Settings?

[Iestrada]

Considering the benefit of your experience please share your settings for the XE-1:

RAW
RAW & JPEG
JPEG only for B & W

I have seen many beautiful pictures in the forum. I am most interested on what has given you the best results for b & w jpegs. The other would also be helpful.

 

[Iestrada]

No one? Please do consider sharing.

 

[Darthfeeble]

Which of the many are you curious about?

 

[Iestrada]

Favorite/best custom setting for B & W jpegs.

 

[dct]

Independently of the final image, I always store JPEG + RAW. Keeping all doors open for later PP is a benefit of digital I never would omit.
Regarding the JPEG/EVF/preview settings of a b&w session, I mostly use the Fuji b&wYellow option.
But I'm used from film cameras to anticipate a scene through an OVF (color) to a b&w image on film. That's why I use the OVF (on the X100) as a standard; also for b&w capture.

 

[daveleo]

You can decide what you like as the "best" results, but for me when I'm shooting "seriously" (not snapshots, which I do all JPG) .....

Raw only = 90% of the time
Raw + FineJPG = 10% of the time

I do all Raw-JPG conversion in the camera, using the Raw conversion menu, as it suits the image.

Specifically to your point, my usual "shooting settings" are:

BW or BW+Y(outdoors)
Highlights = 0 or +1 depending on the drama I want
Shadows = +1 or +2 depending on the drama I want (for faces, shadows & hilights = std)
Noise reduction = std
Sharpening = std or -1

Color
STD ("Provia" ?)
Color = +1
other options, same as above

 

[Iestrada]

Thanks for posting.

I have had the camera for a week and have not had any time to play with it.

Your input will help expedite things when I am able to get to it.

Thanks!

 

[MaxElmar]

Just starting out myself with a X-E1 and a couple of lenses. You really can't go wrong doing RAW+JPEG fine. (Unless you're shooting sports and you're worried about hitting the buffer limit. I'm still using a DSLR for that.)
It really takes a while to learn how to fit a new sensor into a long-established workflow. I recognize it will take some time for me to get as good a result as the Fuji JPEG engine - it's just nice to have both RAW (to learn from) and Fuji JPEG files to compare.

Just don't skimp on cards. Get some good quality, fast 16gb 45mb/s cards - they will handle 450 or JPEG+RAW each.

 

[Darthfeeble]

On my XPro1 I played around with all the settings for contrast, sharpness, etc and when I was done playing I settled on Standard, BW no filters, RAW+jpeg fine. The jpegs are amazing as is, and these settings offer me the opportunity to, as noted above, have several options in post.

 

[rybolt]

I shoot with the X Pro 1 camera and always shoot Raw+jpeg. I never shoot black and white in camera. I usually have the jpeg setting on Vivid as I was a Velvia shooter in my film days.
I use Nik SEFX Pro2 for black and white conversion. I usually wind up converting the Jpeg image though sometimes i get better results via the raw file.
One piece of advice that I'd give you (and for all I know you're doing this now) is to shoot in the full manual mode and enable Preview Exposure in Manual in the setup menu. This is a really terrific feature that allows you to see the effects of under/over exposure in the EVF. Since I began using this mode the Fun Factor has increased by 100% and I think my exposures are more consistent.

 

[goamules]

There are many other settings on the X cameras that make a much bigger difference in your shots, than what you asked about. I'd google it, there are several really good sites, with examples. Here is one that helped me: http://lxcellent.blogspot.com/2012/12/using-fuji-x-e1-tone-controls.html

 

[Iestrada]

Thanks for all the input guys!

 

[willie_901]

Late to the party, as always.

I only record raw data. Then I can manipulate the image rendering with the ultimate flexibility during post-prodution.

However others decide the convenience of in-camera JPEGs is more valuable than flexibility may not need.

Neither choice is correct for everyone and it is silly to insist one is superior to the other.

So in the case of raw there are few in-camera settings to report. I use auto WB. The color temperature parameter estimates from auto-WB seem to be an excellent starting point for XTrans raw unless the scene is lit by strong light sources with different color temperatures (e.g. sunlight from a window and tungsten light from lamps). In this case there is no single correct WB and the only solution is to apply selective color temperature rendering. This is the case for all cameras.

I also set DR=100. This avoids the unintended loss of shadow-region, signal-to-noise ratio due to the automatic under exposure that occurs when DR is > 100. When there is a risk of clipping important highlights I automatically bracket exposures instead. Here again this is my subjective preference to forgo convenience (DR >100) in order retain control.

I do override the default rendering parameters in LR 5. The initial parameters I prefer are applied automatically upon import.

Optimum parameters vary with different rendering software parameters. And people have different preferences for sharpening, noise filtering, saturation, contrast, etc. So there is no general advice to be had. I will say that NIK Silver Efex Pro 2 is powerful for rendering B&W images from raw files.

 

[Iestrada]

There are many other settings on the X cameras that make a much bigger difference in your shots, than what you asked about. I'd google it, there are several really good sites, with examples. Here is one that helped me: http://lxcellent.blogspot.com/2012/12/using-fuji-x-e1-tone-controls.html

Fantastic site thanks!

 

[konicaman]

One of my reasons for switching to the X system was to stop shooting RAW. I have been using Canon dSLRs for many years, and the jpg quality on those is rather meh, so RAW was a must in most situations. With the X-E1 I do on occasion shoot RAW in difficult light situations, but find that jpg output is more than adequate for most uses including A3 printing and even A2 - with a little sharpening.

For other settings, check tips and tricks here:
http://konicaman.wordpress.com/fuji-x-e1-tips-and-tricks/

EDIT: And please be sure to update the firmware - Fuji really does a good job with those updates!