Lessons

Lesson Info

Menu Functions: Shooting Setting Page 1

We're onto our third tab in the menu, and this is dealing with shooting settings. And so actually this entire section is on the camera, and taking photos. And so the first one is a bit of a rabbit hole if you will. There's a lot of little menus within menus in here, and the drive setting controls what happens when you change the different settings on the drive dial up on the top left of the camera. So first in here is the bracket settings. And so, in here we have different types of bracket that we can select. Auto exposure bracketing, the top option, is the most common of all of these, as we've talked about before. So that's the one most people are gonna select. If you do choose auto-exposure bracketing, there's a lot of different ways that you can do auto-exposure bracketing, so we dive into another submenu here. And this option allows us to change the number of frames that we are taking, and their exposure difference from shot to shot. So a traditional basic bracket setting would be ...

three steps, one stop apart. But many people are doing a little bit greater now so they can use it in a wider variety of ways. So perhaps a five step bracket, one stop apart, or maybe three steps at two stops apart. So there's a lot of different options in here for those of you who want to make sure you get the right exposure, or you're using this to accumulate them later on with HDR images. And so, we'll go all the way up to nine frames if you want to in this regard. One frame or continuous will describe when you are taking the photos, do you want to take one photo at a time, or do you want them just to all be taken as quickly as possible? In general when you're doing bracketing, you want them to be taken as quick as possible so that they're all under the exact same conditions and lighting. But in some cases, you actually need to time something very particularly, and so that's when you would choose one frame. But continuous is what most people prefer in this case. The sequence setting normally shoots the normal exposure first, and then the lighter and darker images after it. A lot of people who do like to bracket find this confusing when you end up with a whole page of images that are lighter and darker. It's hard to figure out, where did this start, where did it end? And so shooting from bright to darkest, or darkest to brightest is a simple option that'll look a lot easier when you look at the film strip of all the images that you shot for the day, if you shoot multiple brackets. So that is dealing with the fine-tuning of the auto-exposure bracketing options. With the ISO bracketing, you can choose how much the ISO is adjusted between the three bracket shots. Same thing with the film simulation. You can go in and you can choose which films you use in the three different bracket shots in film simulation. White balance bracketing will also have an amount of how much you want to vary that particular amount. Once again, these ISO and film simulation bracket, and white balance bracketing, these are all for JPEG only, and something that not a lot of users are going to use in my opinion. Next up, the continuous high speed burst. So this is where you can change from eight to 11, to 14 frames a second. Be reminded that if you want to get to the 11 frames, you need to either be using the electronic shutter, or you need to be using the vertical grip. And 14 frames a second is only available with an electronic shutter only. The continuous low speed can be changed from three, four, and five. The advanced filter setting, you get to choose which filters you want to use in here. And so, this is which one will be selected first when you move it to the advanced setting with that Mode dial. So that is our drive setting. Next up, self-timer. We saw this before in the quick menu. Two, 12, and off. Reminder that that turns off when you turn off the camera. The interval timer shooting is a fun feature to use when you want to speed up time. And so the idea here is to find something that'll look interesting when it's speeded up, and oftentimes weather, traffic, people moving around, those can be very interesting things. So you'll be able to select the number of frames. What's gonna happen is you're gonna shoot a whole bunch of frames, and then you're gonna need to use an external program to put this all together. So usually there's a number of different video programs that you can use to put these individual photos into a final video. First one of these two time lapses was done on a slider. This one was done with a little post production pan move, or at least zoom move to zoom out and show you more as it went along. Now one of the things I found about the Fujis is that they have a lot more shutter speeds than most other cameras. What happens with most cameras, if you were to put them into some sort of automated time lapse mode, where the camera is controlling the exposure, the camera will shoot it one shutter speed, and then the next shutter speed as it gets a little darker, and it does this kind of stair step as you are getting a little bit darker in the shooting. And you're gonna notice this as notable jumps in brightness when you watch your final time lapse. What happens with the Fuji is they tend to use more of these incremental shutter speeds, so as to get you a straighter line as the light is changing. And so, if you are working with time lapses in settings where the light is changing, like in this sunset photo, or sunset video here of Seattle, the video seems to be a little bit smoother than with most other brands of cameras. Next up is the shutter type. This is where things can get a little complicated, so we'll take this one step at a time. The camera normally uses a mechanical shutter, and on previous Fuji cameras, they've given you the option of using an electronic shutter, which is no mechanical moves, it's just the sensor turning on and off. And now we have many more options and combinations of options in here, so let me explain what's going on. So in front of the sensor, we have a shutter. We have a first curtain, and we have a second curtain. And the mechanical shutter works in the basic way that we've described at the beginning of this class, is that the first shutter closes, the sensor then receives the light. The downside to this is that the shutter opens and sometimes causes a little bit of vibration before the picture is taken. And so there's a possible vibration when using a mechanical shutter. With this camera I really haven't seen any sort of real problem with that, but it is possible, all right? We also do have a normal traditional camera sound of the shutter clicking open and closed here. Now the next option is the electronic shutter, and this is where there is no physical moving, it's the sensor scanning and turning on. And the way the modern sensors do it is they don't just turn all the pixels on and off, they are not able to do that at this time. They basically turn on one row of pixels, and then turn it off and turn the next row on, and it's the scanning process. And each individual pixel is on for a very short period of time, but the entire scanning process takes a little bit of time. I estimate it somewhere around 1/20 of a second. So anything that's moving across the frame is likely to get distorted, because it's being recorded at different times, at different places on the sensor. And so it's not a system that works real well with action. Now there is a third option, which is kind of a half and half option. In this case, it's using an electronic first curtain shutter, which the electronic first curtain can move very, very quickly as opposed to the second electronic shutter curtain. So in this case what happens is it electronically starts the exposure, and then mechanically ends the exposure. And this is a system that's kind of a good compromise between the two. Now, the electronic shutter does have a problem of distortion with moving subjects. And so I shot a test chart, and what I did is I panned the camera left and right as I was shooting this test chart, and what happens with the electronic shutter is you can see that there's kind of a warping effect that you get. And it's not just that you're at a not fast enough shutter speed, because you can use an even after shutter speed and get the exact same effect, because of that scan time. What ends up happening in the real world is that as you're panning with a car coming down the street, you'll notice that buildings in the background take a certain lean onto them because of this distortion. A bicycle riding in front of you, you will notice that the wheels are not exactly round anymore, and that's because of this distortion of the electronic shutter. And so, the electronic shutter does have some advantages, is that you can use very fast shutter speeds for controlling light. So if you're taking a portrait and you need a really fast shutter speed, but your subject is not moving that fast, it can really help out shooting with very fast lenses. It is silent photography, so if there's a situation where you need to be absolutely silent, perhaps in a playhouse or at a wedding, or in a courtroom, or in any place where you want to be truly silent, that is an advantage of this. It's vibration free, so if you're working from a telescope, or a high magnification lens, that will help you get even sharper images. Now there's a lot of downsides. The main thing is the distorted subjects, and then there's a bunch of limitations as to what you can do on the camera. And so I'm not gonna read through all of these, but there are a lot of different things that are not available when you are in this electronic shutter. So it is something that you only want to use under certain circumstances. So if we were to look at the shutter speeds that are available, from 1/32,000 of a second down to 15 seconds, the mechanical shutter will cover most everything, everything up to 1/8000 of a second. And this is gonna be good for general photography. Now, if you want, you can use the electronic front curtain shutter, and that's gonna reduce the lag time, it's gonna reduce the noise and vibration, and there's really nothing wrong with using the electronic front curtain shutter. So that is a very good option to use in most cases. The electronic shutter can control all the shutter speeds and get up to those extra fast shutter speeds, but does have those little caveats when you are using it. So you have three different types of shutters that you can choose, and we also have options where the camera will automatically switch from one to the other. So the mechanical shutter is great, because it goes up to 1/8000 of a second. You can use flash with it, and it's just your normal operation. The electronic shutter is good when you want to be silent, but there are possible distortion, other problems, and you cannot use flash with it. The E-front curtain shutter is a good general purpose shutter. Short shutter lag, you can use flash with it, and speeds up to 1/1000 of a second. So those are the three main types of shutters, but then they have combinations where you can add them up. So for instance, you can use a mechanical plus an electronic shutter, which uses a mechanical shutter up to 1/8000 of a second, and only if you need a 16 or a 1/32000 of a second does it switch into electronic shutter, and so that's pretty good for those people that have the 56 1.2 lens, and they want to shoot a portrait in bright sunlight at f/1.2. They're probably gonna need f/6, or the 1/16, 1/16000 of a second, or 1/32000 of a second for that. The E-front curtain plus mechanical shutter will use electronic front curtain shutter up to 1/2000 of a second, and then use the mechanical shutter curtain up to 1/8000 of a second. It's possible you might get a little bit of distortion with that, but it's a pretty good general purpose selection. We have e-front curtain plus mechanical plus electronic shutter on this one. So it's using all three, and it just switches off and changes at different timings in here. So, depending on your needs, you would choose whichever one you want. Now, just to give you a little demo on this, let me give you a sound difference. We're gonna do a little mic check here on the sound level difference between these. So let me just get my camera setup for this. Just a moment. Okay, so we're gonna shoot with, let's see, let me get my settings here, a standard mechanical shutter. I just want to make sure I got the mechanical shutter. So I am also, okay I'm gonna take an extra moment and I'm gonna turn off the beeping. Well no, I don't need to turn off the beeping of the focus. I will just manually focus. There's always another way around this. So, here is your standard mechanical shutter, I'll fire it a couple times. (clicking) It is very, very quiet. Okay so let's change it to an electronic front curtain shutter, so this is the electronic first part, mechanical second. E-front curtain shutter. And let's lean in, get the mic. (clicking) Still quiet, not that much difference than the mechanical shutter. And now I'm gonna change it into the electronic shutter here. And what I'm gonna do here is I'm actually going to make a small, let's see we're on f/8. I'm going to point the camera directly at you, so that you can see in the camera. I'm gonna see if we can see the aperture in here, let's see. I'm gonna see if I can get this positioned. Oh, let's zoom it back, there we go. Now you can see it in here, so now you can see the aperture closing down, and here we go. Oh, I have the shutter sound turned on, and so what I am gonna do, that's not the actual sound. And so what I am gonna do is I'm gonna go in and adjust something that we're gonna get to in a little bit, and that is the sound setup. And I am gonna turn the shutter volume off. Okay, because that's the artificial one. So let's see if I can see, where is our shutter? There we go, lock it in here. So the only sound that you're hearing is the aperture closing down. (clicking) Now if I was to change my settings to open up my aperture, so that it's not closing down, listen what happens when I take a picture. No sound at all, and each of those is taking a photograph, and it's not doing any sound at all. And so if you want absolutely no sound, you can't have the aperture stopping down, but to be honest with you, that aperture stopping down is really, really, really quiet. All right, so lots of different options. Experiment with this, see which works best for you. The mechanical shutter is fine for most of the time. I have a feeling somebody's gonna write in with a question, and so I don't know that I can really answer it is, usually cameras are rated by their shutter life, how long the shutter, how many times the shutter fires is how long the camera lasts. Because that's kind of like the thing that moves the most and the first thing that's likely to break down. I have not heard from any definitive source that putting the camera in the electronic shutter makes your camera last any longer. But it certainly would make sense that it's gonna make the shutter last a lot longer. So, I think maybe that electronic front curtain shutter is gonna be the new system for most Fuji users. All right, next up, flicker reduction. This deals with fluorescent lights that have a flicker to them, which is all fluorescent lights. They change in brightness and darkness over the period of one second, 120 times. And if you were to shoot at 14 frames per second, you're gonna get kind of a random selection of darker and brighter images, because of this flickering due to the fluorescent lights. So what the camera does is it monitors these brightness levels, and will time the camera so that it shoots at the maximum peak brightness so that it is consistent and as bright as possible. And so anyone who has shot in a gymnasium or indoor environment that has these fluctuating lights in them, has found that it is a very, very difficult situation to work with, because you have to adjust all your images in post-production. And so if you are in that situation, you would probably want to leave this turned on. But, if you're not gonna be in those situations, it can affect how fast your camera shoots in the motor drive. So, you might want to leave it off unless you're the type of person that shoots in those indoor environments under flickering lights. ISO auto setting, and so the camera has three different auto modes that you can quickly choose from, and you get to set the parameters in each of these auto modes, so that you can kind of have it setup for different types of environments. Now the aspects that you can change in here, one is the default sensitivity of, what would you prefer the camera to be at if it could be at anything? And 200 is a good place to start for most things. What is the maximum sensitivity you want the camera to go up to? And this is depending on your criteria of what you think is acceptable for what you're shooting. I think 12,000 is still pretty good on this camera. And then, what is the minimum shutter speed? So you could choose a specific shutter speed, or you could choose Auto, and in Auto what it does is it looks at the focal length of the lens you have and will adjust it. If it's a longer lens, it will typically choose a faster shutter speed, and if it's a wider lens, it'll be a little bit slower shutter speed, because that's appropriate for the type of action and how steady you would be able to hold the camera in that situation. And so, you can set three different of these Auto modes up, and you can quickly change between them when you change your auto ISO setting. The IS mode in the camera has three options. One is being off, continuous, and shooting only. Most people will have the camera in the continuous mode, where when they have the camera turned on, and they have their finger halfway down, the system will be working. The shooting mode only turns on the stabilization system, only when you are shooting the photo. It saves a little bit of battery power, and for some people depending on the type of lens and how they're framing up their subject, might be easier on their eyes. I prefer to leave it in continuous. I find it a little bit easier to compose my subjects on there. So the stabilization system in here is a five-axis stabilization with the sensor. It's working on multiple different levels. You can use it with a variety of lenses, whether they have their own stabilization system, the OIS from Fuji, or not. How much stabilization you get depends not so much on the lens itself, but how much coverage that lens has in there, and in many cases the prime lenses will give you the most amount of coverage. And so the camera sensor is able to move the maximum amount to give you the maximum amount of stabilization. And so here you can see on this list right now on screen how many stops of stabilization you get with the current lens selection from Fuji. And so, in some cases it's a little bit more, in some cases it's a little bit less. Next up, mount adapter setting. If you do want to use the Fuji adapter for Leica lenses, there's a button on the side of this. You can also come in here into the menu, and you can tell which lens you are using. Then that information is passed forward to the metadata of each of the images that you're shooting. So it's kind of nice that if you put on a 28 millimeter lens, that information will be added into the metadata so when you go look in Lightroom or other programs, what lens did you have on your camera? That information is passed forward, but you do have to manually select that each time you change a lens on the camera.