- I wish I could go back and pick up the Fujifilm
camera for the first time. If I could, this video is the advice
I would tell myself. (upbeat music) Hi, everyone. Welcome to pal2tech. Today, we're talking about
switching to Fujifilm. Tips you should know. And some advice to get you headed off in the right direction. For this video, I'll be discussing the X-T Series line of Fuji cameras. But much of what I'm saying can apply to any Fujifilm camera. First up is that with Fujifilm, you are gonna wanna
rethink your relationship to shooting and using JPEGs. What'll happen is you're gonna find
yourself wanting to shoot with JPEG more often. Now, first off, on Fujifilm's system, you won't find any of
those boring standard or portrait profiles like
you would say in Canon. Instead, you will be using what are called film simulations with cool names like provia, classic chrome, Acros and so forth. These are all designed
to match Fuji's line of film stock profiles. And the colors, contrast, and overall skin tones
with these film sims are just beautiful. Fujifilm does not use a PASM dial on their X-T Series of cameras. Instead, they use independent dials for aperture, shutter speed and ISO. This definitely confuses new users who often don't understand
how to put the camera into automatic mode or how to put the camera into say shutter priority and so forth. So one of the keys to your success in using Fujifilm is understanding how these three dials all work together. So to put the camera into automatic mode, you need to make sure that each dial, the aperture on the lens, the ISO dial, and the shutter speed dial, are all set to A for automatic. Once you do that, the camera will be in all automatic mode and it will function exactly like say a Canon that has the PASM dial in A. Once you're in all automatic mode, you can further refine your exposure by then using the exposure
compensation dial. Okay, so now to put it in say shutter priority mode, simply keep all the other dials in A and just rotate the shutter dial until you select the
setting that you want. You could do the same thing with aperture or ISO as well. And lastly, to put the
camera in all manual mode, simply set fixed values
for all three dials. Just anything but automatic. Keep in mind that when you do this, the camera will be in full automatic mode. You will have full
control over the camera. And because of that, your exposure compensation dial will no longer work. Fujifilm's ISO handling is excellent. Don't be afraid to go a
bit higher on your ISO, especially if you're shooting raw and you planned on editing later. You can selectively bring
back shadows and highlights with a lot of latitude in the Fujifilm system. Frankly, I think you can shoot up to ISO 3200 at least in many cases and not worry about it. A tip I have for you is to set your camera's
auto ISO limit range from 160 to 3,200, and then set the camera on auto ISO. This is good especially for new users to sort of help them get up to speed on the rest of the settings without worrying about ISO so much. To do that, go into your settings, into your camera icon, to ISO auto setting. You see that? And go ahead and select Auto 1 default sensitivity to 160, max sensitivity to 3,200, minimum shutter speed to Auto. Be careful with minimum
shutter speed however because the camera will
drop the shutter speed to the point to make sure that you have enough light if it's unable to do so
with these other settings. Just to be safe, you might wanna set your
minimum shutter speed to be at least 1/125th of a second or even 1/250th of a second, especially if you're shooting people. If you find that that does not give you the proper exposure and not enough light in
the shooting situation that you're in, go ahead and raise the
max sensitivity to 6400. Even at 6400, you can get some great shots with the Fujifilm camera system. Fujifilm focus modes are one of the most important parts
of the camera to master. I have an entire video on this subject, which you can check out. And I will have links to those videos in the description below. Now, while Fujifilm
offers great autofocus, using 100% manual focus is something that I want to, please forgive me, focus a bit more on in the
next couple of minutes. So when the camera is in
full manual focus mode and you are manually turning the focus ring on the lens, you're actually sending
an electronic signal from the lens to the camera, telling the camera where you wanna focus. Then the camera is then relaying that information back to the lens. And as such, it's not really truly manually focusing. Now, this behavior works the same way with all Fujinon and Fujifilm lenses, and electronically
adapted third-party lenses such as this Viltrox. You see the contact points right there? So yes, you're manually focusing, but you're not manually turning the lens with your hands. Does that make sense? However, on a non electronically connected completely manual lens such as the 7artisans 35 millimeter f0.95 and you'll notice there's
no contact points at all. You see that? It is nothing but metal touching metal. That's it. Now, when you manually focus, watch this, dink, dink, it stops. You see that? There is no electronic signal that passes from the lens to the camera. It does not pass go. It does not collect $200. Now, if you're just
starting out with Fujifilm, there are two main tools you're gonna wanna use to help you with manual focus. They're called manual focus assist and manual focus zoom check. The first one, manual focus assist, is located in AF/MF setting
of the camera right here. And you can choose some options. But go ahead and use
focused peak highlight. I think you're gonna
like that one the best. You can also quickly
switch manual focus tools by pressing down and holding the rear command dial. You can only do this
when the camera is in M for manual focus mode. So once you have it in M, then if you press and hold down on the back rear command dial, pressing and holding, pressing, there it is, you see that? I'm gonna press it and hold it again. Look at that. Press and hold it again. Look at that. See? Until I get to the
one that I wanna use. In this case, red focus peak highlight. So it's very simple. Point your camera at your subject, start to manually focus
using the focus ring. And whatever you see in red, that's the area that will be in focus. I have a very shallow depth of field here. Have a look at this. Right now, pretty much
the zero and the P key are in focus, but now I'm gonna rotate the ring, look at that, I'm rotating it. Now the N key is in focus, but the back keys are not. And it's just a bit easier to see it when you have this tool enabled. And here's the secret. Once you press it in and you've zoomed in a little bit, rotate the command dial just a little and you'll zoom in even more. Check this out. First I aim and I focus. Then I press once the
rear command dial. Boom. Okay, now I've zoomed in, you see that? But now I'm gonna turn the dial. Watch this. Boom. It gave me that little
bit of extra zoom in. And of course, I can get out of this by pressing in on the
rear command dial, boom, and back. And that's a great combination
to use those two tools. The first being manual focus assist, setting your camera up so that you have red peak highlights say. And then using the rear command dial to zoom in using manual focus zoom check. Speaking of the rear command dial and the buttons on the camera, my next piece of advice is to make sure that you focus on customizing two main
areas of the camera, the buttons on the back and creating a My Menu. Customizing the buttons on the back is the easiest thing in the world. All you need to do is
press and hold DISP back for a few seconds. And you'll see this menu appear. Then you can simply pick the button you wanna change, go into the menu, and assign it a new function. Now, the reason this is so important is that there are certain camera features that you can only access if you assign them to a custom button. So for example, I could assign my top D pad button, which is currently AF mode, to the histogram. See that right there? Now, whenever I press
the top D pad button, have a look at that, the histogram appears. Now, setting up my menu
is also a great way to have easy access to
those camera features that you use all the time. So anytime you press menu okay, it will jump, you see that? Into my menu. And right there, these are the settings I
happen to have for my menu. Setting up my menu is very easy. Go into the wrench, into user setting, my menu setting. If you have an X-T4, you might see different my menu settings, one for stills, one for video. And in there, you can add them, you can reorder them
and you can remove them. And once they're in my menu, the minute you hit menu okay, it will jump to my menu first and you can quickly
access them from there. Now, while Fuji does offer what's called a queue menu, I don't think it's that
useful for raw shooters. Many of the camera's raw settings cannot be customized with this menu. The queue mode is more or less a place to dial in your
custom JPEG recipes for your shots. Settings such as white balance, clarity, highlights, shadows and so forth. I find that using my
menu is much more handy than using the queue menu if mostly what you're
shooting are raw files. But try it out and see what works the best for you. Now, the Fujifilm X-T Series cameras up until the X-T3 used this
type of battery right here, the Fujifilm NP-W126S lithium-ion battery. This battery is not very good. It has about a spit of power in it and it doesn't last very long. Now, when Fuji switched
to the NP-W235 battery, this battery does have a much more reasonable
amount of battery life. Because of these smaller spit of power, barely any power batteries, Fujifilm ended up giving camera owners the option of using kind
of a dumbed down mode called either normal or economy mode. You'll find these modes in the power management
section of your camera. Now, using normal or economy, you will get more battery life. However, you will not get the full performance of the camera. Most noticeably, the
camera's autofocus system will not be as good. You have an awesome photography machine. Don't cripple it. Therefore, I recommend that you always keep the camera in boost mode. And yeah, you're gonna
use up these batteries a bit faster, but I don't know, just carry an extra
battery or two if possible. It is a small price to pay to have all of the features on this camera performing at their very best. The whole idea behind Fujifilm cameras was to reduce the size, give you great ergonomics and provide you with a high
quality mirrorless camera. However, hands come in
all shapes and sizes. And for some, gripping the smallest hand grip for long periods of time can kind of turn into
an ergonomic problem. This could be even more problematic when you have a larger lens attached, like for example, the 50-140, right? And you're holding the camera
like this all day long. What happens is because the grip is kind of smaller, you feel this area of the camera digging into your palms more. It's not as comfortable. So there are three main fixes for this. A battery grip, a thumb extender, and a metal grip extender. First, the battery grip. Fuji does sell one of these and it's pretty good. However, it's expensive and it does make the camera a bit larger. It is great though for
those vertical shots. So for more budget friendly options, I would recommend instead of investing in the battery grip right now if budget is a concern, check out this thumb rest right here. Simply slide it into the hot
shoe mount just like this. And now you have a place
to rest your thumb. You see that? It does make it a bit easier. Although I must tell you that over time, putting this kind of pressure on this area of the hot shoe mount could cause it to loosen up. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I have heard from other people where that has happened, just as an FYI. I think actually the best compromise you can get for ergonomics
on the Fujifilm camera would be to use one of these JJC HG line of metal grip extenders. These are about $35 and they screw right onto
the back of the camera. What's nice is you do not even need to have a screwdriver. It has a screw mechanism just like this. What's great is it makes the camera feel really good in your hand, and it doesn't put any stress on the hot shoe mount. But for me, what sealed
the deal with this thing is how easy it is to attach to a tripod. It has mounting indentations right in it. You see that right there? So without doing anything else or needing any kind of adapter, boom, you just put the camera on just like that, tighten, and you are good to go. Oh and lastly, if you're new to Fujifilm, you might wanna pick up one of these shutter
release buttons right here. These are about $8 and they come in different colors and they are so much better than using the regular Fujifilm uncovered shutter release button. I think it's actually
the best value accessory you can get for the money for the Fujifilm camera system. And of course, I will
leave affiliate links to all this stuff down below because I wanna make as
much money as possible here. For those of you who are just starting out with Fujifilm, welcome. This is a wonderful camera system that's gonna provide you with years of great equipment, outstanding lenses, and a lot of fun shooting. Well, that wraps it up for today. I hope you enjoyed the video. And if you did, be sure to give it the like and subscribe I will see you again in another video very soon. Take care.
