My Fuji XE-2 Setup for Wedding Photography
With the new firmware out and being enjoyed I thought I'd draft up this quick blog post which goes over how I have mine setup to shoot 99% of the time.
If you haven't seen it already do check out the review I did on the new firmware to see what you have and an overview of what the new features are.
So my XE-2, well it's actually 2 XE-2's I normally use, one with the 56mm lens and the other with the 23mm lens, setup wise they are exactly the same, but they do differ a little in physical setup so I'll start with that.
XE-2 + 56mm - Hand grip and spider holster
XE-2 + 23mm - Leather case and strap
The main physical differences are just how I carry the cameras, the 23mm lens sits around my neck and the 56mm on a spider Holster on my belt, the grip is there to add a bit more to hold onto and make shooting a little more comfortable.
Exposure Settings: I like to let the camera do the work so I can just focus on getting the shot, as such here are my exposure settings;
Aperture priority, auto ISO [200-6400 1/125], auto white balance, shoot in RAW+small JPG and most of the time I'm shooting wide open.
The reason for shooting RAW + small jpeg is I use a cable to transfer shots to the iPad which doesn't like RAW files, auto white balance is on most of the time and can be adjusted in post, auto ISO is great, and now there are a choice of 3 auto modes, so I do have a second backup mode for shooting dancing etc.
Function Buttons:
We now have a bigger choice when it comes to function buttons, these are quickly changeable by holding down the button in questions and choosing the mode.
FN1 [on the top plate] - ISO - I usually shoot auto ISO but this is here for quick touch changes if I need to override, I hates having the movie button here as it's just too easy to press and start recording when you don't want to.
FN2 - Shutter Type - I love the new electronic shutter and my default mode is MS+ES but sometimes especially for movement I want the MS then for quiet still moments I pop into ES only.
AE button - Metering - This is set to metering mode, I usually shoot with spot metering but sometimes it's nice to have this able to make a quick change for rapidly altering light
D-Pad - Focus Point - This is on all 4 buttons so you can very smoothly change the focus point from pressing any button.
Focus settings:
Quick and easy focus is my main priority when shooting, I want to get the shot and move on, this is also the main point when people talk about the Fuji X series line, so this is how I set things up to get the fastest focus speeds.
Focus mode - Single point AF, set to shutter priority [the camera will take a photo over locking focus] Size of focus point 1 above the smallest.
Drive - Still Image
AF-L Mode - Pressing, back button will focus+lock when held down
This setup allows for quick and easy focus, as well as quick shooting, now you can put the camera in 7fps if you want to get a lot of shots of a quick moment, but I find having this on all the time means you end up with far to many repeated shots.
Using the back button to focus frees the shutter up for taking the shot allowing you to get some pretty decent speeds for shooting compared to using the main focus button alone [both are reasonable however], this setup allows easy switching between both so I tend to mix and match to the situation.
I hope that sheds a little light on how I set the cameras up, I'll also be doing a post on how I process my images as quite a few people have been asking for that, so stay tuned!
Cheers, Col-