I Would like to show you some settings, or preferences if you like, used on my X100V camera in case you are curious. Maybe it can help, maybe not. The settings on any camera are all very personal. It’s all a matter of taste and preference and there’s no good or bad.

Manual focus

I almost always use manual focus. For most of the photography I do it works really well. Shooting landscapes and clouds the lens is almost always set to infinity. When I take a picture of subtle clouds the auto focus can go hunting because of the low contrast. Manual focus solves that problem for me.

Back button focus

In the above image you can see that I have set my AEL/AFL button on the back of the camera to auto focus when pressed. I’ve set it to AF-ON: Keep it pressed and it will keep focussing until released. A very nice way to quickly adjust the focus point. The big advantage of back button focus is that the shutter button now only functions as a light metering button when half pressed. So now you can measure and recompose if you like.

Manual Focus Assist

Another way to help me find the correct focus is Manual Focus Assist:

I’ve set it to Focus Peak Highlight, for me the Red (High) setting works really well. Everything that’s sharp will be marked red in the viewfinder.

Auto Exposure Lock

There’s one button on the front of my camera that I have set to Auto Exposure Lock or AE-L. So when I measure my scene I press the front button to lock the exposure. Now I can recompose and my exposure will never change until I press the front button again. Very handy.

Color Space

One thing to also mention when you are shooting JPG is the color space or color profile. I’ve set mine to Adobe RGB. You can also choose sRGB. The gamut (color range) of Adobe RGB is a bit wider, meaning there is a bit more color depth. If you shoot JPG files the color profile makes a difference because the profile is stored in the jpg files.

If you only shoot RAW (like me) it doesn’t really matter what profile you use.

If you have set your camera to Adobe RGB you might find that your JPG images may look a bit flat, color wise, when posting online. The standard profile for web is sRGB. So your web browser will display the sRGB profile which has a smaller range than Adobe RGB.

If, however, you want to print the JPG files from your camera, it might be better to choose Adobe RGB for it has the widest color range. This also depends on where you will have your prints made.

Aperture priority

I shoot Aperture Priority mode normally. For most of the things I do that works really well. The aperture has the most influence on how an image will look most of the time. You control depth of field, sharpness and bokeh with it. Sharpness? Yes. Every lens performs best when stopped down two or three stops. So an F1.4 lens will perform best at F2.8 or F4 while an F4 lens will perform best at F8 or F11. Very small apertures like F16 or F22 decrease sharpness. Shooting wide open usually makes images look a bit softer (this also differs per lens) and of course there is not much depth of field. This also depends on the distance to your subject. The closer the more bokeh.

Auto ISO and Auto shutter speed

For auto ISO I give my camera full control over the sensitivity. The lowest it can go is 160 ISO. That’s the lowest the X100V will allow. For the highest ISO I set it to 12800 ISO.

I am really not paranoid about grain or noise especially not when I’m shooting outside and it will never reach the max ISO. Since I always convert to black and white and also add film grain in Silver Efex Pro, I am not worried at all about grain/noise or whatever. I don’t need my files to look polished anyway. The minimum auto shutter speed is set to 1/125th of a second. That should keep image blur away from my files easily with the 23mm lens (35mm full frame) on the X100V.

Zone Focussing

When doing street photography I mostly use Zone Focussing. It is actually manual focussing where the lens is set to a fixed distance. Say for example 3 meters. When choosing an aperture of F8 you will get approximately everything in focus from a bit less than 2 meters to almost 10 meters with the X100V. So that will be “the Zone” in which everything will be sharp. You set and forget. Now all you have to do is take care your subject is in between 2 and 10 meters away from you and it will appear sharp in the photo.

The larger (lower number) the aperture the smaller the zone. The smaller (higher number) the aperture the bigger the zone.

In the AF/MF menu you have to set your Depth of field scale to “film format” instead of “Pixel Basis” to get the best results.

In your viewfinder you will see something like the below image which I honestly stole from another website (35mmc.com) and changed to my liking 😊

In the photo the aperture is set to F16 and the focus is set to a little bit more than 2 meters, now everything from approximately 1 meter till a lot more than 10 meters will be in focus.

The zone is represented by the blue line, the small white stripe is the set focus point.

Metering

For my light metering mode I use “Multi”. The camera uses different zones to calculate correct exposure. I also use the exposure compensation dial on top of the camera to adjust the metering on the fly which is almost always.

Mechanical and Electronic shutter

My shutter is set to M + E. I like this because in really bright sunlight the camera can choose very very short shutter speeds up to 1/32,000s. Because of the leaf shutter of the X100V, the mechanical shutter can not go any faster than 1/2000s wide open and 1/4000s from F4.5. That is where the electronic shutter takes over. A big advantage of the leaf shutter, for me, is the super silent operation. It also has the advantage of being able to sync flash at its fastest shutter speed of 1/4000s. I never use flash but it is nice to know.

Silence!

Last but not least, I have all my sound settings turned off to be as unobtrusive as possible. Maybe I will turn the sound of the self-timer on should I need it. Probably not.

Those were some of my preferences. Hopefully it can be of use.