Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Overview

Let's start with the fact that the camera does come with a fairly lengthy instruction manual. I warn you right now, I have downloaded a couple different versions online and one of 'em was the worst instruction manual I ever saw because they would have lines pointing to parts on the camera and it would say like number, part number one, part number two, and then like down in the descriptions they would be labeled a, b, c, d. So, make sure that you download the correct instruction manual of the correct version. If not, do some more searching to try to find the right one. Gonna take you about 11 hours to go through that instruction manual. This class, I expect to be somewhere in the range of around five hours. It is impossible for me to cover every detail that is in that instruction manual. I'm gonna be concentrating on features that most photographers are interested in. I'm concerned with how do I get the highest quality pictures outta the camera? How do I manually operate it? How do I us...

e the automatic controls? I'm not so concerned about every detail about how to print from the camera or do slideshows. There's some other things that you may wanna dig into the instruction manual for reference. This class will hopefully, mostly, completely replace the need for diving into that manual. I've gone through it page by page to try to squeeze out every relevant fact and I have tried to put that in this class. Now, this is a class on the Fuji X-T2 camera in particular. If you're interested in learning about shutter speeds and apertures, that's more of a photography class and there are a number of other classes. I have a three hour basics class for somebody who wants to dive in just to the shallow end. And for those of you who really wanna get into it, I have a 27 hour in-depth series of lectures on this. And for somebody who's really into photography that wants to get the most out of it, take a look at that class. It's a very popular class and it's gonna teach you pretty much everything you need to know for heading off in whatever direction of photography you want to go. And those are all available, of course, here at Creative Live. You can just go in and do a search for my last name, Greengo. G-R-E-E-N-G-O. And you'll find all my classes and those classes listed there. All right, so Fuji's been around for quite sometime. They, of course, were notable for their film, which is actually why the name of the company is Fujifilm, which still seems a little bit weird in the digital age here. They started making lenses and optical glass in the 1940's and then they got into starting to make cameras. And so, around late 60s, they were making medium format cameras. And if you've been paying attention to what they've introduced lately, that makes perfect sense. They were into medium format cameras. They have been for quite sometime. In the 80s and 90s, they were making a variety of different cameras. They had some 35 millimeter SLR's. But they made a number of very interesting professional medium format cameras that fit a variety of different niches. And so, they had really good lenses, but they fit kind of oddball niches of the world. And then, when the age of digital came around, they didn't have a lens lineup. And so what they did is they bought Nikon cameras. They modified 'em with their own sensor, which by the way had really good color. People who did portrait photography loved these cameras. Portrait studios loved these cameras. They used Nikon lenses. They were Nikon modified bodies, but they were quirky. Some of the early ones, you would have a battery for the camera, and you would have a battery for the back, which was a little unusual, cause you had two different batteries you had to maintain in there. And eventually, that era stopped and that's when they decided to make their own series. And this kinda gotta soft introduction with the X-100. It's a point two camera, fairly large sensor, very good quality lens, and some nice serious controls. They took that experience and they built the X-Pro 1, their first interchangeable lens camera. And this introduced the new X mount system. And what is kinda notable about this is it's really the only digital camera on the market today that was fully designed from the ground up, the size of the sensor, to be a digital camera. If you think about all the Nikons and Canons, those were all film based. And then they've kinda modified all of their stuff from there. So it's really a great system in the sense that they thought about this early on and they've designed it as a complete working system. And they are expanding and taking things further and further all the time now. And recently they just introduced their first medium format camera. And so they wanted to come in at an aggressive price range, and this looks to be a good camera. Am I going to do a class on this camera? It is undecided at this point. I want to. And I have a long list of other classes to do but this looks like an interesting camera that I think I might like to get my hands on and so, we're gonna put it into the maybe to yes category at this point. The Fujifilm camera system encompasses some pretty basic level cameras up to the more serious cameras. They have a growing collection of lenses that are very high quality. There does seem to be a very dedicated base of photographers who are using the Fuji cameras. So, if you were to look at the series of cameras that they currently have, kinda the big difference in my mind, is the type of viewfinder they have. Now, of course, there's lots of feature differences as you go from model to model, but the X-T has the largest best electronic viewfinder of the group. The X-Pro 2, you know with the pro in there, you gotta think that's the top of the line. That has a unique hybrid finder, which is a whole different thing and I do have a full dedicated class on the X-Pro 2. Now, the X-T20, which recently came out, I will have a class on that one and that looks to be a good junior version of this camera. So, if you are looking for a second camera, and you like your X-T2, you might wanna take a look at the X-T because it's gonna offer a lot of the same features, not all of 'em, but many of the same features in a slightly smaller, slightly lighter weight camera. If you read through the instruction manual, there are some funny things in the warnings. One of my favorite is do not use the camera while walking or driving. So you must stop for shooting photos. Do not use this camera in the bathroom or shower, I think is really good too. And, of course, injury could result by those struck by the ejected card. It's spring-loaded and you can actually, if you do it right, the card will spring outta there like toast coming out of a toaster. So, be careful, don't hit yourself in the eye. Obviously, just don't be stupid with it. Now, the camera is dust-proof and splash-proof. And it's got 63 different weather seals and I've heard some pretty amazing stories about getting this camera very wet and not having any problems. Having said that, there are lenses that are weather sealed and some that are not. If you do get it wet, you might wanna be aware of which lenses are sealed and which ones are not. And despite the fact that it has all these weather sealings and they taut it as an all-weather type, splash-proof camera, they have a little provision in their instruction manual, fairly small print, and it says do not use near water. And so, they're probably not gonna fix the camera under warranty if it does get wet, so you do have to be reasonable about the precautions you take. If you were gonna be shooting a football game outside in the rain for the next three hours, I would probably get a rain cover. I don't think it is that sealed that it would handle a heavy rain for three hours. A light rain for half an hour, probably so, make sure you have those weather-sealed lenses on there to complete the sealing around the lens mount. All right, let's make sure that your camera's ready for today's class. You wanna have a charged and installed battery. It takes about two and a half hours to charge it on the standard charger. You'll need a lens on your camera. You wanna put a memory card in there. We'll take some practice pictures. Turn the camera on. There's a number of different lenses that have different controls, but a lot of 'em will have an A setting for the aperture. You either turn the aperture ring or there'll actually be a switch on the lens. And you can go ahead and flip that into A and I'll do the same thing on my camera right now. On your shutter speed dial, there'll be an A setting, which means that shutter speeds will automatically be set for you. And then, on the front of the camera is your focusing switch and you can set that to S for single-focus, which means the camera will focus and then stop. And then you can press half way down to focus and press all the way down to take a picture. I'm gonna turn my camera on and make sure that my camera is indeed, working. Yes, it is. And so, I am ready and hopefully you are ready for the rest of the class. Fuji does a lot of Firmware updates. And I am doing this class with a X-T2 running Firmware version 1. and I would bet really good money that at some point in the future, they're gonna make a change to the Firmware and it's gonna be a higher number than this. And they might have made some changes. If there is a significant change, I will come back and add a little video addendum that goes over those changes. But if it's a really small change, like they changed the spelling in one of the languages of the menus, I'm not gonna come back and do a class for that. And so, here's where we're gonna get into something that you wanna pay attention to throughout the rest of the class. And that is this little shortcut sign. And that means there's a secret shortcut that enables you to turn something on or off. And what we're gonna look at here is how to check the Firmware on your camera. You press the display/back button, hold it in while you turn the camera on, and you will get this screen that shows you what Firmware your body and your lens is running. So, I'm gonna do that with my camera here now, so let me get it positioned up for you. And I got my camera turned off. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna press and hold down on the display button while I turn the camera on. And now you can see I'm running version 1.10. I have just in case you're wondering, I have the 18 to 55 lens on, which is currently at version 3.21. They've made some autofocus improvements on the lens and a few other little updates as well, which is why it's not at 1.0. So don't worry too much about the lens version right now. We're gonna talk about that when we get to the lenses. But if you are at 1.0, you can go to Fuji's site and update it. And so we just, to turn this off, you just turn the camera back off and the you can turn back on. All right. So, if you do need to update your Firmware now or in the future, let me give you a little brief on how to do that. You're gonna need to go to Fuji's website. Actually, I find it easiest if you do a Google search for Fuji Firmware Table, then you can see the list of all the Firmware. You're gonna download the software onto a memory card, put the memory card in the camera. Use slot one, that's closer to the back of the camera. And then go through the same operation of hitting the display/back while turning the camera on. The camera will then recognize that there is new Firmware on the card and then you'll have a couple of okay buttons to press to go ahead and do this. So, something to make sure of when you do this is don't have any pictures on your memory card. You should format it in the Fuji X-T2 camera, then put it in a jump drive or install it in your computer before you download the software onto that card. And so, it's something you wanna keep a check on cause Fuji tends to do a lot of these and so, I don't know, maybe every six months to every year, they have some new little addition. In some cases they're actually adding in new features that you didn't get when you bought the camera and they're doing this for free. All you have to do is spend the five minutes downloading the software and updating the Firmware.