X-E1 fully manual and no exposure com, How?

[trondareo]

I have been shooting film for a long time, only using my digital for family snapshots, but now I want to try it out on some low key b/w work, running it in full manual mode. I have it set to iso 400 with a manual lens, like I am used to from my Leica M3 and expose using f and time as suitable.
But I can not get the viewfinder to show me the exposure I will get. It seems that it is still doing some exposure compensation that come into play as i press the shutter.:bang:

How do I disable this and get true what you see is what you get in the viewfinder ?

 

[geertvn]

There is a setting in the last 'blue' menu: preview exposure in manual mode.

 

[trondareo]

Thanks for the tip, but I cant find that setting. Maybe I have an older firmware.

I\ll get to work updating it

 

[trondareo]

I updated it to the latest firmware and found the setting! Turns out I was on firmware version 1.10
Thank you That is a great improvement.

 

[daveleo]

Using the X-E1 in full manual exposure mode is the "bees knees".
The "preview in manual mode" is a great help.
Definitely explore the possibilities there.

 

[willie_901]

Preview exposure mode is very useful. However it's actually preview post-acquistion brightness mode unless ISO =200. For in-camera JPEGs the EVF brightness is close to the JPEG brightness.

For raw files it's useful to keep a couple of things in mind.

Brightness is not exposure.

The only time the brightness in the EVF represents something close to the exposure is when ISO = 200. At higher ISOs the sensor becomes under exposed as ISO increases (if you do what the meter tells you to do). Increasing ISO also decreases the analog dynamic range. Only the shutter time and aperture determine exposure. ISO determines the post-acquistion brightness. Just because the EVF brightness looks great does not mean you are getting the best possible data from the sensor when the shutter is open. It just means the brightness will be useful. Two images can have the same brightness, but one can have a much higher signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range than the other.

The EVF brightness you see is from a highly compressed image. This makes optimizing exposure based on the EVF (even at ISO 200) problematic.

This has several implications.

If the camera is on auto-ISO the ISO (post acquisition brightness) can be unnecessarily high. The brightness of the EVF will look normal. If you use raw files, you may find exposure can be a bit higher than what you see in the EVF. Some people calibrate the EVF brightness by comparing flat, rendered raw files to what they saw in the EVF.

Automatically bracketing exposures by 1/3 stop increments is another way to optimize exposure independent of the EVF brightness and the meter estimate.

 

[MaxElmar]

That's a great summary, Willie - do you know how the histogram is derived? (Must be similar.) It's very nice to have a live histogram - that's how I usually gauge exposure. I would be happier if I could get histograms for the color channels as well (at least after the fact.) Hate it when a color channel is blown out, and you don't notice because the average luminance is fine.

 

[willie_901]

I do not know the details of how the histogram is derived.

However:

o The histogram display will change as the in-camera JPEG rendering parameters change. As is true with many cameras, the histogram is not computed directly from the raw data.

o The histogram data is highly compressed beyond the typical JPEG compression.

o Some raw users will evaluate and select in-camera JPEG rendering parameters to mimic what they see in the raw platform they use.

o It is disappointing Fujifilm does not offer RGB clipping tools. Of course even these could be affected by in-camera JPEG rendering parameters.

The only way to be certain the raw data is not clipped in any of the channels (while avoiding unnecessary underexposure) is by bracketing exposures.