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Camera Controls: Front & Lenses

Lesson 16 from: Fujifilm X-H1 Fast Start

John Greengo

Camera Controls: Front & Lenses

Lesson 16 from: Fujifilm X-H1 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

16. Camera Controls: Front & Lenses

Lesson Info

Camera Controls: Front & Lenses

Looking to the front of the camera, on the front we have a little screw that comes off, a little cover here. And that is a PC sync terminal, now PC does not stand for personal computer, it has nothing to do with computers, it's the prontor compur system of connecting up with studio flashes. Most studio flashes don't use this system anymore, but it's kind of nice because it can hook up with virtually any old school manual style flash system available. Focusing mode, we've talked a little bit about this before, but this controls the way in which the camera focuses. So let's look at some examples of where we would use this. S is the standard mode that stands for single shot, this is where the camera will focus on a subject, lock and freeze, that's it. Continuous is for sports and action, where it will track subjects moving towards you and away from you, and then of course, M is for manual, so you can manually focus, and remember when you do have it in manual focus you can always press the...

AF on button on the back of the camera, for an immediate auto focus override, of the manual focus system. The image sensor in here is a 24 megapixel sensor, it's the X-trans CMOS III sensor, which is a little bit different than the standard sensor in most other brands of cameras. Here's a little graphic of the difference between it, the bayer pattern that most cameras use has a very rigid system to it, and the pixels or the points of light that are recording the light are a little bit more random, and they are doing this so that they don't have to use an anti aliasing filter in front of the sensor to avoid a moray problem. And so what tends to happen with Fuji cameras is they are 24 megapixel sensors, but you might say that they punch above their weight class. They tend to do better than other average 24 megapixel sensor cameras, and so you'll notice that there's a lot of Fuji owners, are very happy about the sharpness of their images. Now, there are of course, detractors to this, people that don't like the system because it's different than the standard system, and a number of the post processing programs don't work quite exactly the same, and they're not able to work on their images in quite the same way, overall, it's not that big a difference, but I do think it is a slight advantage in Fuji's favor. Lens contacts will communicate distance and aperture information with the lenses, make sure these are not obstructed, blocked, or broken in any way. Lens release and alignment pin, press that to remove the lenses. We have an alignment orange dot that will match up with the lenses on all the Fuji X-mount lenses. For those of you who are new to interchangeable lenses, I'll just do a little quick demo of taking the lens on and off, and so, because medium format camera, or mirrorless cameras have the sensors so incredibly close, to the opening, I don't recommend doing lens changes in really dusty environments, try to get yourself someplace that's a little bit cleaner. But just look for that orange dot on the lens, and the orange dot on the top, and you'll notice there's a little pin down here, that you can see retracting, and that's what you're pressing when you are releasing the lens. And so when you are mounting the lens, just turn it until you hear the click. And then you've got it on there properly, just make sure that you've heard that little click, that indicates that it's fully secured on the mount system. We do have another function button in the front of the camera, we've played around with this a little bit already, changing some of our drive settings, if you recall that part of the class. But this is a general function button that you can change to almost anything else that you want. The front command dial is something that we use for a whole variety of functions, remember that this is also a push button that can be changed as well for changing a variety of features. There is an auto focus assist and self timer lamp on the top in low light situations this will come on to help shine a light on your subjects so that you can focus a little more easily, the problem is, is that it's a little bit annoying when your subject is a person, this bright light in their face, and it's not good for a very large distance, so if this is something that you would rather turn off, be a little bit more discreet in your shooting, you can jump into the AF manual focus settings, and turn off this AF illuminator. Let's talk for a moment about lenses, Fuji has a lot of great lenses, and even more coming out on the market right now. So on the lenses they will usually have some sort of aperture mode, sometimes it's a switch, sometimes it's part of a aperture ring on there, with an A at the final end of the setting. Some of the lenses will have a stabilizer built in, not all do, on this particular camera, the camera has stabilization so it can stabilize anything that you put on it, really, but there are stabilize lenses specifically, that have on off switches, as well. Most of their lenses will have an aperture ring, some will have numbers, some will not, there are zoom lenses that have big fat zoom rings, and then you'll have a focus ring out in front, for those of you who like to manually focus. Each lens kind of has it's own unique lens hood, and so ideally you'll be using your lenses with lens hoods that prevents flare, improves contrast and sharpness of your image a bit. Most lenses will have the option of putting in filter there's a lot of different standard size filters, the 18 to 55 uses a 58, if you want a protection filter on the front of the lens, it's not a bad idea as far as a simple way of protecting the front element of your lenses. Looking at some of the Fuji lenses, they make a number of what I call serious, good zooms. And so the 18 to 55 is arguably the best kit lens on the market today, it's been a very popular lens, it's got a good general purpose range, it's small in size, the 55 to 200 is a good basic telephoto and it's a little bit faster than your average telephoto. The 18 to 135 is your super zoom, and it's a pretty good quality, it's one of the better quality super zooms, and the 10 to 24 is a very versatile landscape travel lens with stabilization built in. The pro lenses are the 2.8 lenses, and so this is kind of what they call the holy trinity of lenses, a series of zoom lenses, with a fast aperture of 2.8 covering from very wide angle, to a very good telephoto, and so, all of these lenses are very very high quality, the eight to 16 is the newest of the bunch here, and that is the equivalent of a 12 to 24 millimeter lens, and that's going to be very good for people shooting under low light, that are looking for wide angle. Now you'll notice that there's a lot of letters that are attached to these lenses in their item description. I'm not going to go through them completely here, but I'm going to leave this little cheat cheat up as I go through some more lenses, and so, this is just speaking to some of the technology that they are using in these particular lenses. Now they have just announced that they... Development announcement of a new lens, that I can pretty much guarantee is going to be in my arsenal, unless there's just something horrible that comes out about it, this is a lens that a lot of people have been asking for, and this is going to be the new perfect zoom kit lens. The 16 to 80 is going to be the equivalent of a 24 to 120, which is just a great, all around general purpose lens, it's going to be an F4 constant lens, it's weatherized, and it has optical stabilization. We should see that in 2019, or later. If you're looking for a bigger lens, the 100 to 400 is great for all you birders out there, who like photographing small subjects at very great distances, and recently announced, is the new most beautiful 200 millimeter lens, that comes with a matching 1.4 teleconverter, and this is going to be very good for sports photography, potentially for concert and theater photography and even for portrait photography, maybe not in a studio but maybe down at the beach, because it's going to be able to blow that background just beautifully out of focus. This is going to be an expensive little lens, okay, well who am I kidding, it's not a little lens, it's about $6,000 but it is showing that Fuji is really dedicated to providing top quality professional lenses to this entire system. There are some fantastic primes, there's this whole group of small F2 primes, we're going to have a new 16 2.8 coming out in 2019, that's going to be the equivalent of a 24, so that's going to be a very nice wide angle lens, and the size on these are just really small, so if you want to reduce the size of your camera, these are going to be a great little travel lens. They have a number of great primes out, and they've just introduced one that people have been calling for and that's going to get a lot of people really excited, and this is the new 33 1.0 lens , this is going to come out supposedly in 2020. And so this is going to be the equivalent, I think they said of a 54 millimeter 1.4, 1.5 millimeter lens, and so for those who like to shoot with a normal point of view, but with really shallow depth of field, this 1.0 lens is going to be, going to be their fastest lens at Fuji, probably for quite some time, and so you can look forward to those new products, in the coming months and years ahead. Zeiss has also made some very high quality lenses for Fuji, these came out pretty early on in the Fuji game and these have been very popular among people because Zeiss is known as making extremely high quality lenses, and so these are auto focus dedicated lenses for the Fuji system. You can also use Leica lenses, a lot of people have compared Fuji as the new Leica, or maybe that was just me that said that. And so if you do want to use Leica lenses, you can get the M mount adapter, lenses will work on their fit, focus perfectly. There's even a function button on there, so that you can activate the camera to tell the camera what lens you have on there, so that lens information gets transferred to the meta data in the camera, and so that would be something that you can go right into the menu system and do as well. For those of you interested in shooting video, they do make special lenses, that are designed for video. Now, Fuji does make an 18 to 55, and a 50 to 140, but the basically completely redid it for video and they sell for about four times as much money, these are roughly $4,000, and $4,300 for these lenses. But when you focus there's no focus breathing, you can zoom back and forth, subjects stay in focus, it's specifically designed for shooting video, and so if you want to shoot really high end video, these are going to be some fantastic lenses to work with this camera. Earlier in the class, we talked about firmware for the camera, well there is firmware for the lenses, as well, and so, you want to check to make sure that you have the latest firmware for your lenses, because they often make improvements in the focusing algorithms and allow them to focus a little bit better or without some sort of bug or flaw in the system, and so, this is the current chart that's available, but you would want to go and do a little internet search, for Fuji firmware table, and that's going to give you the full list of all the current lenses, and all the current firmware, as well as instructions on how to download that firmware and get it, get your lens updated with that new system. If you are interested in learning more about lenses, I love to talk about lenses, in fact, I have a whole class on it, and it's called choosing the right camera lens. And in this one day class, I go through Fuji lenses, as well as other brands like Sony, and Nikon, and Canon and so forth, and I talk about the different focal lengths and apertures, and all the different features, and all those different letters, the OIS, and WR, and what does that mean on each of the different lenses? And if you are interested in setting up your own lens collection, because that's what photographers really prize, is not so much their cameras, it's their lens collection because it's something that sticks around for much much longer. A good lens is going to last you 10, 20 or more years. Cameras seem to go very quickly, every two, three, four, five years, people seem to cycle through them, but it's your lens collection that you really want to build up, and have a smart choice that fits your needs, and this is a class that'll help you choose the right lenses for what you're doing.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Fuji X-H1 Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

Erik
 

I have been thinking about buying this camera. After watching this class I know that I have made the right decision. John is fantastic! Previously I have watched a random assortment of youtube videos by self-proclaimed experts. It turns out that many of the things that these so-called experts have said about this camera are simply wrong. John is the real deal. He goes in depth for every function and explains everything very clearly. His graphics are wonderful, he obviously spent a huge amount of time on preparation. If you have this camera and want to understand it better, or are thinking of buying it, I highly recommend this class which is taught by a true expert.

Mark Ballard
 

Well done! Worth every penny. Shined shoes too.

Mario Gravina
 

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