A friend of mine is getting his first X series camera shortly and I started thinking about the advice I might give him from my experience using them over the last two years. Then I thought, it might make a decent blog post and be of use to other people just getting started. I love the fuji cameras but they certainly have their share of quirks and foibles that someone new to the system may not pick up on right away. Feel free to add your own below in the comments section..
– Flash & studio strobes will not fire if the camera is in silent mode ( see the sound settings for this one, but it is not on by default ).
– X-T1 performs way better in High Performance mode, especially on autofocus, and the battery still lasts a decent amount of time.
– you will need spare batteries, but the third party ones are 25% of the cost of the Fuji ones and work just as well ( check reviews of them first obviously ). Take 3-4 for a days shooting, up to 8 for a wedding ( although I’ve never gone through that many ).
– the biggest drain on battery life is chimping ( looking at your shots on the screen/evf ).
– when the battery gets to 2 bars, you have 10-20 shots before it dies completely. This is apparently fixed in the December firmware update.
– X100S – if you have failed to read the manual, the little lever at the front top of the camera is the one that switches between OVF and EVF
– X100S – if you are shooting at f2.0, stay at least 3-4ft away from your subject or the image will not be as sharp as you would like. Above f2.0 it seems ok, so this is a quirk of the sensor/lens combination I guess.
– X100S – the pop up flash is pretty good as a fill flash, much better than you might expect..
– when shooting jpeg in low light, put Noise Reduction to -2, or you will get mushy skin tones on the jpegs. Even at this setting, I’d suggest shooting RAW for low light.
– when shooting moving objects, use the central 9 AF points, at their medium size ( i.e. not the smallest ) for better performance. The large your AF box is, the quicker it will be, but also less accurate, 2 steps up from smallest is a great compromise between accuracy and speed.
– when in AFC mode ( continuous focus ), the camera will hunt continuously until you press the trigger. It won’t lock like a DSLR. Have faith in it, once you push the button it generally locks pretty well, having said that, these cameras are not as good as high end DSLRs at tracking motion, and you certainly need to practice.
– when shooting in bright sunlight and wanting to review your images, put your eye to the viewfinder and view them through the EVF rather than attempting to look at the back of the screen.
– the first batch of X-T1s seem to have had 3 main build issues, the D pad buttons being too flush, the light leak issue, and peeling off off the cover of the camera skin ( the black textured skin ), all these are fixable under warranty and you should get that done ASAP while you can.
Thats it for now, I may add more later..