Lesson Info
6. Top Deck: Metering
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:48 2Camera Overview
12:06 3Photo Basics
06:03 4Top Deck: Overview
04:23 5Top Deck: Exposure Control
27:35 6Top Deck: Metering
07:17 7Top Deck: Drive Mode
21:01 8Camera Controls: Viewfinder Display
09:26Backside: Playback
08:50 10Backside: Auto Exposure Lock and Focus
10:04 11Backside: Quick Menu Custom Settings
04:35 12Quick Menu: AF Mode
08:27 13Quick Menu: Dynamic Range & White Balance
04:35 14Quick Menu: Noise, Image Size, Film Sim & Color
13:49 15Quick Menu: Self Timer, Face Detection & Flash
05:21 16Function Button of Fuji X-T2
12:08 17Left & Right Side of Fuji X-T2
06:51 18Bottom of Fuji X-T2
09:40 19Front of Fuji X-T2
05:50 20Fuji Lenses
07:37 21Q&A
02:38 22Camera Menu Overview
02:56 23Image Quality Settings
18:04 24Auto Focus and Manual Focus Menus
20:50 25Shooting Settings
19:13 26Flash Mode
08:18 27Movie Mode
05:09 28Camera Menu Q&A
02:53 29Set-Up Menu: Basics
01:38 30Demo: Add Items to My Menu
03:26 31User Setting: Sensor Cleaning and Sounds
04:39 32Screen Set-Up
07:36 33Button Dial Setting & Power Management
12:06 34Save Data Set-Up & Connection Setting
07:59 35Playback Menu
08:52 36Camera Operation Overview
14:30 37Firmware Addendum
30:43Lesson Info
Top Deck: Metering
Next up on the top of the camera is the function one button. This camera has a lot of function buttons and this is the first of them. A function button is any button that you can reprogram to do something else. To start with, this is the face and eye detection options so when you press this button you're going to get a little menu of options where you can leave this feature turned off. That's a good default position to be in, I think, to begin with. You can do where it's looking for faces or it's actually looking for the right eye or the left eye which I recommend if you have a single person in the frame. That way it's actually going to look for the focus of the eye, not just maybe the nose or something else, a hair or anything else on the face. So this is a really good way of automatically focusing on faces. Overall I'm not a huge fan of face and eye detection. It depends on how many people you're shooting. Once you've put more than one person in the frame it can get a little crazy on...
where it might go and you may not want it to go where it happens to be going. But with a single person in the frame it is a very accurate way of focusing and for anyone that has one of the portrait style lenses like the 56 f/1.2 or 50 f/2 or any of the zooms where you have a shallower depth of field this can really help you nail focus. If you don't want to keep moving an individual focusing point this is a system that some people really, really like so it's an option that some people never use so you can decide whether it's a useful feature or not. If you don't use it, we can reprogram this function button to do something completely different. We're gonna talk more about these function buttons when we get into the setup menu but you can see the list on screen on the far left. There are a lot of different things that you can program into this particular feature. Whatever it is that you like to access on a regular basis. You do that by going into the setup menu, finding the button/dial setting, and then going to the function setting, selecting the function one and then choosing which option you want for that particular button. Take a good look through those see which ones you would likely use on a regular basis. And we'll, once again, get back into this in the menu section of the class. On the top of the camera, it's kind of hard to see in this photo, but you'll see it on your camera, there's a couple little tiny dots there, those are the stereo microphones. They're not the world's greatest microphones, but they're better than nothing for the video that you're going to shoot. We'll talk more about video in a little bit. There's a little UFO or Saturn symbol on the side and that is the location of the sensor in the camera. There are some people who are doing special types of photography where they need to measure the distance from the image plane to the subject and if you're one of those people, that's where you're gonna be measuring to. We have the hot shoe on the top of the camera and this is of course where we can plug in a number of accessories. The camera actually comes supplied with the EF-X8 which is a very low powered flash. It's kind of in lieu of the fact that this camera does not have a pop-up flash on it. The guide number is eight which is a pretty low number as far as power but it's nice for a little fill flash if you're doing a portrait. The main flash most of the XT-2 users are gonna be interested in is the X500. This is a relatively new flash from Fuji. It's much more powerful, guide number of 164. It's got zoom and bounce capabilities, it's got remote capabilities if you have multiple of these flashes. And it has an LED light on the front that you can use for a couple of different purposes. Fuji has a number of other flashes that all work, they all work perfectly fine, they're fully TTL as far as the communication, they were very easily. But I think most people are gonna wanna go with either the X500 or the X8 that comes with the camera. They just offer the most number of features. Something that's kind of an interesting little side note is that if you have Canon cameras or if you want to be able to get this flash off the system the Canon OC-E3 which is their off camera shoe will transmit Fuji TTL data because Fuji put their communication pins in exactly the same location as the Canon pins. Now unfortunately for flashes like the EF-X which need power the cord does not supply power to the flash and so it's only gonna be useful with other flashes other than the X8. If you do have that laying around because you used to shoot Canon or you continue to shoot Canon, you have two systems, you can use that if you wanna get your flash off camera. Alright, still on the top of the camera but kind of working our way around to the back side are a couple of little dials below the shutter speed and the ISO dial there's little levers on the front that some people have a little bit of a hard time getting to but they're designed to be not changed too easily. So if we look at the back camera from a slightly different angle over the right hand side we have our metering options. So let's take a look at what we have in metering. We have four different options depending on where we put this dial and each of these does a different type of metering system. So, first off on the left we have a spot metering system. What spot is is a highly centralized area of reading the light, it's about 2% of the frame. Unfortunately there isn't a little circle that shows you where it is, it's just right in the middle, it's very very tight. But what is really nice is if you go into the interlock spot AE & focus area settings you can get the spot meter to be exactly that little square that you are using for focusing. It's incredibly accurate so that way you can actually see where you are doing that spot metering. There is the traditional center weighted metering which is a large area in the center and this is what cameras were like in the 70s and the 80s for the most part and it works for some people, it's not something that I personally use but it's nice that they threw it on here for the legacy reasons everything else is so retro, if you want retro metering that is the way to go. What most people use is the multi segment system of 256 boxes. What they do here is it compares, it's essentially 256 spot meters that are smartly averaged. So what's going on here is it looks for highlights and sees how many boxes it's in. Then it knows how to weight the exposure and it does a tremendous job. We have a new one from the XT- and this is just an average meter over the entire area. You might find for certain types of subjects one metering system does a better job than the other. For most people in the typical usage, you're gonna wanna probably leave it in the multi because it does such a good job at understanding areas of lightness and shadows and averaging the entire scene together so that would be the default position I can see potentially jumping over to the spot meter from time to time or maybe the average meter.
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Ratings and Reviews
John Simpson
I highly recommend this class! Been shooting Nikon for 40+ years and decided to give my Nikon gear to my daughter and go the smaller and lighter Fuji X-T2 for travel. Excellent camera and this course was outstanding in helping me learn how to use the camera. I have watched a number of Nikon oriented instructional videos. This video by John Greengo is the best organized and informative presentation I have ever watched.
a Creativelive Student
Really appreciate John putting these Fast Start Series together. Went through part of the training waiting on my Fujifilm X-T20 to arrive, which did today. That allowed me to dive into the menu settings and get the camera ready to use. I found that we are on Firmware 3.0, so, I have some updates to get installed. The training was great and informative as always. Don't hesitate to look for his Fast Start for your particular camera, and the in-depth training on Photography Fundamentals. It is well worth your time and money to get this training, especially if you are an amateur like myself, but, thanks to John Greengo I am quickly learning to use my camera in Manual Mode, most of the time.
Monroe Nevels
We all learn from different methods. I, for one, learn best by watching you while teaching, and being able to work along side you, with my camera in hand, and then follow you. I highly recommend this class if you really want to know how to use your camera. Thank you John for helping me to relive my film days, and integrating into Digital. I now have my Fujo X-T2 programmed and I LOVE IT!
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