I must admit, I don’t use the Q menu a lot on my camera. But I never understood why my custom settings always suddenly were renamed to “BASE” and how this works.

While searching for an answer why this is and how it works, it turned out I wasn't the only one who wondered. The Fujifilm camera manual doesn’t give a clear answer to how this whole “BASE” system works:

This is the only reference to “BASE” I could find in the manual. Is it clear to you how this works now? If so, congratulations, I admire your intelligence. It still didn’t make sense to me though and with me many fujifilm camera users. Here’s how it works:

When you press the Q button on the back of the camera you get this screen or something that looks like this. Of course your settings are for sure different.

In this case I’ve selected my custom made setting called C4 ”FLAT RAW” and you can see the parameters I have chosen for this custom setting. However the C4 is called BASE C4. Closing the Q menu will get you back to the normal shooting mode like below image. Nothing confusing right?

All the chosen values are still the same as C4. If you now change some settings to zero for example, like I’ve done in the image below, these are your new BASE C4 settings.

Closing the Q menu and opening the Q menu again, you will find all the settings you’ve changed in BASE C4, in this case everything set to 0, are still there. That’s logic right?

However, if you now change your BASE C4 to another Custom Setting, like for example C1, and close the Q menu, you will find that, when opening the Q menu again, the preset C1 is now called BASE C1.

The changes you applied earlier to BASE C4 (everything set to 0) are now gone. You still have got C4 of course, with the custom programmed settings like shown before:

The settings you made earlier to BASE C4 no longer exist. Closing the Q menu and opening the Q menu again you will find that C4 is now renamed to BASE C4 again. The settings however are the “normal” C4 settings. All the changes you’ve made previously to BASE C4 are lost.

The added word BASE literally means: This is your current setting BASED on your C 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 and it might be that you’ve changed the values of this custom setting. If you want to see what you’ve changed you can switch between the BASE and the original C setting. But don’t leave the Q menu when you are in the original C setting or your adjusted BASE settings will be gone and the original C setting is now your new BASE.

When you change to a different custom setting like C3 for example and you do NOT see the BASE naming yet, when you now change a setting, a little red dot appears in the right top corner of the “button” that you’ve changed, to show you have changed the setting.

My C3 setting:

My adjusted C3 setting with the red dots, indicating change:

Closing the Q menu and opening it again your C3 setting is now called BASE C3, just like I explained before but the red dot or dots are gone. Values are still the way you adjusted them, see image below, but you can’t tell anymore until you compare with your original C setting.

The conclusion, or should I say confusion, is this: The BASE setting is the customising of your custom setting. It will only be “saved” if you leave the Q menu while the BASE setting is still selected. Choose another C setting and leave the Q menu, then the previously customised-custom-BASE values are gone and your newly chosen C setting is now called BASE.

Hope this helped. I need a drink. Basically.