by Rico Pfirstinger

Talk to Rico (questions & feedback) – Rico’s studio samples set

Taking your X-series camera to a studio is easy. All you need is a well-equipped location, a stunning model, great make-up, amazing dresses, beautiful lighting and the talent to put it all together.

Obviously, I’ve got none of that.

That’s why I turned to Damien Lovegrove, who’s not only a master of the trade, but also a keen and experienced X-series user. When others shoot with bulky Canikons, Damien will use his classic (black) X100 or his X-Pro1. Many of his images are nothing short of spectacular and can be admired on his blog, and unlike other well-known pros, he’s not paid by Fujifilm for using and endorsing their products. Shooting the little Fujis is his choice. Here’s Damien with one of his beloved Lupolights, posing as a stand-in model:

Once I learned that Damien was coming to Munich for a lighting workshop at Radmila Kerl’s studio on April 3rd, I quickly secured myself a spot. After all, it’s just a 90 minutes drive from where I live. I brought my X-Pro1, X-E1 and X100S cameras along with a full set of lenses, eventually using Fuji’s trusted kit zoom (which Damien uses a lot), the F1.4/35mm and a classic Voigtländer Heliar F1.8/75mm with Leica M mount, which has become one of my favorite portrait lenses. Damien quickly fell in love with it, as well, but he was struggling with the manual focus of the lens. So let’s begin with a 75mm high-key shot of our stunning model Wlada Schüler from Berlin:

Lit with a single Profoto flashlight from above/behind, I used ISO 1250, f/2.8 and 1/125s flash sync on my X-E1 along with some heavy overexposure that is required for this look. Here’s another example, this time with Fuji’s kit zoom lens at 55mm and f/4.5, dialing up the X-Pro1’s ISO to 1600:

Apart from the initial Voigtländer image, all samples in this article are based on factory-setting OOC JPEGs (Provia), although I dialed down the highlight tone to -2 for several shots. The JPEGs were swiftly processed in Apple Aperture (no fancy stuff or layer work) and uploaded to Flickr.

by Rico Pfirstinger

Talk to Rico (questions & feedback) – X-E1 sample images set – X-Pro1 sample images set

Last week, we had a very interesting article by Jan Vogelaar about the performance of Carl Zeiss and Leica M lenses on a X-Pro1. So I guess it makes sense to cover some practical aspects of adapting vintage lenses to your X-Mount camera in today’s X-PERT CORNER column.

One highlight of the X-Pro1 and X-E1 is undoubtedly the small flange-back distance of the X-Mount lens connector at only 17.7mm. This means you can attach practically any third-party lens from other camera systems—with the appropriate adapters—to your X-Mount camera. Manufacturers like Kipon have already announced X-Mount-compatible adapters for more than 40 third-party systems, and the high-quality German manufacturer Novoflex has also dutifully added X-Mount adapters for some 13 established third-party mounts.

The X-Pro1 is not a rangefinder camera. It’s a pure-bred autofocus camera and as such—despite its hybrid viewfinder—it is only marginally equipped to work in combination with manual focus lenses. Currently, the only tool that the X-Pro1 and X-E1 feature to assist with manual focusing is a magnified digital viewfinder. The camera also offers some kind of focus peaking when you magnify the viewfinder image: It will enhance contrasty edges, indicating that they are in-focus.

Unfortunately, there are a few further aspects that render the X-Pro1 and X-E1 not yet perfectly equipped for working with third-party lenses: When a lens is attached to the X-Pro1 via an adapter, Auto-ISO operates with a minimum shutter speed of 1/30 second—independently of the actual focal length that was set in the adapter menu. 1/30s may be too fast for many wide-angle lenses and too slow for most standard and telephoto lenses. The cameras also set the minimum flash sync speed at a fixed 1/15 second when a third-party lens is attached, which is largely useless for lenses with larger focal lengths. In other words, the cameras “know” exactly what the current focal length is, but doesn’t use this information to the benefit of the photographer.

Fuji’s own Leica M mount adapter (pictured above) includes X-Mount signal contacts as well as a function button on the adapter ring that brings up the adapter menu on the monitor or in the viewfinder. Furthermore, this adapter unlocks extra camera functions that allow you to correct several optical errors such as vignetting, distortions, or color shifts at the borders of an image. However, due to these extra contacts occupying extra space, Fuji’s own adapter is not compatible with all M lenses. Fuji maintains a compatibility chart showing which lens will fit and which will not. The adapter also comes with a gauge that will tell you if a particular lens that’s not on the chart will fit.

In the X-Pro1, the display frame for the OVF uses the selected focal length setting from the adapter menu (SHOOTING MENU > MOUNT ADAPTER SETTINGS), as long as it’s between 18 and 60 millimeters. Focal lengths less than 18mm are indicated in the optical viewfinder with yellow arrows in the corners, and focal lengths of greater than 60mm, with a red frame calibrated to 60mm.

Within the acceptable range of focal lengths for the OVF—18mm to 60mm—two frame indicators will appear in the viewfinder: one white, one blue. The white frame is corrected for parallax for objects at infinity and the blue frame, for objects at a distance of about two yards.

Third-party lenses that are attached to the X-Pro1 or X-E1 over an adapter can only be focused manually. The only exposure modes that are available are the aperture-priority (A) and manual exposure (M) modes. Other functions such as auto ISO, TTL flash, and DR extension, however, are still available.

Connecting and Recognizing Third-Party Lenses

After you have mechanically attached a third-party lens to your camera via an adapter, you should first make sure that SHOOTING MENU > SHOOT WITHOUT LENS > ON is selected—otherwise your X-Pro1 won’t take any pictures. Using Fuji’s own M adapter will automatically enable and grey-out this option for you.

Next go to SHOOTING MENU > MOUNT ADAPTER SETTINGS. Here you will have six lens settings to choose from: four focal length presets (21mm, 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm) as well as LENS 5 and LENS 6—two focal lengths that you can set manually.

If you happen to be using an M-adapter from FUJIFILM, you will also have a number of correction settings available, which I’ll cover in part two of this article.

Focusing with Third-Party Lenses

The only way to focus precisely when using a third-party lens is to use the magnified display of the electronic viewfinder (EVF) or the LCD monitor. Your camera will need to be in manual focus (MF) mode, so turn the focus mode selector on the front of the camera to M. As usual, you can magnify the digital displays by pressing the command dial.

The sample shot above was taken with a (probably) at least 20 years old Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 180mmF2.8 MM-G C/Y lens and a no-name C/Y > XF adapter. It’s an OOC JPEG shot with an X-E1 (using the internal RAW converter as described here) and post-processed with Apple Aperture. To preserve and enhance the pleasing vintage look, colors and gradation of such “analog” lenses, I often use film simulations from VSCO (available for Lightroom, Photoshop and Aperture) as starting points. I took the picture at open (or almost open) aperture and focused with the 3x magnifier tool. Click on the image for a higher-res view and more exposure parameters.

To focus as exactly as possible, you’ll want to open the aperture as wide as possible. The reduced depth of field will help you to find the correct focus point. After you’ve found it, you can then close the aperture to your desired setting. The focus point should not move, but the depth of field should become larger. You can observe this effect in the EVF. The viewfinder’s distance and depth of field indicators will be nonfunctional. Of course, you need be careful with this method when using a lens that shifts its focus plane on changing the aperture. This often occurs in spherically under-corrected lenses that feature nice background bokeh (and harsh/swirling foreground bokeh). With such lenses, you may be better off focusing with the actual working aperture of your shot.

To refine your focus at any time you can always reactivate the magnified digital display. Well, almost at any time: the magnified display will not be available while the camera is transferring data from the buffer memory to the memory card. As soon as that finishes, you can activate it again. Let’s hope that Fuji takes care of this annoying quirk in future firmware updates. In the meantime you can make do with a bit of patience and a super-fast memory card.

The image above is a sample shot with a [shoplink 8026 ebay]Voigtländer Heliar F1.8/75mm[/shoplink] with M Adapter. It was shot with a Kipon M adapter and developed from the RAW in Silkypix 5, no further post-processing and no VSCO Film. Click on the image for larger views and more exposure parameters. Here’s another sample with the Voigtländer, shot at f/2.8 with a single studio flash from above:

Exposing Correctly with Third-Party Lenses

by Rico Pfirstinger

Talk to Rico (questions & feedback) – X100S sample images set – X100S/X100 comparison images set

The X100S has hit the shelves, and it appears to be quite popular. It’s an evolutionary camera, improving the very successful “classic” X100 in many fields and aspects. Following the lead of last week’s “Using the X20” article, here’s a compilation of tips and tricks to get you started with the new “S”. This article is partly building on my earlier “X100S vs. X100” text, so it assumes that you have read it. Let’s once again begin with…

Auto-ISO

The X100S features an improved Auto-ISO function that is based on the classic X100. In Auto-ISO, you can set the ISO base (minimum ISO / default sensitivity), the ISO limit (maximum ISO sensitivity) and the minimum shutter speed. Different Auto-ISO settings can be saved in each of the camera’s three custom shooting profiles (C1 – C3). For more information on shooting profiles and how to use them, access them and configure them, please have a look at my very first X-Pert Corner article. Like with the X-E1 and X-Pro1, you can change settings and select shooting profiles in the Quick Menu by pressing the Q button. Remember that BASIC is just a funny acronym for the camera’s currently selected/active settings. BASIC is neither a preset nor some default profile. Sadly and contrary to statements in the owner’s manual, the X100S features not seven, but only three custom shooting profiles.

If you plan to use the DR (dynamic range) function (DR Auto, DR200% or DR400%) you should set the camera to Auto-ISO. You may also want to consider reading this X-Pert Corner article to learn more about how to expand dynamic range. In order to work with DR200%, the X100S needs an ISO setting of at least 400. For DR400%, it needs an ISO setting of at least 800.

Auto-ISO is now also a part of the ISO menu when you use the Fn button to change ISO settings. This is quite useful and an improvement over the X100, where you had to dive into the shooting menu to (re-)configure Auto-ISO settings.

Autofocus

The X100S offers the same AF modes as the X100: AF-C and AF-S, with two AF-S submodes:Area and Multi. AF-C is basically behaving like AF-S and known to be very effective in low light situations with bad contrast. This also means that AF-C is no real object tracking mode (unlike the Hybrid-AF systems in the Nikon 1 or Sony NEX 6). So when you are shooting objects that quickly move towards the camera, better use the famous “Autofocus Trick”, also known as “shutter mash technique”: Set the camera to AF-S or AF-C (use AF-S if you want to assign a particular AF field, use AF-C if you are okay with the center spot or area) and press the shutter all the way through in one quick, swift motion (no half-pressing!) while keeping the AF field trained over  the area of your subject that you want to be in focus. Since the X100S operates with Autofocus Priority, it won’t take the shot until it has actually locked focus (or until it gave up, in which case the shot will probably be wasted). This cropped example of a horse trotting directly towards the camera was shot at open aperture (f/2) using the Autofocus Trick, with the AF frame trained on the pony’s head:

Please remember that the X100S features a new hybrid autofocus system: a mix of CDAF (contrast detection autofocus) and on-sensor PDAF (phase detection autofocus). PDAF is quicker, but only works in good light, such as 5 EV or better. More importantly, PDAF is only available in about 40% of the sensor area, covering the center 9 (3 x 3) AF fields. So for best (fastest) AF results, shoot in good light and use the center 9 AF fields. You don’t have to worry about which of the two AF methods to use. The camera will take care of that for you.

Shutter Lag

While the Autofocus Trick will obviously introduce some shutter lag (defined as the time between you pressing the shutter and the camera taking the shot) due to the camera’s AF Priority operation, you can significantly reduce this time period by priming the camera during normal shooting (= shooting without tricks). All you need to do is half-press the shutter while anticipating the actual shot.

Mirrorless cameras like the X series have a distinct way of operation: During Live View, they are constantly adapting the lens aperture to the brightness of the ambient light that’s entering the lens. However, for exposure measurement and focusing purposes, the camera has to fully open up the aperture. Then, right before actually taking the shot, the aperture has to be closed again to reflect the chosen “working aperture” settings. Half-pressing the shutter button performs this sequence and primes the camera to minimize any shutter lag. If you don’t half-press the shutter button before actually taking the shot, shutter lag will increase even if you are using manual focus and manual exposure. When the camera isn’t primed before taking the shot, smaller apertures will also induce a longer shutter lag than wide-open settings, as the aperture blades have to travel a longer way from their wide open measuring position to their final working aperture position.

Shortcuts

The X100S features an impressive list of shortcuts that can make your life much easier:

• Press and hold the Q button for a few seconds to clearly increase the brightness of the LCD. This can be quite helpful when operating the camera in bright light, like on a sunny day.
• Press and hold the MENU/OK button down to lock or unlock the arrow keys and the Q button.
• A long press of the Fn button will bring up the Fn button’s configuration menu, where you can assign one of several functions. I typically assign ISO to this button, because I like to be able to quickly change my Auto-ISO configuration (minimum shutter speed). Another popular option for this button is enabling the camera’s built-in ND filter.
• Press and hold DISP/BACK button to activate (or deactivate) the camera’s Silent Mode. When this mode is turned on, the X100S functions quietly and inconspicuously. It won’t make any artificial noises and it abstains from using both the flash and the AF-assist lamp.
• Pressing the DISP/BACK button while selecting an AF field in AF-S Area mode will immediately select the central AF field.
• Press DISP/BACK in shooting or playback mode to change the view of the currently active display. This means that in order to change the view of either the OVF, the EVF or the LCD, either the OVF, EVF or LCD must be active when you press the button. You can select the display you want to change with the VIEW MODE button. Alternatively, use the eye-sensor to activate a display by looking through it, then change its view with the DISP/BACK button. The X100S can’t read your mind, you need to tell it which display’s view you want to change. ;)
• Finally, to check (or upgrade) the firmware version of the camera, press and hold the DISP/BACK button while switching on the camera.
• In manual focus mode, press the AE-L/AF-L button to initiate an autofocus run.
• Also in manual focus mode, press and hold the command dial to cycle through the camera’s different MF aids: standard, digital split image and focus peaking.
• Press (but do not hold) the command dial to enlarge the current image to inspect its sharpness. This works in both MF and AF modes.
• Rather than selecting a function in the shooting menu by pressing the OK button, you can press the shutter button halfway down. Pressing the shutter button halfway down while in playback mode switches the camera directly into shooting mode. You can wake the camera by pressing the shutter button halfway down as well.
• Double-tap the macro button to switch between normal and macro modes.

Hybrid Viewfinder

Like every non-TTL (mirrorless) optical viewfinder camera, the X100S is prone to parallax error. This means that the image you see in the optical viewfinder doesn’t always reflect the image that is actually recorded by the camera. Even worse, the focus field you have selected may not point to the area of the frame that the camera is actually focusing on. This is unavoidable, as the lens/sensor and the OVF are located on different optical axes and see things from slightly different angles. Parallax error is negligible for objects that are far away, but it can be quite strong when shooting (and focusing on) things that sit close to the camera.

Luckily, the X100S is trying to compensate parallax error in the OVF by illuminating parallax-corrected AF frames once focus has been locked and the X100S “knows” the camera-object distance. In order activate this function, make sure that CORRECTED AF FRAME is set to ON in the shooting menu.

How does it work? The X100S displays two AF boxes in the OVF, a solid one, and a second box with dotted lines. The solid box represents AF at infinity, the dotted box represents the AF target at the camera’s OVF minimum focus distance (MFD). Once the X100S locks focus, a third (green) box)will appear in the OVF, showing you the actual parallax-corrected AF field position based on the calculated distance between the camera and the in-focus subject. If this green box covers the part of the image you intended to be in focus, all is good. If not, you should reframe and try again. Alternatively, you can quickly switch from the OVF to the EVF using the viewfinder selector at the front of the camera. This convenient lever is there for a reason, please use it to quickly switch between the OVF and EVF to get the best of both worlds. In the EVF, there is no parallax or framing error, so even hardcore OVF shooter can temporarily use the EVF to perfectly frame and focus a shot. Before switching back to the OVF, you may want to lock focus with an appropriately configured AF-L button.

Try to avoid the “focus and reframe” method known from DSLR cameras. In order to minimize focus plane shift, it’s better to select one of the camera’s 49 AF fields. While adjusting/selecting AF fields, you can reset their size by pressing the command dial and jump to the center frame by pressing the DISP/BACK button (see shortcuts).

Happy Easter, everybody!

X100S: BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / AmazonDE / AmazonUK / AmazonITA / DigitalRev / your ebay / your Amazon
X20:  BHphoto (black – silver) / Adorama (black – silver) / AmazonUS (black – silver) / AmazonUK (black – silver) / AmazonDE / AmazonITA / DigitalRev / your ebay / your Amazon

For your convenience, here’s a TOC with links to my previous X-PERT CORNER articles:

• Using the X20
• X100S vs. X100
• X20 vs. X10
• RAW, JPEG, Silkypix and “Fuji Colors”
• Adapting Third-Party Lenses
• RAW for JPEG Shooters…
• Tips for Updating your Firmware
• How to Clean the X-Trans Sensor
• Using the XF14mmF2.8 R
• Decoding XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS
• Comparing RAW converters: JPEG vs. Lightroom, Capture One, Silkypix & RPP
• XF14mmF2.8 R appears to be almost distortion free
• How to Expand Dynamic Range
• How to Use Extended ISO
• EXR, anyone?
• Capture One – When the Going Gets Tough…
• Using Shooting Profiles and the Quick Menu

Rico Pfirstinger studied communications and has been working as journalist, publicist, and photographer since the mid-80s. He has written a number of books on topics as diverse as Adobe PageMaker and sled dogs, and produced a beautiful book of photographs titled Huskies in Action (German version). He has spent time working as the head of a department with the German Burda-Publishing Company and served as chief editor for a winter sports website. After eight years as a freelance film critic and entertainment writer in Los Angeles, Rico now lives in Germany and devotes his time to digital photography and compact camera systems. His book “Mastering the FUJIFILM X-Pro1” (Kindle Edition) (Apple iBook Store) (German version) is available on Amazon and offers a plethora of tips, secrets and background information on successfully using Fuji’s X-Pro1 and X-E1 system cameras, lenses and key accessories.

© 2013 Rico Pfirstinger, all rights reserved.

by Rico Pfirstinger

Talk to Rico (questions & feedback) – X20 sample images set – X20/X10 comparison images set

So you have pulled the trigger on a new X20? Let’s compile a few tips and tricks to get you started!

Auto-ISO

The X20 has a new Auto-ISO function that is based on the classic X100 and mimics the functionality of the new X100S. In Auto-ISO, you can set the ISO base (minimum ISO / default sensitivity), the ISO limit (maximum ISO sensitivity) and the minimum shutter speed. These settings can also be saved in different customer profiles (C1 and C2).

If you plan to use the DR (dynamic range) function (DR Auto, DR200% or DR400%) you should set the camera to Auto-ISO. Unlike the X10 with its EXR sensor, the X20 needs to raise the ISO sensitivity to a minimum of ISO 200 for DR200% and ISO 400 for DR400%. You can read this X-Pert Corner article to learn more about how to expand dynamic range.

Auto-ISO’s minimum shutter speed can be augmented by the optical image stabilizer (OIS) of the X20 when you set the OIS to one of its two “motion” modes. In these modes, the camera will scan the scene for motion and crank up the shutter speed (and along with it the ISO setting) accordingly. Of course, the camera can only do this when Auto-ISO is active. For example, my X20 chose ISO 400 and 1/320s (instead of ISO 100 and a slower shutter speed) when I shot these horses trotting directly towards the camera:

Once the horses had come to a stop, I took another pic, but this time, the camera reverted back to ISO 100 and a more moderate shutter speed of 1/150s:

Aperture was kept at f/5.0. Both shots were taken in Aperture priority (A) mode.