The Ultimate Fujifilm X-E1 Camera Guide

I recently (in 2024) purchased a used 2012 Fujifilm X-E1 on eBay and a new 2023 TTArtisan 25mm f/2 manual lens. Normally I shoot a larger, pricier, modern, more capable Sony camera. With photographers everywhere having nice cameras and looking for a cheaper EveryDay Carry (EDC) camera, I figured such a review would be beneficial to others.

I highly recommend using a fully manual lens with this camera otherwise the slow autofocus will make it a drag to use.

How I configure it

Changing configuration options go a long way to help make the camera easier to use. In particular, since the manual-only lens is very cheap and does not have electrical contacts, there are some settings that must be changed in order to even take a photo. Note that it's always recommended to reset settings to factory defaults any time you buy a used camera.

Pressing the MENU OK button (herein referred to as OK) brings up a menu which is semi-contextual. If you're in normal shooting mode it will bring up the Shooting Menu. These menus are made up of multiple menu screens. If you're in playback mode (press the Play icon on the left) then the OK button will bring up the Playback Menu instead. In either case there are contextual menu options at the top, then four Set-Up menu options below them.

Also note that basically the first two menu entries in the Shooting Menu are dedicated to creative Custom Settings / Recipes. Those will be described separately from the Shooting Menu since they're so unique.

Finally, note that on the front of the camera there is a switch labelled M, C, S. These are the shooting modes and stand for Manual, Continuous, and Single. I only own the TTArtisan manual lens and assuming you're using the same lens you'll want to set it to M and then never look at it ever again.

Card Recommendation and Speed

Basically whatever you use will be slow. The RAW files (with a file extension of .RAF) are 25MB each. JPEG files are between 4MB and 8MB. Shooting in JPEG only can buy you some speed.

I use the SanDisk Extreme PRO 200 MB/s V30 U3 C10 64GB card. It stores over 2,000 photos when shooting Fine JPEG + RAW. When shooting Fine JPEG only it'll hold around 10,000 photos. RAW only is about 2,500. Suffice to say you do not need more than a 64GB card for this camera. Having too many files on a card at once increases the chance that you lose data. A 32GB card is adequate. The cards from this era are old and cheap so you might as well grab some backups for your bag.

When you take a photo the status light on the back of the camera will blink as the photo is saved to the card. Three blinks seem to take about a second. Depending on the Image Quality selection you make in the menu it takes about this amount of blinks for the file save to finish:

• Fine: 3 blinks
• Normal: 3 blinks
• Fine + Raw: 6 blinks
• Normal + Raw: 6 blinks
• Raw: 6 blinks

Fine and Normal refer to JPEG quality. Normal is more compressed, which reduces file storage, but takes time to compress anyway and also reduces filesize. With storage being so cheap you should never use normal JPEG quality, only use fine.

So the only real decision is if you should use RAW or not. If you're shooting in continuous mode (DRIVE menu, second CONTINUOUS option, either 6fps or 3fps), perhaps for sports, then you might not want to use RAW as you'll run out of buffer faster.

Camera Manual

Download the camera manual to your smartphone so that you can reference it in the field if needed:

• Fujifilm X-E1 Manual PDF (English)

Shooting Menu

These settings are catered around manual shooting and an ubiquity of affordable storage.

Page 1

• Image size: L3:2 - this uses the full surface of the sensor
• image quality: F+RAW - this takes a Fine (low compression) JPEG and RAW photo
• Set this to FINE if you never want to edit photos and use the JPEG straight from camera

Page 3

• Fn button: assign to Whitebalance - I use this to overcome a bug with custom settings
• Framing: thirds - this helps with composition
• Mount adapter: 25mm - set this to the focal length of the lens
• Doing so allows the camera's metering to select a proper shutter speed and avoid motion blur
• Shoot without lens: on - cameras think there is no lens if it has no electronic contacts
• Without this you won't be able to take a photo

Page 4

• AE/AF lock mode: P - doesn't really matter with a manual lens
• AE/AF lock button: AE-L - doesn't really matter with a manual lens
• The AE-L AF-L button is useless in manual mode
• Autorotate PB: off - previewing vertical images is annoying as the full display isn't used and you can't zoom in as far
• MF assist: std - experiment with this to your liking, it tries to visualize what is in focus
• AF+MF: on - doesn't really matter with a manual lens

Set-Up Menu

These three menu screens display at the bottom of the menu regardless of if you're in playback to shooting modes. The settings configured here are essentially global.

Page 1

• Silent mode: Off
• It seems counter-intuitive since we really want the camera to just shut up
• However, setting this to On will prevent the flash from firing even when the flash is extended
• The beeps can be disabled separately
• Frame no: Continuous - this helps with photo organization later

Page 2

• EVF/LCD brightness: 0 - seems to make colors whiter instead of making backlight brighter
• Quick start: On - this probably affects battery life, but it makes the camera start a lot quicker
• Operation vol: off - disables annoying sounds when using the camera. Shutter still clicks though.
• Image disp: off - helps keep the photographer from reviewing every single photo
• Sensor cleaning: set both options off - in my experience it just slows down camera usage
• if your sensor gets dirty either run a manual cleaning or buy a sensor cleaning kit

Page 3

• preview exp in manual mode: TODO
• Edit file name: Set these to your initials. I use TLHX / THX
• In this case the "X" means I'm using a Fujifilm X-Mount camera
• For my Sony cameras I use a different prefix
• Setting prefixes can later help quickly identify which camera a photo was taken with

Playback Menu

These menus allow you to do things like re-apply a different recipe to a RAW after the photo has been changed, reviewing photos, cropping, and otherwise modifying photos at rest. You can also mark them for being uploaded, which I'm not sure if that really means anything. Perhaps there used to be desktop software that would use that information. At any rate I never use this menu. Feel free to experiment.

Side Menus

The DRIVE / AE / AF buttons to the left of the screen can be pressed while in shooting mode. Doing so opens a screen that allows for further configuration.

DRIVE

Personally I always leave this set to Still Image since I want my A-E1 experience to resemble that of a film camera. But you can also set up multi shooting and video recording and all sorts of bracketing in this menu. Feel free to experiment.

AE (Auto Exposure)

On my other cameras I would usually use spot metering (e.g. the center of the frame), point it where I want the brightness level to be decided, lock the exposure (half press shutter on the X-E1), then recompose my scene. However on the X-E1 the multi metering seems to give better results.

AF (Auto Focus)

While the name of this suggests it's only useful for auto focusing it does actually have a use with manual focus. When you press the jog wheel to enable manual focus assist zoom it defaults to the location of the auto focus reticle, which defaults to the center of the screen. You can actually move the reticle's location using this screen. However I usually just leave it at the center.

VIEW MODE

Pressing this button cycles through three "view modes". The options are either to always use the Electronic ViewFinder (EVF), the back monitor, or "eye sensor", which means it will use the back monitor unless your face is next to the camera in which case it switches to the EVF. This eye sensor option is basically what you'll always want to use. That said if you're really going for a film camera purity thing you can leave it always on EVF.

I have a bright high vis jacket which screws up the detectors so sometimes I need to force a mode. All things said this is an option that changes rarely so it's no wonder Fujifilm removed the dedicated button by the time the X-E2 came out (though it mysteriously returned for the X-E3).

Recipes (Shooting Menu 1 + 2)

Here's the fun part. It's potentially the reason you decided to buy a Fujifilm camera to begin with. You can set custom "color recipes" in the camera to fine-tune how the JPEG images will look. Note that these changes affect JPEG, and what you see in the viewfinder, but do not affect RAW. If you find that the photos you get from these recipes are good enough then you might not need to edit photos using software and you might not need to shoot in RAW at all. Of course that's up to you.

Unfortunately I find there is a bug with the X-E1 wherein the two dimensional whitebalance color shift options are not always properly set on the recipe. For that reason any time I change a recipe I manually check if the whitebalance was set as well and if not I manually fix it. This isn't a huge deal since I only set the recipe like once per scene. For this reason I tape a note to the bottom of the camera telling me how to set the whitebalance for each of the 8 recipes.

Also, for a mental note, when you select a recipe to use, it's not that you're "in" that recipe. Instead it's that the camera applies the settings for that recipe. So if you choose recipe three there will be no on screen indication that you are in recipe 3. Also, you're free to tweak any of the changes made by switching to recipe three and it won't change the recipe itself (unless you later go in and save). Saving a recipe just copies the currently-applied applicable settings to that recipe slot.

The following list are seven recipes that I use on my camera. And here is some quick instruction on how to set them. Note that everything here is set in pages 1 and 2 of the Shooting menu.

• Base: Page 1, select "Film Simulation", select from list
• Dynamic Range: Page 1, select "Dynamic Range", select from list
• White Balance: Page 2, select "White Balance", select from list, press right, select from grid
• Color: Page 2, select "Color", select from list
• Sharpness: Page 2, select "Sharpness", select from list
• Highlight Tone: Page 2, select "Highlight Tone", select from list
• Shadow Tone: Page 2, select "Shadow Tone", select from list
• Noise Reduction: Page 2, select "Noise Reduction", select from list
• ISO: Page 1, select "ISO", select "Auto", press right, input max ISO, usually lowest min ISO, and 1/60 shutter
• Exposure Compensation: Set this using the knob on the top right of camera. It is not saved with the recipe.

Once you've made the changes to your camera you then to into Shooting menu 3, select "Edit/Save Custom Setting", select the Custom 1-7 option you want to save to, then select the top "Save Current Settings" option in the new menu. Doing this will modify the numbers displayed. Pressing Back will then prompt you to save. Choose to save.

There's no way to save the "name" of the preset so you'll just need to experiment with them and get familiar with when to use each. In my case I have 4 color options and the last 2 are black and white.

C1 Faux Classic Chrome

Fuji X Weekly: Fujifilm X-Trans I Film Simulation Recipe: Faux Classic Chrome

• Base: Pro Neg. Std
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• White Balance: Auto, 0 Red & -1 Blue
• Color: +1
• Sharpness: 0
• Highlight Tone: +1
• Shadow Tone: +1
• Noise Reduction: -2
• ISO: Auto, max ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: 0 to +1/3

C2 Color Analog

Fuji X Weekly: Fujifilm X-Pro1 (+ X-E1) Film Simulation Recipe: Color Analog

• Base: PRO Neg. Std
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• Highlight: -1
• Shadow: +1
• Color: -2
• Sharpness: -1
• Noise Reduction: -2
• White Balance: Daylight/Fine, -1 Red & -4 Blue
• ISO: Auto, max ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3 (typically)

C3 Kodachrome I

Fuji X Weekly: Fujifilm X-Pro1 (X-Trans I) Film Simulation Recipe: Kodachrome I

• Base: PRO Neg. Std
• Dynamic Range: DR400
• Highlight: +2
• Shadow: -2
• Color: +2
• Sharpness: +1
• Noise Reduction: -2
• White Balance: Auto, 0 Red & -3 Blue
• ISO: Auto, max ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: -1/3 to -1 (typically)

C4 Color Negative Film

Fuji X Weekly: Fujifilm X-Trans I Film Simulation Recipe: Color Negative Film

• Base: Provia
• Dynamic Range: DR400
• Highlight: +2
• Shadow: +2
• Color: -2
• Sharpness: -1
• Noise Reduction: -2
• White Balance: 3000K, +8 Red & -9 Blue
• ISO: Auto, max ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: 0 to +2/3

C5 empty

• nothing for now

C6 Dark Knight / Acros

"Dark Knight" Recipe: My Custom Black & White Film Simulation (Acros-like)

• Base: Monochrome
• Dynamic Range: DR100
• Highlight Tone: +2
• Shadow Tone: +2
• Color: 0
• Sharpness: -1 if RAW 0 if JPG
• Noise Reduction: -2
• White Balance: 0/0
• ISO: Auto, max 400

C7 Monochrome

Fuji X Weekly: Fujifilm X-M1 (X-Trans I) Film Simulation Recipe: Monochrome

• Base: Monochrome
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• Highlight: +2
• Shadow: +2
• Color: 0
• Sharpness: +1
• Noise Reduction: -2
• White Balance: Incandescent, -5 Red & +9 Blue
• ISO: Auto, max ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3

White Balance Cheat Sheet

The camera has a global white balance setting which isn't associated with a customer profile. So anytime one switches profiles one also needs to change white balance settings. This cheat sheet can be written on paper and taped to the bottom of the camera:

 C    R    B    E
C1    0   -1   +0,1
C2   -1   -4   +1,2
C3    0   -3   -1,3
C4   +8   -9   +0,2
C5
C6    0    0
C7   -5   +9   +1,2

The R and B columns represent the Red / Blue setting of the whitebalance. The E column is the exposure compensation min and max range measured in thirds of a stop (-1,3 means -1/3 through -3/3).

Photo Taking Workflow

Before taking a photo

When you're on a scene or going for a walk or in a certain building I recommend choosing a recipe and for the most part sticking to that. Spending too much time in the menus can be a major time suck. Plus when switching recipes you'll need to double check the whitebalance settings as well. So think to yourself, "this morning is a black and white morning," and go with that. Get familiar with the recipes by shooting test shots in different scenarios. Figure out what you like and when.

To select a recipe press the back "Q" button. With the cursor in the default upper left corner position use the back top wheel to scroll through the seven recipes, C1-C7. Once you've selected the one you want press the OK button. Next, press the "Fn" button to open the whitebalance selection and press the right arrow to open the Red / Blue color grid. Check if the right color option is selected for your recipe and change it if not and press OK. You've now applied the recipe.

As long as it isn't rainy or there's no salty sea breeze or no sandstorms feel free to take the lens cap off and stick it in your pocket. If the weather acts up or I'm going to drive or I'm ordering food and holding a tray then I'll put the lens cap back on. If you stick with the default TTArtisan cap it's really slow and loud and you'll drop it a bunch. That thing likes to roll.

In my experience the camera slurps down battery. So I'll leave it powered off and only turn it on to take one or a few photos. Once I'm done with the photo, or the action has died down and I think I'm good for the next few minutes, I'll turn the camera off.

Unless I'm shooting an action shot I'm going to keep the shutter speed set to automatic. And I usually have the ISO settings set to automatic as well.

Before taking a shot you should choose an aperture. Is your subject a nearby portrait or something small or you're in a dark room? Then choose an aperture like f/2 or f/2.8 or f/4. If it's bright and sunny or it's a landscape shot then choose something like f/8. You can loosely aim at a scene and half press the shutter button to get a readout from the camera. If the ISO is at 3200 or above then the aperture number might need to be lower. If the shutter speed is blinking 4,000 then the aperture number definitely needs to be higher.

Shooting at f2 or f2.4 results in low contrast and ghosting and overall poor image quality. Only use it when you're indoors and it's too dark to otherwise get a decent shot. Focus will also be harder.

When taking a photo

I first figure out my composition by aiming my camera and looking through the EVF. If everything is super blurry I'll quickly/inaccurately adjust focus. Once my composition is correct I'll then aim directly at the subject and press the focus assist button (press the back top wheel in). Next I'll adjust focus so my subject is sharp. After that I'll half press the shutter button which zooms out so I can check the composition again. Finally I fully press the shutter button to take the photo.

The TTArtisan lens, since it's a manual focus lens, has focus distance scales printed on it. Try to get familiar with the scale, taking test shots with a tape measurer. It's actually possible to accurately focus a shot without even looking at the camera. This can lead to discreet hip shots. When you're coming up on a scene and you are about to take a shot try to first estimate the focus setting. For example, if something is near, set it to a closer focus point, and if it's far away, set the focus almost to infinity. This can help save time and ensure you get the shot if something quickly happens that you want to catch.

When outdoors my default setting is f5.6 and focus around 2 meters. With these settings I can often hip shot some action and get a salvageable image. It's also a decent middle ground to start with.

Sample Photos

Here are some photos that I have taken with this camera:

• Time Square: 25mm 1/85s ISO400
  • Taken as RAW and edited in software
• Haight Ashbury Camera: 25mm 1/450s ISO400
  • JPEG only?
• Sacremento Tunnel: 25mm 1/400s ISO400
  • This was taken in JPEG only (but I did commit the sin of editing the JPEG)

Things that are good

• This is a small, discreet tamera
• The JPEG colors Straight out of Camera (SooC) are very good
• Has dedicated aperture, exposure compensation, and shutter speed knobs (no ISO though)
• Can be as fast as f/2 (approx f/3 full frame equivalent) though without high image quality
• Don't need to deal with slow autofocus since we're using a manual lens

Things that suck

• When taking a vertical photo the playback won't fill the full screen
• The manual focus assist zoom button is a scroll wheel, probably fragile
• Cannot zoom-in while saving an image
• Cannot preview photos while saving image
• Unreliably saves whitebalance Red & Blue values with profile, a bug fixed in later models
• Heavy flaring with the lens
• Can't use peak design wrist strap clip on the bottom of the camera, gets in the way of battery
• No electric contacts on lens, so no auto focus assist when changing focus, and no EXIF lens data
• Focus peaking is white instead of red, thus hard to manually focus when shooting black and white
• Can't charge the battery in camera via USB

Thomas has contributed to dozens of enterprise Node.js services and has worked for a company dedicated to securing Node.js. He has spoken at several conferences on Node.js and JavaScript and is an O'Reilly published author.