Iso-x Manual

[Olimpia Sawaia]

The AUTO ISO value can change if you turn the exposure comp dial, nothing out of the ordinary about that but I wondered if I could refine that a little and add some control. At the time I would mostly shoot in spot metering with the AF and Exposure meter linked to the same point, this was great but I would see the image in the EVF jump about in exposure a fair bit if I was using AUTO ISO. To solve that I changed the metering to matrix and that gave me a fairly solid read on the light available and stoped the ISO jumping about making it much easier to get the exposure I wanted by simple dialling up or down the exposure comp using the dial on the right of the camera and AUTO ISO set up until I could see the exposure I wanted in the EVF. This effectually gave my manual control of my ISO using the exposure dial. Neat!

Kim is a professional photographer & Official Fujifilm X-Photographer living in Celbridge Co Kildare, Ireland. When not shooting Portraits and Weddings or Corporate & Editorials he can be found searching out the best coffee shops or running round after his two kids.

I got an X-e4 recently and what I have done is set the AEL/AFL button to AFL only and whenever you press that and then turn the focus ring the camera is automatically in manual focus mode without the half press until you shoot or press afl. I assume you need af+mf also selected.

It seems that Auto ISO does not work when I switch into Manual mode on my X1 (ie set aperture and shutter speed manually) - the ISO does not seem to move, and when I press the ISO button, Auto is "greyed out", forcing me to manually select an ISO to get the correct exposure. Is this correct or am I missing something?

My suggestion is to decide what your priority is: the speed or the DOF and set the time or f: on A, while using Auto ISO at the same time, if you expect changing light condition to be of wider latitude than your other variable (time or f: stop).

But with 2 free-floating variables and no way to preset their interaction you'll have surprises. You'll always get answers, stating that what you ask for is not necessary untill the feature is available, but that's standard on all fora.

The exposure compensation is very useful even in manual mode and is present on other fujifilm bodies and other brands. For instance, the experience shows some time is better to go -1 EV in manual mode (A and S) with auto ISO, just to preserve nuances in over illuminated zones of the photo frame. This is just an example, there are many other situations the exposure compensation is very welcomed in manual mode (when you really need to control both A and S) and the compensation to be done at the level of ISO, with your choice of +/- EV. This is my experience with X-T20 and Nikon DSLRs.

I made the setup, it worked for a while (very short time) but now has an erratic behaviour (the left dial). Most of the time is not working, no exposure compensation; after the rotation of the dial nothing happens.

Good news, a major firmware update (2.0) is apparently coming this month! Hopefully that fixes up some of the issues you're having. It's apparently adding tethering as well if you're into that. But before you bench the camera while waiting, make sure you are familiar with the following 3 settings which can cause erratic behavior with exposure compensation:

Example: it's a really bright day and the auto-iso sets iso160. You are currently at -1 compensation, but no matter how much you turn the dial it won't lower the exposure since the camera is at the minimum possible iso already.

This quickly becomes confusing because it seems that there is a difference between the current exposure and the setpoint exposure. What you see on screen is the current exposure, in other words the exposure the camera is currently using based on your settings. When you turn the dial you are changing the setpoint exposure, in other words the exposure the camera is trying to reach (but may not be able to). Since this setpoint has no on-screen indicator, it can look like turning the dial isn't doing anything when you are far outside the range of possible iso values.

Example: on the same sunny day as above where you are stuck at -1 compensation, if you keep trying to lower the exposure, your setpoint may go all the way down to -5, but the on-screen indicator will still show -1 since the camera can't go any lower with current settings. If you start to turn the dial in the other direction to increase the exposure again, it will look like nothing is happening! This is because you have to move your setpoint all the way back up to above -1 before the on screen indicator will move, and this may take quite a few clicks of the wheel since you are down at -5.

Recommendation: Set iso to auto with as wide of a range as possible. Be cognizant of very bright or very dark scenes where your exposure settings may be out of the range achievable by the auto-iso, as the exposure dial will seem unresponsive here.

We just saw in the Auto ISO section above that having too small an ISO range can make the exposure compensation dial seem unresponsive. Activating the DR200 or DR400 settings further shrinks this range, making it seem unresponsive over an even larger range of settings. Using the "auto" DR setting is even worse, since the camera will be trying to change the DR to what it thinks it should be, which may directly counter your manual exposure settings! You are then in a fight with the camera over exposure which makes the exposure meter jump around erratically.

3) D Range Priority (Settings->IQ->page 2): This combines the dynamic range settings with alterations to the tone curve. So the same issues that exist with the DR settings (higher minimum iso, problems with the camera fighting against your manual settings) will occur here as well.

and thank you for spending time on this subject, but from my point of view the capability to use the exposure compensation with M mode make the difference and allows to shoot as creatively as possible. All the settings were as you mentioned, except D-range that was on auto. I put it off and now I am just testing again.

Old post but hope this can help. You have to make sure that exp. comp. is set to zero in P, S or A mode before you go in to manual mode. If the comp is set to, let say +5, and this is of the range for the settings in manual mode, twisting the comp dial (left dial) want do any changes.

Hi Fuji X-S10 owners.
I am using the video mode of the X-S10. I have set manual exposure. Shutter speed is 1/60 as I film with 30fps. I have set auto ISO. Dynamic range is set to 100%. Whatever I do the lowest ISO possible is always 640. I can set 160 manually, but 640 seems to be the lower limit for auto ISO. This is a problem in bright light. I use the current firmware. There are now configurable auto ISO modes like in photography.

You could see 640 in two places. Your base ISO could be set to 640 which could cause the behavior you are seeing. Alternatively, if your max is set to 640, then your camera will show the maximum ISO (640) until you half press the shutter when it will calculate the actual exposure (and show the actual ISO in use).

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