New Fuji user in need of advice on shooting settings.

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

JNR wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

JNR wrote:

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

JNR wrote:

Ysarex wrote:

My X-T4's behavior is odd regarding autoDR with the camera in manual and auto ISO. I found a lighting condition that causes autoDR to engage DR200 and placed the camera on a tripod. If I hard set the ISO with the camera in manual then as long as I set an ISO above 320 autoDR will activate DR200 no matter how high I set the ISO -- 3 stops above nuked highlights and DR200 kicks in. Likewise stops below well placed highlights and autoDR still sets DR200.

If I set the ISO to auto however and use the EC to force auto ISO to raise ISO autoDR basically disables. Any EC value above 0 and autoDR seems to lock out. At first I thought autoDR wasn't working if the camera was in manual with auto ISO set. That's not it. AutoDR seems not to function in manual exposure with auto ISO set and any positive EC value. Odd.

Totally agree that sounds odd. I'm wondering if that has something to do with DR Priority settings, but you don't use those, or some other setting. Don't blame you at all if you're getting those weird responses.

I don't see anything like that on the X-T2 or X-T20, but I'll look into it a bit more. Those bodies don't offer DR Priority - and I'm not interested in it. As I've said - on my bodies - everything just seems to work well on its own. The AutoDR just allows me to be a bit more aggressive with the EC in difficult situations, such as backlit faces. If I go a bit too far, the Auto DR just triggers as it should. No difference AFAICT regarding native ISO or the higher ISOs.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. The AutoDR function is only triggered by the contrast in the scene as it perceives it, and not by any potential or imminent overexposure/highlight clipping condition (at least not with my cameras). Too bad, it would be a far useful feature if it did.

Not my experience at all. That would be true if metering was done by full averaging - which I haven't used on a camera built since the 1970s! If that was the case, then you'd be running into poor exposure measurements and blow outs on a routine basis. I'm not exactly sure what is going on under the hood based on multi- or center-weighting (my usual settings), but when any area larger than a few specular highlights are blown, AutoDR consistently triggers for me only as needed - and I have it activated more often than not.

Not me, if I point my camera (with DRAuto mode on) at a scene where DR100 is chosen (even one that is right on the edge), I can dial up the exposure compensation until all highlight detail is completely obliterated and the DRAuto never switches to DR200 (the ISO remains at base ISO).

I can't imagine any reason why the camera would do that, given that it is operating the meter system for AutoDR in the same way as other controls such as EC.

Well, it does.

It’s pretty clear to me that the DRAuto switching is based (as it should be) on the contrast of the scene, not your exposure settings. If the scene has only moderate contrast there’s no really no need for you to alter the exposure with EC and, I guess, it assumes that you won’t.

Same here -- my X-T4 behaves as Erik describes.

Of course, if you put in some crippling controls regarding minimum and maximum shutter speeds, and if all else are manual settings... you're telling the camera not to make the necessary change. I suppose there should be warning signal to tell you that, but then again Fuji tends to assume you know what you want when using the manual settings.

Aside from a manually set aperture, my camera is set up with Auto-ISO/SS with no limits that should have anything to do with how the AutoDR works.

Do your cameras behave differently?

Erik