. I'll also have a summary of the shortcuts, and this camera has mawr unlabeled shortcuts than any camera on the market that I know of. So those and many of my other recommended settings are in this pdf that comes with the purchase of the classes is the recommended settings here. And what we have in here is I I'm a visual person and I bet you are too. If you're a photographer is. I've laid out the entire menu system on just a couple of pages, and I put all my recommendations as to where a lot of good settings are. I have blank pages so you can write your own end, and then I have, ah, page in here somewhere. Let me see if I can find it at the back. That has recommended settings for different types of photography, like action photography, portrait photography and just general shooting when you're not really sure what your next photo is. Some words of advice on how to set the camera. So this comes with the class, and that would be a good device to have have with you as we go through the class. So let's dive in. So first off, you do get a instruction manual with this camera, and this class is kind of designed to take you through all the most important elements of that instruction manual. But there's still a number of things buried in there that you may need reference foreign, so it's not my hope to cover everything that's in the instruction manual, but it's my hope to cover everything that's important for most photographers doing most things, and I tend to want to concentrate on how to manually control the camera and how to get the highest quality photos from it. Now, this is what is known as a camera class where we're gonna be talking about a camera and it doesn't discuss photography in general, at least for very much of the class. And so, if you are new to photography and you're wanting to get better at it, well, you need to get yourself educated. And if you are interested in some photography classes, I do have a couple of general photography classes, ones kind of short and quick, and gets yet right out the door in just a little bit of time. And that's the photography starter kit for beginners. And for those of you who really want to die then and you like the material, and you like learning as much about photography as you can. The fundamentals of photography is a much more in depth class where we have more time to explore all the important topics of photography. So you might want to take a look at those at creative life like to talk for just a short bit of time about Fuji. They've been around for a long time. Most of us have known Fuji because of their film, which they made a lot of film in the past, back in the days of 35 millimeter. But they've also made a wide variety of films. But what a lot of people don't know is they have a long history of making cameras, and they have a really wide selection of cameras that they've made over the years. I kind of first came to know about them when they made medium format cameras, and they made a lot of different specialty professional cameras, and I think they kind of saw where the mainstream cameras were. And they've been trying to make cameras that fit in different niches around all that mainstream area in the area of digital. It was kind of weird because they took Nikon cameras for a while, modified him with their own sensors because Fuji has a very good color science department, and their sense of sensors and color is very good, and a lot of these people would buy these modified Nikon cameras with Fuji's name on them. You put on Nikon lenses and that's what they had. Obviously, that wasn't gonna work for a very long time, and so they eventually went into their own systems. So they started with this X 100. And people love this retro styled camera that had a lot of modern conveniences. And they're just wishing that they would come out with an interchangeable lens version of that camera, which they did just a short time later. And that's where this whole muralist X system came from. And since then, they have gone back into medium format and are making medium format cameras as well. And so this is kind of their main line of consumer cameras. But a lot of professionals do use thes, but there is also the medium format Syriza's well. Currently, the X Siris of cameras range from entry level affordable cameras very, very small, and it's kind of a little bit unusual refugee, because it's hard to tell what is their top end camera right now. Yeah, it's the X t three, but the X H one and the X Pro two are all equivalent quality cameras. But because Theo, 63 is the newest one, it has the most features If a X H two comes out at some point in the future, it'll probably supersede this one in overall features and capabilities. So they're really targeting different types of users in ways that I haven't seen from other manufacturers. And so they have three, I think, very equivalent cameras, but just marketed to different types of photographers. They've also been coming out with a lot of great lenses, and their lenses are what I would call mid to upper end scale lenses in that they are a little bit more expensive. But they tend to be a little bit higher quality than the average lens from many of the other average manufacturers on. So I think it's it's something that's nice because you get some really good glass with the Fuji system now on the durability, the care in handling of this particular camera, it's got a magnesium alloy body, so it's a very strong body. Of course, they do have quite a bit of weather ceiling in this. It's something that they are not so confident that they're gonna tell you to take it underwater or take it out in the rain. They still expressly say, Do not expose it to water. But I know from personal experience, you know, light rain. A modest amount of water is not gonna be a problem on the camera. Be aware that different lenses have different weather ceiling ability. And so it does depend a little bit on which lens you have on whether you might have a filter on how much water and how long. If it's raining real hard, I would recommend getting a rain cover. All right, hopefully you are ready for this class, and hopefully your camera is ready. And so things that you wanna have to make sure everything's ready to go is you wanna have a charged battery ready for the camera. You'll need a lens on. You want to have a memory card in the camera and then turn the camera on. And the automatic setting for the aperture is a orange A, and it is in different places, depending on which lens you have. But just make sure that is in the A mode and on the shutter speed. If you want to make that a simple is possible for right now, you can just put that into the A mode as well So we have automatic shutters and on the front of the cameras, a little dial that controls the mode of focusing and s stands for single. We'll talk more about this in the class, but that's a good, simple place to begin. And then go ahead and press down on the shutter release and make sure that your cameras working. I'm gonna make sure my camera is doing that. And so let me just set my camera up in the various aids so that everything is nice and simple. Turn it on. Take a look at my, uh, test site over here. Take a photo and see if that came out. All right, It looks like we're doing okay, So we are ready to get started with this class Now, there's one more thing that I want to check on, and that is the firmware. So one of the things about Fuji, more than any other camera company out there is that they do updates on a very regular basis on their cameras. And what's going on is the camera has software that runs it, and just like the software on our computers from time to time, they figure out there's a bug or there's an improvement or feature they can add, and they post a new firmware update that you can go in, download and upload to your camera then and so the way that you can check this on your cameras by pressing the display back button and turning the camera on, and you will get a screen that tells you what your firmware is. And so let's go ahead and do that with my camera here. And so let me turn this around so that you can see what I'm doing. Cameras turned off. I'm gonna press the display back button and turn the camera on and wait for that screen to come on and there we go. And so if you are watching this class somewhere down the road from when I actually am recording this, there might be newer firmware. But as of the date of this recording, the latest firmware on this is 2.10 and small updates would be like 2. and then a kind of a medium sized one might be 2.2, and then they do something major than they would call it 3.0, and keep going from there. And so if you do not have this, you may want to go to Fuji's website and download the newest software and then just turn the camera off. So, as I say, if you do not have that or you would like to check to make sure that you do have the most current software, what you want to dio is get on your computer and look up Fuji Firmware table. That's the easiest look up words that I have found that will get you to the current software for it. You download the software to your computer, you put it on a memory card, and then you put the memory card in the camera and then use that same system of hitting the display back. But in turning the camera on the camera will then recognize that there is software on the card and it will upload it and will usually take a few minutes. And so make sure you have a full battery charge when you are doing that. And so get your camera updated with latest firmware so that you're ready for the rest of this class.