Do you shoot fully manual or do you prefer to shoot with one of the priority settings that Fuji offer on their cameras? I get asked this question from time to time & I also read it online a fair bit so I thought I would be a good idea to share my set up on here as I have a good trick using AUTO ISO as a manual setting. I do use full manual when I have flashes or studio strobes set up but often at an event when I’m not using flash I’ll let the camera adjust the ISO automatically and set the shutter speed and aperture to suit the scene, other times I’ll fire away with the shutter and aperture on Auto. GASP! I trust the cameras to get me the right setting and I can see the exposure in the EVF in real time anyway but if you find changing the ISO on the X-PRO2 or X100F not you cup of coffee then read on…

I know many reading this might say you should only shoot fully manual but I don’t agree, not fully anyway, I got use to shooting with Auto ISO when I got the X-PRO2 as it has a dial that you have to lift up and rotate and at first that can be a little awkward to use as the shutter speed part of that dial can also turn if you are not careful. Once you get use to it thought, like anything else, it becomes second nature so after two years of shooting I don’t even think about how unusual it was at first. Anyway on to the short cut.

The AUTO ISO value can change if you turn the exposure comp dial, nothing out of the ordinary about that but I wondered if I could refine that a little and add some control. At the time I would mostly shoot in spot metering with the AF and Exposure meter linked to the same point, this was great but I would see the image in the EVF jump about in exposure a fair bit if I was using AUTO ISO. To solve that I changed the metering to matrix and that gave me a fairly solid read on the light available and stoped the ISO jumping about making it much easier to get the exposure I wanted by simple dialling up or down the exposure comp using the dial on the right of the camera and AUTO ISO set up until I could see the exposure I wanted in the EVF. This effectually gave my manual control of my ISO using the exposure dial. Neat!

To do the same you simply need to set the following on you Fuji camera.

1. AUTO ISO – well that’s a given
2. A metering mode other than spot – this gives you a more constant EV reading
3. ‘Preview Exp./WB (white balance) in manual’ is on – so you can see the exposure in real time, you set that in the menu, under screen setup.

That’s it, three simple things to set you and you now have control of your ISO on the right thumb with 6 stops to play with and it you need more you can turn the EXP Comp dial to ‘C’ and use the front dial to get 10 stops. This also works if you have auto shutter speed set but I find it’s better to set that appropriately using the manual setting. You can always set the shutter to ‘T’ and have control of the shutter speed on the rear wheel removing any need to use the top SS/ISO dial at all if you prefer.

 

 

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