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Set Up: Button/Dial Settings

Lesson 25 from: Fujifilm X-H1 Fast Start

John Greengo

Set Up: Button/Dial Settings

Lesson 25 from: Fujifilm X-H1 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

25. Set Up: Button/Dial Settings

Lesson Info

Set Up: Button/Dial Settings

The next grouping is the button dial setting and this is where we really get to customize all those buttons and dials on our camera. First up, the focusing lever setting, and so, on the back of the camera the little joystick, that's the focusing lever. We actually played around with this earlier in the class where you press down and hold in for a couple of seconds and it will give you the option for locking this. You can come in here and do it as well, but I think that two-second press in is a little bit quicker to get to. The edit and save quick menu, you can go in and you can exchange all the different features in here. I think we looked at this one earlier with the quick menu by pressing that in for a couple of seconds, gave you a shortcut to this as well. And so what you're gonna want to do is you're gonna wanna figure out if there's features in here that you don't ever use, go in and replace them with ones that you do want to use. And so just highlight the box that you want and go...

in and navigate your way around to find one that you do want. The function setting. So there are a number of buttons on the camera that you can reprogram. Here's kind of a map of all the different functions that you can change. And so there's all sorts of buttons on the camera including the screen with its touch settings for going up, down, left, and right. And all of these can be programmed to be a wide variety of different features. And so when you get in here you'll see a little map of the camera, and then you'll see different ways of reprogramming these buttons on the camera. And so this is something that is a lot of fun because you get to truly customize the camera the way that you like it to work and seems that everybody ends up with a slightly different set. There's so many different options in here, it's hard to say what is the best place to put something, but if it's something you access on a regular basis, you shouldn't be diving into the menu system to change it. You should have a button on the outside of the camera that gives you direct control if it's something you use quite frequently. The selector buttons on the back of the camera can be used as function buttons, or as focus area buttons. Now back in the days before the joystick and the focus stick on the camera, a lot of people would change this to the focusing area so that you could quickly change where the camera's focused. Now that we have the focusing stick, I don't think as many people are going to be changing this to the focus area, I think these buttons are far more valuable as a quick access to one of your functions. And so I think the function button is a little bit more practical now that we have that joystick. The command dial, front dial and the back dial of the cameras can be reprogrammed. If you don't like where the shutter speeds are operated, or where the exposure compensation is being done, you can go in and you can reprogram these buttons as well according to your likings. The ISO dial setting of H is a high setting, which can either be 25,000 or 51,000 and most cases you'll probably want to have it at 25, unless you know that you are specifically needing that very highest 51,200 setting. The low setting can also be adjusted from 100 to 125, or 160, so depends a little bit on your needs there as well. The ISO dial setting of A is an auto mode where it would normally adjust automatically adjust the ISO for you, but you can also have it switched over to the command mode so that you can change your ISOs by turning the front dial of the camera. So if you would rather change ISOs with the front dial rather than the ISO dial, you would just put this in A and move this command, or move this setting over to command, and then you could control ISO with the dial rather than the top dial. Alright, shutter AF. So this is for people who wanna activate back button focusing. And so normally when you press down on the shutter release, the camera is going to focus and meter. If you want to just be able to do that on the back of the camera, you need to turn off the shutter AF. And so let me demonstrate this for you right now. Let's get my camera set up. And let me give you a view of what we're looking at. Let's change our display here. Make sure that we are in focusing. Let's put this in an automatic shutter speed so it's a nice. So you can see that it focused on the subject, moving back and forth, so it's focusing by pressing halfway down on the shutter release. So I'm gonna dive into the menu system. I'm gonna quickly go down to whoops, it's faster to go this direction. And we're going into button dial setting, I think we're on the second page, shutter AF, and we can choose the shutter AF to be turned off, alright. When we are in the AF-S mode, we can also do it in the AF-C mode, for right now AF-S. So now, when I press down it's not gonna focus. Let's make this really clear, actually, put it there, and so when I press down, I can shoot a photo and it's not focusing. To focus I need to press the AF on button here on the back of the camera. And now it focuses and I can shoot a photo. The advantage is is if I focus back here, I can move around and shoot photos, and all of these are focused in the same spot but I am composing differently. Now if I change the dial over here on the front of the camera to AF-C, and I press down, it turns green, which means it is auto-focusing in that case. And so it's just a great way of really fine tuning the way the camera focuses in here. And so I do encourage you to try this back button focusing, it's gonna be less fussing around when you focus on a subject and wanna try different compositions, but the focus point is not changing during those times. And so once again, you can change this, I recommend turning it off for AF-S. Now for AF-C I'm not as big a fan for back button focusing. Sometimes I'm shooting sports and you're rapidly going between two cameras and I just wanna pick up a shutter, press it halfway, focus, and then press all the way and get my shots. And so I might leave it on for AF-C but off for AF-S. But you decide with your camera. Next up is shutter auto exposure. So when you press down on the shutter release halfway, do you want the camera to lock the exposure? And so normally the camera will lock the exposure, which I think in general is a pretty good thing. If you turn it off it does not lock, it will continue metering as you move the camera around. If you're gonna be using this lens with adapters or on a telescope, or something that doesn't have electronic communication, normally this would lock the camera up, which is generally pretty good, 'cause most of us are using Fuji and electronic lenses on our cameras. But if you are going to be using this on a telescope or something unusual where you don't want a lens mounted on the camera, you would turn this to on so that it allows you to fire the shutter. It's kind of a safety protocol so that the shutter doesn't fire without a lens on there. Shoot without a card, kind of the same thought here. If you forget to put a memory card in the camera, do you want the camera to be able to shoot and fire photos? Can't store them but can shoot them. Generally not, that's why you want to leave this turned off as a safety protocol. The only people that would turn it on might be people who are just trying to show what the camera sounds like when you're operating it and shooting photos. The focus ring on the lenses can be changed to match the way Nikon lenses focus, or the way Canon lenses focus. Nikon's by the way are kind of the opposite of the way everyone else focuses. Just they've chosen a different direction to go in you might say. And so most of the time people would leave this in the standard mode to hook up with most types of lenses. This is a new one, haven't seen this before on a camera. And so the focusing ring operation on these cameras is what's known as fly by wire, which means when you turn the lens you're not actually turning helicoids that move lens elements back and forth, you are turning a little circuit board that's telling the lens to move forward or back. And in the past, this has all been a nonlinear mode which means depending on how fast you move it, it might go a little bit further, or a little bit less. And so it was a little inconsistent depending on how fast you turned it. With the linear speed, it's very precise and goes exactly with the way you turn it. And so for people shooting movies, that wanna know that when they turn the lens exactly 45 degrees, it changes from here to there and it's always the same. And so it's a little nod to the people who are shooting video and they're putting this linear option in there, which I think is quite nice. And so if you do a lot of manual focusing, you might want to play around with these two options to see what you like more. The auto exposure auto focus lock mode. And so the AE-L button on the back of the camera has the option of being a toggle switch or a press-down switch. And so the pressing obviously means that you have to be pressing on that button for it to lock. The other option is having it as an on-off toggle switch, you kind of just tap it once and then it's locked in place, that exposure, and then you press it again and it unlocks it. So it depends on how you like to press your buttons. Exposure compensation button setting. And so the same thing goes with the exposure compensation button, it's kind of got a safety protocol set into it right now, whereas you have to press and hold the button in while you are turning the dial on the back of the camera in order to make a change. Other people like to make it a little bit more easily by just tapping the button once, having exposure compensation turned on, and then they can make those adjustments in the back a little bit more simply without having to use two fingers at the same time. So once again, you might want to play around with this to see which one you like. Aperture setting on the lens. On some cameras, you may want to, on some lenses they don't have aperture rings and so you have to use the dial on the camera. But in this case if you want, you can use a dial on the camera to control the aperture. Some people prefer that system and if you want that you can put it into the command setting, and then you would control the aperture with the front dial of the camera. So the shutter speeds, the ISOs, and the apertures can all be controlled by dials on the camera rather than their physical controls that they have in other places and so we have multiple ways of operating these cameras The aperture setting, this is mainly designed for those lenses that do not have aperture rings, which are the XC lenses, think of them as the economy lenses, and do you want them to be able to change back through the apertures and include that auto setting at the end, usually below the 1. or whatever the lowest number is, or do you just want it to go to the main aperture settings? So in that case it's kind of nice to be able to get to auto easily. Touch screen settings, will put us into a submenu for dealing with all the touch screen options on the back. First option of course is turning it on and off. Some people love the touch screen, there's others that are not quite as excited about it. So if you don't like it turn it off. But it's usually kind of a handy feature to have in many cases. You can change which part of the screen is active, because sometimes you're holding the camera up to your eye, or your finger just doesn't reach all the way over to the left side of the screen. You can narrow down which part of the screen that you're using, the whole screen, left, right, or any of the quadrants. If you want to lock settings on the camera, there's a submenu in here for that. You can lock various functions on the camera so that you can't make changes for instance by the shutter speed and aperture electronically. The function selection will allow you which functions that you are going to lock on the camera. So if you wanted to have the camera for instance mounted in a location and you didn't want anyone making any changes, you can go ahead and lock any of these different functions in. Obviously this is not something you're doing on a regular basis, it's a special case scenario. But it is an interesting option that you do have so many different things that you can lock in so that people can not change it.

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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