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30 Comments

  1. Scott Bennett
    December 1, 2016 @ 3:46 am

    Robert, thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough article. The best one I’ve seen regarding Fuji X settIngs.

    Reply

    • Robert Clark
      December 5, 2016 @ 12:02 am

      Scott: Thanks so much! I hope it was able to help you with your shooting and settings.

      Bob

      Reply

  2. Wayne Dapper Wilkins
    December 4, 2016 @ 3:48 pm

    Robert, a great article, well written, well explained thoroughly enjoyed reading it (a few time, to help it stick). One question, looking at many of your landscape images, how can you setup an image on flip screen if it’s dark? Hopefully not too stupid a question

    Reply

    • Robert Clark
      December 5, 2016 @ 12:16 am

      Wayne: NO its a great question! Low light use with the EVF and the LV screen can be a bit grainy but I usually do not have issues until I am outside of civil twilight. As far as focus goes I have learned the hyper focus point on my lenses and can set these without much fuss. As the light comes up a bit I can switch to using the focus distance scale that I mention in the article. Once I have something set I go ahead and make a test shot and can look at both the composition and the focus, and if necessary make a few adjustments in both, before making the final images. The captured image on the LV screen comes in nice and clean and coupled with the histogram informs my exposure decisions moving forward. It is a far cry easier than my days shooting with a 4×5, lol. Hopefully this helps. Drop me a note if you have more questions or thoughts on the set-up. Thanks again for stopping by.

      Bob

      Reply

      • Wayne Dapper Wilkins
        December 5, 2016 @ 2:35 pm

        I will drop you a note, quite a few questions.
        Thank you so very much
        Wayne

        Reply

  3. Gary Munson
    December 4, 2016 @ 7:13 pm

    Great write up Robert, one the most informative and intuitive explanations of the fuji x system to date . Your power of “T” section just makes the fuji camera more comfortable to use for me than i had initially realised.

    Reply

    • Robert Clark
      December 5, 2016 @ 12:04 am

      Thanks so much Gary. So glad the article helped you out. I can tell you that when I figured out the “T” and how it could speed up my process I was hooked. I think that is a stroke of genius from the Fuji engineers and another case on how they think about photographers. Thanks again.

      Bob

      Reply

  4. Richard Wedekind
    December 6, 2016 @ 4:59 am

    Hi Robert
    I see you have an X-Pro2 and X-T2 in your camera bag at the same time and you say both cameras are set up the same way.
    I’d be interested to hear what your thinking is when you select one camera over the other as there doesn’t seem to be an obvious subject bias between the post examples i.e. there are landscape, street and portrait photos taken with both cameras.
    Do you have a particular lens always on one camera over the other?
    Cheers
    Richard

    Reply

  5. Jase1125
    January 10, 2017 @ 3:17 am

    This is great info. I shoot largely the same, but picked up a few tips. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

  6. Steven Wetherbee
    April 2, 2017 @ 5:27 pm

    Hi Robert, Thank you for all of the great information I love this camera. I was wondering if you might share your shadow, highlights and other settings in the Q menu. Thanks again!!!
    Kind regards,
    Steven

    Reply

  7. David Julian
    May 1, 2017 @ 6:50 am

    Robert, The “T” and Front Command Dial method of choosing SS is fast and really helpful. Lots of good ideas here!

    Reply

  8. Robert Blesse
    May 24, 2017 @ 5:51 pm

    Many thanks. This was very helpful to me, in particular the parts about setting up for landscape.

    Reply

  9. DALVINDER
    July 5, 2017 @ 9:59 pm

    Wonderful article, i use some of the methods you have mentioned already, but require more practice. The whole article was beautifully written and a pleasure to read. Thank you.

    Reply

  10. Rodrigo Pereira
    July 10, 2017 @ 12:55 am

    What a detailed, helpful and well written article, and with great photo work to match. Inspirational, thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  11. Nuno
    August 2, 2017 @ 1:01 pm

    Hi Robert,
    Thank you for sharing your knowledge, this may seem nothing but it’s a precious help for beginners like me.
    I have been reading from other sources and one thing I found common was they all set the Noise Reduction to -3 or -4 but you seem to prefer setting it to 0. Can you please uncover a little bit more about this ?
    Again, many thanks for the time you spent sharing your knowledge.

    Reply

    • Robert Clark
      June 6, 2018 @ 10:55 pm

      Nuno: It is important to understand that settings, such as NR, applied to through your menus will only effect the JPEG images. So amounts of contrast, sharpening, etc will also effect those images. It will not effect RAW captured files. I almost never shoot in JPEG Mode, preferring to shoot RAW for maximum capture of data. So I keep a lot of these settings at 0 as it is an unnecessary step for me. But if you are shooting more in JPEG than I would suggest shooting some test images with the various settings and see which you prefer. These can then be set up as specific user profiles in your camera. Thanks so much.
      Bob

      Reply

  12. ishootyou
    August 7, 2017 @ 12:33 pm

    Adobe RGB? Why on earth? Unless your entire post production chain is able to display Adobe RGB not using sRGB is a huge mistake as it will result in wrong colors and contrast. Especially beginners reading this will end up in trouble so better correct that in your article.
    Then Auto-WB: another hige trouble-causer! Never use Auto-WB because then every-single-shot will have a different WB. This will wreak havoc when trying to get matching skin tones in a photo series! It is always better to set WB to a fixed value as then all corrections will have to be made just ONCE as they will apply for all shots.
    It’s great you took the time to share this but sharing wrong or misleading information is of no help really…

    Reply

    • The good Doctor
      November 8, 2017 @ 6:18 pm

      I had the same thoughts you did about sRGB vs Adobe RGB. Auto-WB won’t matter (much) assuming RAW using Lightroom as you can ‘sync’ WB across a series of photos. If you are shooting JPG only, setting WB for scene is more predictable and should result in quicker post processing.

      Reply

    • John DiJulio
      January 19, 2018 @ 7:48 pm

      sRGB is only good for output to web. Since Adobe RGB is a large color space, why not shoot in that and then convert down to sRGB before editing if you know your output is web? Why would you limit yourself from the start to work with the smaller color space if you can easily convert after.

      I agree that auto wb is a bad idea in pretty much any situation where you’ll want to edit a series.

      Reply

      • ishootyou
        January 19, 2018 @ 8:05 pm

        Shooting in Adobe RGB only makes sense when your entire post production chain is capable of displaying that color space. Even the most recent iMacs can only cover <80% of Adobe RGB. There is no such thing as a "conversion" from Adobe RGB to sRGB - this isn't to be seen as downscaling 4k to 1080p which comes with huge benefits. When saving an Adobe RGB file in sRGB mode, you are cutting off (and losing) those parts of the color spectrum.

        Reply

        • John DiJulio
          January 19, 2018 @ 8:27 pm

          Right so why start smaller and stay smaller. Why not shoot in the larger color space that is capable of displaying all colors sRGB can and then cut off those edges if you plan on only displaying for web.

          I think telling people to start in the smallest color space possible just so that their monitors can display it fully is lazy. Its going to leave you with less options and if you’re really editing photos you know your eyes are a terrible judge if colors are correct. Correcting by data is the only reliable way of producing correct colors so it doesn’t matter what your monitor can display in the end

          Reply

          • ishootyou
            January 19, 2018 @ 9:21 pm

            I really appreciate your effort to make yourself clear but you are wrong. Changing the color space after editing will change the look of ALL colors including those that lie within BOTH color spaces. You can verify this by simply changing your screen from AdobeRGB to sRGB. Adobe RGB only makes sense if you are printing your work very often and if these printers are compatible. In order to display images on the web correctly (or on a customer’s computer) you must convert them to sRGB. Doing so, you will mess up the colors of your images as they will show dull and less vibrant.

          • John DiJulio
            January 19, 2018 @ 9:55 pm

            Which is why I said change to sRGB before editing if that will be your output. Then you still have the option of Adobe RGB. I don’t get how you can say straight to sRGB is always better because it saves you a click of a button.

          • ishootyou
            January 19, 2018 @ 10:12 pm

            Please do some research. Once for all, shooting in ARGB is wrong unless your pp chain AND the output format (e.g. high end print) demand this color space. If you shoot ARGB and then “convert” to sRGB you will mess up the ENTIRE color range of your images. Editing in ARGB on a machine that can’t display ARGB is even worse. Stop spreading the word that shooting in sRGB is shooting in a crippled format. Please understand that I won’t be able to follow this any further.

          • John DiJulio
            January 19, 2018 @ 10:35 pm

            Thanks for assuming that I haven’t done my research. I guess I’m set up for studio quality prints in my workflow and you are set up for more web based uses. Conversion from Adobe RGB to sRGB does not “mess up the ENTIRE color range” of an image, don’t be so dramatic. It shifts it into the sRGB space which of course will have a slight change(which i don’t know how you would notice if your monitors can’t display Adobe RGB), but you’re about to edit the image anyway so what does that small shift matter? Anyway, thanks for regurgitating every gear-head article to me like it has real relevance in making prints or actually understanding color space.

          • nate
            January 21, 2018 @ 5:06 pm

            Contrary to what you say, it is absolutely possible to work in a larger color space, then transform to a lower color space on export. There are obviously different options to how you contract that color space. Depending on your needs you can choose to keep the colors 1:1, that does mean some truncation will happen at the edges. Or you can shift all the colors to the middle, where as you say you “mess up” the entire range.
            Also, with a proper calibrated monitor and proper software, of course you can display an sRGB Image in its proper color space side by side with an aRGB Image. Also my sRGB images look the same when display on my monitor calibrated to sRGB as they do with the monitor calibrated to aRGB. Those problems you talk about are nonexistent.
            The Problem with choosing sRGB at capture is, that you might truncate already there. An example would be taking pictures indoors in the evening. You could accidentally blow out the highlights on your R-Channel, which you will never be able to recover. If you shot in aRGB, it allows for “stronger” Reds, so that could have saved you. Then in Post you can pull back the strong reds to an sRGB Range.

      • Robert Clark
        June 6, 2018 @ 11:13 pm

        John: Fuji Cameras are particularly good with reading WB, and across a variety of scenes and lighting situations. Most people, especially those starting out with these cameras, will benefit with learning how to shoot them before going on to manipulate WB. Setting up a preset to balance a series of images is quite easy, and because I shoot specifically RAW I can make WB adjustments quite easily and too taste. In a studio scenario, with lights, I would balance. But in landscape work, and on the street, auto WB is just fine.

        As to aRGB or sRGB, well, that is just a ridiculous argument (note: not saying that you are being ridiculous). If all one is doing is posting to the web then go on with sRGB. But, I post heavily to the web, and I print so my workflow is built around this with calibrated monitors and printers/printer profiles/soft proofing. So I want the maximum capture of information. My workflow follows from LR to PS, in aRGB. When a master is completed I will then make a web version, which is converted to profile as an sRGB. And that conversion matches the master without question. In fact if you compared the image in FB, or on my website, all in sRGB by converting to profile, and looked at my PS masters they would look exactly the same, and more specifically the prints would be just as vibrant.
        Cheers
        Bob

        Reply

  13. Photography By JW
    January 6, 2018 @ 10:59 am

    Just bought my XT2 and loving this info, certainly helps as the learning curve from xpro1 is possibly greater than moving to that from canon, many thanks

    Reply

    • Robert Clark
      June 6, 2018 @ 10:56 pm

      Thanks so much. Hope it helps you.
      Bob

      Reply

  14. Jonathan Heyes
    September 9, 2020 @ 10:35 pm

    I have a problem with my XH1 and so far no one has been able to answer how to solve this problem even fuji haven’t replied. So the question which is simply this; I shoot in manual mode only and I use vintage lenses/ B&W. For some reason only on certain ISO or shutter speeds the screen changes from 1/1 to Movie Setting and keeps bouncing between the two screens as if trying to find the optimum, how do I stop this. I do not wish to use video and if possible would like to delete it’s option.

    Reply

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