Using Face Detection

by Rico Pfirstinger

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Fujifilm kindly delivered the LMO and PDAF upgrades for most of the X-Mount lenses a day earlier than expected, and they have also fixed the manual focus glitch in firmware 2.00 for the classic X100. I am looking forward to read about your first impressions with the X-E2 (and XQ1) using the new hybrid tracking autofocus.

If you need assistance upgrading your camera or lens firmware, you might find this article helpful. Sadly, there’s still no word if or when Zeiss will issue similar firmware updates for their X-Mount Touit lenses.

In Your Face!

Face Detection has always been available in most of Fujifilm’s “consumer” cameras. Among others, you can find this feature in the X10, X-S1, X20, XF1 and XQ1, and now also in the X-A1, X-M1 and X-E2. Face Detection is also available in combination with the tracking autofocus feature of the XQ1 and X-E2. This means that you can use Face Detection along with AF-C (in either single shot or low-speed burst mode) to keep the face of a person in focus while this person is moving left or right, or towards or away the camera.

While the hybrid PDAF/CDAF (combining on-sensor Phase Detection Auto Focus with on-sensor Contrast Detection Auto Focus) allows the camera to focus faster on a subject, Face Detection has to rely mostly (if not entirely) on the camera’s CDAF, because in many real-life situations, the face the camera is locking on will not be fully located inside of the nine central AF frames (the area that is equipped with PDAF pixels).

PDAF helps the camera establish and lock focus faster, but it’s not mandatory to enable autofocus tracking. Just think of the Olympus OM-D EM-5, which doesn’t have PDAF, but still offers fast AF and subject tracking capabilities. Your X-E2 and XQ1 can do this, too: Both cameras can track subjects with any of their 49 AF frames, not just the nine central ones (aka those with PDAF pixels).

In addition to selecting one of the camera’s 49 AF frames, you can also set the X-E2 and XQ1 to track subjects using Face Detection. Click here to access a private Flickr set that illustrates both standard AF tracking (pre-production 23mm lens) and Face Detection AF tracking (pre-production 50-230mm lens) with a pre-production X-E2.

Wait, There’s More!

While most users will immediately understand how Face Detection and the camera’s autofocus work hand-in-hand, some may not realize that Face Detection also influences the exposure metering of the camera. To illustrate this, let’s have a look at an example.