New X100 User Needs Advice

Coming from a point and shoot background, I would like to understand more about photography so that I can start taking more control of my shots. To this end, I purchased an X100 but am using it in program mode with auto iso set between 200 and 3200. This way I can concentrate on focusing and composition with camera doing the technical work. Most of the time I find that my pictures turn out quite well which is a credit to the X100. I've posted one here for your comments. What might I have done to not have the sky look so over exposed?

I know some basic information about aperture settings and exposure control (ie. lower f stop shallower depth of field, etc.), but I still don't understand why you would one fstop vs. another, for example.

Would anyone be so kind as tell me how I might get started? Thank you.

Two things:

1. Set the DR (dynamic range) to 400%. This increases the camera's ability to capture stronger bright lights.

2. Dial back the exposure. Use the exposure compensation dial and experiment with lower values, perhaps -2/3 or more. This will make the rest of the image darker, but this can be corrected on the computer if you know how.

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http://fujifilmimages.aminus3.com/

Well first I want to say that I fall in the same category as you, I got the x100 as a way to learn more about photography, I guess the manual controls are what really made me get this camera. So far it's been a great learning tool, but due to where I am located at the moment I have very few shooting opportunity or at least nothing with a great range of colours (I'm stuck on a military base in Afghanistan)

Anyway, I found that grabbing a book was the best thing, many titles can be purchased online and one I can recommend is "Understanding Photography Field Guide - How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera" and one that I've seen recommended many times was "Understanding Exposure" and "Understanding Shutter Speed" all by Brian Peterson.

Otherwise there are some cheap apps for the iphone that are mini technical guides to photography that are nice mini intros

Online I have bookmarked a few links :

http://shuttersalt.com/blog/5-great-online-resources-learning-photography
http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/resources/photo-class/06-The-histogram
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm

As you can see understanding the histogram was a big part for me and a hurdle I wanted to pass as quickly as possible.

rattymouse said:

Two things:

1. Set the DR (dynamic range) to 400%. This increases the camera's ability to capture stronger bright lights.

2. Dial back the exposure. Use the exposure compensation dial and experiment with lower values, perhaps -2/3 or more. This will make the rest of the image darker, but this can be corrected on the computer if you know how.

Click to expand...

So, this overexposure problem can't be corrected by the in camera JPEGS?

I was wondering if I should just set the dynamic range to auto instead of a fixed value since I have everything else set to auto. I also noticed that when I set the dynamic range to a higher value than default, the iso increases from the base setting.

I also read somewhere that the X100 tends to overexpose a little. I went into Picasa and adjusted the shadows slightly on the photograph I uploaded and it looks alot better.

Thank you very much for the links. I will check them out when I have the time. I really liked some of your night photographs. I'm having difficulty with photography at night with focusing and exposure. Do you still leave it in program mode to do these shots? Do you manually focus?

I've never used the x100 in any auto mode, everything manual well except for focus. Some of the picture I use the manual focus + afl/ael button others are focused in af-s mode. For night shoots I opened the aperture at the max of f2 slow shutter speed of 1/15 and high iso (800-2000).

If you are going to use the x100 as a learning tool you should then use it in manual, you will have to retake shots 3-4 times at first but the more you use it the less shoots you'll have to take before you get a technically right picture.

Thanks for your reply. When you're in manual mode, how do you decide what f stop and shutter speed to use? Is it just by looking at the exposure histogram to be sure it will be properly exposed? I know that different combinations of fstops and shutter speeds can be used to give the same exposure, but I never understood why you would use combination versus another.

get the book understanding exposure by bryan peterson. the relationship between exposure, iso and aperture is something you really need to learn if you want to progress and peterson does a great job.

ed rader

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my galleries:

http://erader.zenfolio.com/

Thanks for the suggestion. The book looks like just what I need and I went ahead and ordered it.

No camera can create good light, which is what this shot needs. Go before sunrise or sunset and shoot again. Or try a long exposure at dusk. Bonus points if it's foggy. You need to learn to create an image, not take it. Move beyond snapshots and test the limits of your camera and yourself. This could be an amazing scene at the right time of day!

Davidgilmour said:

So, this overexposure problem can't be corrected by the in camera JPEGS?

Click to expand...

Erm, yes, by setting the DR to 400% or switching Auto-DR on so that it can choose the higher settings automatically.

In Auto-DR mode the camera is very protective of highlights and does some clever tricks to boost the shadows. It ends up being very close to an Auto-ETTR setting. It does some very clever optimisation in the conversion from the RAW file to the in-camera JPG. Better than any other camera I have used. To the point where if you forced me to shoot JPG I would expect better results from the X100 than I would from my 5DMkII.

Obviously by shooting RAW you can ditch Fuji's processing and see if you can beat them yourself in Photoshop or Lightroom. Easy to beat Canon's engineers, but not so easy to beat Fuji's.

But apart from that no, there is no magic way to expand upon the DR of any digital sensor. This is obviously not an X100-specific point. The X100 has 12.4 stops of DR at base ISO as measured by DXOMark. Which is typical of modern APS-C sensors. If you overexpose the image and blow the highlights you are in the same situation as any other digital camera.

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Fuji X100 Fanboy #1
X100 blog -> http://peri.org.uk/wp/?tag=blog

Thank you for your comments, however I have alot to learn regarding low light photography before I can do what you suggest. In this case, we were at a very nice restaurant in Leland, MI and we were seated at a table right next to a picture window when my wife noticed the nice Chris*Craft sailing past and asked if I could capture it. So it is just a snapshot through a picture window. I did bring up the shadows a bit in Picasa and it looks alot better.

Would you mind if I repost a different version of your picture? We can discuss what I did and why.

No. By all means, please do.

Okay, first off I really like the picture. The X100 probably isn't the best camera to learn on due to its fixed focal length but it will make you work harder to get a good shot. Since it is pretty wide it's hard to isolate your subject in the photo. You're going to learn to move around a lot!

For your photo below, the first thing I did was to level it. Water should almost always be shot even. If you don't have it activated, turn on the custom display with the level indicator working. I use that all the time. It's a real handy tool.

Once it was level I cropped off both sides. I removed the right side because it had some random items that were distracting. I removed the birdhouse from the left side because I didn't feel it really added anything to the picture.

I also cropped a little of the sky off for two reasons. One, since it's white with no color it's really bright and distracts from the subject. Two, I wanted to keep the picture a rectangle to keep a feeling of length along the river.

Next thing I did was to warm up the white balance a little. It was blue from being shot in the shade. This probably gets it closer to what you were actually seeing. Your eyes are still better and correcting for white balance than any camera made.

The next step I took was to darken up the left side of the photo where the river starts to go around the bend. It was too bright and was pulling my eyes off of the main subjects.

Last thing I did was add a little curve to the Tone Curve in a gentle S shape to darken the shadows just a touch and brighten the mids slightly.

Notice what you have left is a nicely balanced photo. You actually have three main subjects. The tree with the heavy bark on the left which kind of pushes you over to the right to look at the boat in the river which in turn leads you to looking at the long building. This in turn will push you back to the tree.

These three subjects are in a triangle which keeps the viewers interest longer because you will keep switching from one to the other. This helps to make a picture look more interesting to the viewer. If one of those were missing your eyes would probably be more likely to leave the photo. If I hadn't darkened the far left it also would drag your eyes out of the photo. Thanks for posting this photo. Really nice. As you learn about composition you'll be able to do this more in camera.

Thank you very much for your modifications and reasons for doing so. The picture indeed looks much better. May I ask what program you used to do these modifications?

I did what you suggested to the original image with Picasa and it really does look much better, almost like an oil painting. I was wondering if I had the dynamic range set to auto, would I still have had the blown out sky and background? It was set to the default which is 100%. Thanks again.

I use mostly Lightroom to process my photos. Sometimes going into photoshop. As for the dynamic range. I leave it on 100%. I don't want the added noise from the others. Others may have different opinions.

Davidgilmour said:

rattymouse said:

Two things:

1. Set the DR (dynamic range) to 400%. This increases the camera's ability to capture stronger bright lights.

2. Dial back the exposure. Use the exposure compensation dial and experiment with lower values, perhaps -2/3 or more. This will make the rest of the image darker, but this can be corrected on the computer if you know how.

Click to expand...

So, this overexposure problem can't be corrected by the in camera JPEGS?

Click to expand...

Not in camera but some software can correct overexposure on the PC.

If you shot RAW, you can process the image in the X100 and do some corrections to the exposure.

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http://fujifilmimages.aminus3.com/