Fuji X camera settings help needed

Johnmcl7

If I'm understanding your post correctly you want to set a shutter speed but set aperture and iso on auto with the system prioritising iso before widening aperture?  That makes complete sense on a large sensor camera since a shallow depth of field is more likely to spoil a photo than more high iso noise but I'm not aware of a camera that lets you do that, reading the link above about Fuji auto iso (which I'm not familiar with) it doesn't sound like that's possible.

I always stayed away from manual mode as it sounded like too much work but when you use it with auto-iso it effectively becomes a more customisable auto-iso mode.  I started using it on a Sony camera which had a very limited auto iso mode and set a minimum shutter speed of 1/80 even though the lens is a fixed 35mm and 1/40 would make more sense to gain a stop back.  I normally use aperture mode to control the depth of field so now I put it in manual mode, set the shutter to 1/40, continue to set the aperture as I want and then set the iso to auto.  

The main issue is if I go into a bright area and the camera is maxed out at iso 100 then it will over expose but then it's easy enough to just change to aperture priority mode when the 1/80 speed minimum isn't an issue.  I realise it doesn't quite do what you want but with a larger sensor I think it's good to keep a control of the aperture as you're the only one that can tell whether a wider aperture is suitable or not.

273K

That article's interesting, a couple of things I don't agree with, but it's good to see other ways of thinking about it. One good point it makes is how being able to adjust iso is such an advantage over the days of film when your iso rating was effectively fixed for the next 36 shots (though I suppose you could also push/pull film). Otoh in a way that was a simpler time and now you have makes one more factor to think about (I know autoISO takes the thinking out of it but there is an aesthetic aspect still attached to the iso setting)(I also disagree that really high iso's are absolutely fine, at least on my body, I find 3200 is the highest I usually like to go).

Interestingly, the article says that in auto ISO mode with auto shutter (equiv to P-mode I guess?) it will first set ISO to minimum, and select and appropriate shutter speed. If the shutter speed reaches the (user defined) minimum setting then it will increase the ISO up to the maximum. Fine, but then,
This checks out, and is what gets me. Why have a minimum shutter speed then disregard it (ok, I can see the logic)? It's probably the reason I ended up using shutter priority, as you can easily correct for a bit of underexposure, but not motion blurring.

In any case, I 100% agree with the last part: Practice.  And then practice more.

273K

Yeh that's exactly what I want to do, don't know why no cameras have this option, maybe something to do with firmware, or mechanics, or maybe I'm just the only person who would ever use it.

I think for me 1/40 is too slow to hold steady, but I can see what you're getting at.

Johnmcl7

I was meaning 1/40 purely for my use but you could use 1/250 or whatever you need to suit your use.

I guess there's probably a variety of reasons why auto iso doesn't allow more complexity in setting how it works, many of them are still quite basic and going back a bit when high isos weren't great.  I had an Olympus DSLR which in auto iso wouldn't change iso past 100 unless the flash was open or it was in the sports preset at which point it would increase it to 400.  I quickly got used to choosing aperture myself so there's perhaps not a huge demand for such a configurable auto iso.