Custom settings and how I’ve lost my love for the X-E series

7rvar wrote:

I read this a few times and I really don't get it. My reply probably will sound critical but it's just my reaction, by all means use your cameras in the way that you like most.

No, these are all perfectly sound questions 🙂

In my opinion auto ISO is the preffered mode. Why would you go from say 1/125 to 1/250 to offset going from f/2.8 to f/2 when instead you could just keep the shutter speed you wanted and allow the ISO to maintain the exposure. Not to mention the fact that you can fine tune it in third stops by simply adjusting the exposure comp. dial that is placed as prominently as possible at the corner of your camera.

Maybe this is largely down to a style of shooting that I’ve evolved into, but it’s mainly that there are numerous situations where keeping a constant exposure is more useful than reacting to what’s in the frame. For example, I mostly shoot B&W and often want to blow the highlights to leave detail in certain darker areas, and I’ve found that any form of AE means I’m constantly fighting the closure comp dial. These days I’m less into the “expose to the right and spend time post-processing” way of working than I may once have been; these days I want a certain style out of camera and full manual just works better for me in that respect.

To me this sounds like you're just deep in C1-C7 as jpeg recipes and maybe that's why I don't relate. I tried that but I don't enjoy it.

Absolutely correct: to me, they’re the image styles I’ve always wanted, and I prefer my shooting controls to be dedicated rings and dials.

And doesn't it make a fair amount of sense to specify ISO within that? It's not like you could change the ISO of your film mid roll. I find the white balance shifts that get used to get the desired look much more problematic than defining an ISO value.

Yeah, but let’s face it, anyone who’s shot film has found themselves shoot half a roll in daylight and then want to take shots in the evening, so flexibility of ISO is one of the absolute joys of digital over film. In the same way, being in broad daylight, you might want to switch from colour to B&W but you still want a low ISO. To me, the fact that ISO (affecting the exposure) was once coupled with the colour response (affecting the final print) was purely an unfortunate trait of the medium. The fact that digital separates them is a good thing.

With ISO invariance you could theoretically shoot everything at base ISO and just adjust the exposure after the fact if you're shooting raw.

Also true, but that’s a real ball ache way of working, trying to judge the level of under exposure. I love the Wysiwig nature of EVFs.

I mean you're literally already in the Q menu to change your custom setting so how is it confusing to set your desired ISO at the same time you alter your custom setting.

I have the custom settings on a function button. Press the button, move the joystick, then shoot. The Q menu is too laborious: open it, spot which item currently has focus, shuffle up and left by some number of clicks that wasn’t predictable prior to opening the menu, then move to the rear dial and rotate that. I’m waaaay to lazy for that when there’s an easy option 🙂 let alone then having to repat all but the first step to faff about with ISO.

if you have already determined what aperture and shutter speed you want shouldn't auto ISO just give you what you wanted anyway? Not to mention the fact that you can tune it via exposure compensation in this scenario.

It’s always possible, but starting with auto and reacting via compensation is often way less efficient, and perhaps more importantly less consistent, than going full manual.

Isn't this just like applying presets to your RAW files?

Yup, except (a) that’s more time wasted doing something tedious and (b) for me one of the absolute joys about Fuji (the other being the ergonomics and traditional controls) is that the in-camera processing can make a far better job of colour than I can. Honestly, for many years I’ve primarily shot raw and processed to B&W because the cameras I used produced unpleasant JPEGs and I couldn’t make a better fist of the colours, but with Fuji I can set up a profile, shoot, and I’m happy with the results. I’m very comfortable processing B&W, but I simply can’t create colour profiles in Lightroom as good as those in the camera.

No reason to miss the X-E if you've replaced it with an X-Pro. You spent more money but got a better camera.

Well, yes, absolutely true—but the X-Es are delightfully light and compact, and we had some great times together 🙂