Fuji X-E1 has no focus peaking n the EVF? Is there a setting I'm missing?

entropic remnants

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John Griggs
I've tried this now with several lenses and what I find is that when I use the LCD focus peaking works. When I use put my eye to the EVF it's gone. I've tried moving in and out of focus and in the EVF it's simply not there.

I've tried several lenses and it is happening with all of them (not that I didn't think it was a body issue but you never know about how things interact). Anyone else have this and/or know how to remedy it?

Thanks.

Edit: I can it sort-of there. Maybe it's the fact that the EVF is so high resolution that the unicorn tears are so tiny they don't show up well. On some subjects I can see it with difficulty, on others it's hard to see it at all.

So maybe it works, but it sure is a lot easier to see on the LCD.
 
Okay, here's some more information: although it's very nearly invisible in the full scene view in the EVF -- and in some low contrast scenes I can't see it at all -- when you press the control dial to magnify the image it's extremely visible.

So to sum up:

  • Focus peaking works great on the LCD without magnification
  • Focus peaking is marginal at best in the EVF without using magnification
Guess that pretty much answers it. It would be nice if Fuji made the focus peaking as visible in the EVF as it is on the LCD without magnification.
 
Hmm... my mileage differs ;)

I never use the LCD, but I can see the magic clearly in the EVF... one trick I do use is to shoot mono, then process the raw file if I do want colour.

Sent from another Galaxy
 
Hmm... my mileage differs ;)

I never use the LCD, but I can see the magic clearly in the EVF... one trick I do use is to shoot mono, then process the raw file if I do want colour.

Sent from another Galaxy

Thanks. Maybe it's just my old eyes, but the difference between the LCD and EVF in low contrast situations is HUGE. The "tears" are so tiny in the EVF it's just hard to make them out. I'll try the mono trick though, thanks.
 
John, maybe you could try putting the screen to B&W. This creates better contrast and it is somewhat easier. I wish they put yellow in like the Nex6.....
It's also an issue of scale. The screen is much larger so the peaking is not as compressed as on the finder.
 
John, maybe you could try putting the screen to B&W. This creates better contrast and it is somewhat easier. I wish they put yellow in like the Nex6.....
It's also an issue of scale. The screen is much larger so the peaking is not as compressed as on the finder.

I agree. There are many more dots in the EVF and it's smaller -- good for what it looks like, bad for an old man trying to see the peaking, lol. I too hope for colors like the NEX. I had a NEX 3 and NEX 5 awhile back and tried to love them but failed to -- though I did think the peaking was excellent in them.

Thanks for the b/w idea though it was mentioned earlier and I will be trying it.
 
I agree. There are many more dots in the EVF and it's smaller -- good for what it looks like, bad for an old man trying to see the peaking, lol. I too hope for colors like the NEX. I had a NEX 3 and NEX 5 awhile back and tried to love them but failed to -- though I did think the peaking was excellent in them.

Thanks for the b/w idea though it was mentioned earlier and I will be trying it.

Well John, my eyes aren't so young either.
I did another test this afternoon just to make sure that what I stated was correct.
With the Nex6 and LOW Yellow peaking, it's almost never needed to use the finder. It focuses 99.9% accurate and fast. The Finder works better on LOW peaking but it's ok....

The XE1, regardless of how I set it, I almost always need the Magnifier. The peaking is too spread out across the field.
I was using a few Voigtlanders...21 Skopar and 35 Nokton and a half dozen Leica Pre ASPH.
I don't know what your into but me it's the streets. I trust the NEX6 with everything and I'm starting to find a groove with the XE1. I finder the slightly lower contrast glass to outperform any of the higher contrast stuff....

Now I'll go run and hide......later
 
Well John, my eyes aren't so young either.
I did another test this afternoon just to make sure that what I stated was correct.
With the Nex6 and LOW Yellow peaking, it's almost never needed to use the finder. It focuses 99.9% accurate and fast. The Finder works better on LOW peaking but it's ok....

The XE1, regardless of how I set it, I almost always need the Magnifier. The peaking is too spread out across the field.
I was using a few Voigtlanders...21 Skopar and 35 Nokton and a half dozen Leica Pre ASPH.
I don't know what your into but me it's the streets. I trust the NEX6 with everything and I'm starting to find a groove with the XE1. I finder the slightly lower contrast glass to outperform any of the higher contrast stuff....

Now I'll go run and hide......later

Don't hide from me -- my bark is worse than my bite though I do bark a lot, lol.

That makes sense. Yes, something about the way the highlights are displayed in the X-E1 finder make it hard for me. I don't shoot street but I'm shooting a wedding with the X-E1 in about 3 weeks and I was trying various things to deal with low light and low contrast and thought the focus peaking would make it easier to get stuff with the 55-200 in lower light. It's too dark a lens at the long end to focus well in really low light.

But I had such problems I tried the 14mm and 35mm primes to make sure it wasn't just the 55-100mm that was causing it and same deal. I've been trying it a bunch more and I've "trained" myself to see it a little better in the EVF though I still wish peaking was as "bold" there as it is on the LCD.
 
John, another thing to consider and Fuji hasn't really....the absence of the AA filter. This creates heavy contrast...well, I prefer accutance from the film days. When the peaking is on LOW....and my screen is B&W...I see this really over sharpened image on the screen. If I let go of the 1/2 press...it gets tolerable. I hope Fuji can address this as it's an issue with all cameras without the AA filter.
 
It's not just you; it's definitely somewhat harder to see in the EVF, and it's much more visible with magnified view. I think it's a combination of resolution, size (a huge LCD is just easier to see which sections are highlighting), and color. I am most assuredly not a fan of white for focus peaking for all of the above reasons. With red peaking, or other colors you aren't going to see large amounts of in most scenes I think it works much better.

The good news is rumor has it that an upcoming firmware update is supposed to add the option to select different colors for peaking highlights. Hopefully that pans out!
 
It's not just you; it's definitely somewhat harder to see in the EVF, and it's much more visible with magnified view. I think it's a combination of resolution, size (a huge LCD is just easier to see which sections are highlighting), and color. I am most assuredly not a fan of white for focus peaking for all of the above reasons. With red peaking, or other colors you aren't going to see large amounts of in most scenes I think it works much better.

The good news is rumor has it that an upcoming firmware update is supposed to add the option to select different colors for peaking highlights. Hopefully that pans out!

That's an interesting thing you mentioned about the color. I certainly find Yellow Low in the Nex6 to work in all situations.
What's interesting is that I studied the color choice as far as how they worked and how I worked them.
I came to the conclusion that the choice of color will effect the accuracy and speed in which the shooter gets focus.
It's just like driving.....
Yellow signals the brain to go with caution and of course red raises the STOP! White.....dunno as it's very ineffective.
I focus the same subject with the same lens and settings at least 2-3xs faster with yellow instead of red on the Nex6. I've had a few friends try this and I will publish results in the next issue of the magazine.

The thing that gets me is, with the Nex...I focus very fast and almost never magnify...it's always dead on. It can't be my brain because it's on vacation till October.........
 
Yep. Me too. peaking with the EVF is weak to the point of nearly useless. I always have to zoom in and I have very good eyesight. I don't care what causes it. i just want it fixed. Maybe a really, really, really high setting is needed.

Gordon
 
I've started to doubt myself on this, then I realised an important point - the lenses I am trying to focus manually, with only one exception, are f2.8 and faster. My Sonnar is f1.5, the Biogon and Summcron are f2.0. Everything else is f2.8 except the Oly zoom and tele which are f4 and I focus magnified, anyway.

Here's an example taken with the Oly 75-150 in piss-poor lighting, handheld, from the balcony:
26407885.a2e9bfb2.1024.jpg

Christina Graduation Sept 2013 X-E1 36 par Lightmancer, on ipernity

effective focal length 225mm, f4.0, 1/250 iso6400, manually focussed in EVF.
 
in addition to shooting in b&w, i bump both the shadows and highlights to +2.

(Sent from my EVO via Tapatalk)

And that may be a help if one is shooting in RAW but it effects the histogram, which I use, and of course you can't effectively shoot in JPG that way unless you want clipped whites and blocked shadows -- but I may try it just to see.
 
And that may be a help if one is shooting in RAW but it effects the histogram, which I use, and of course you can't effectively shoot in JPG that way unless you want clipped whites and blocked shadows -- but I may try it just to see.

Yeah, I had to refresh my memory on the X-E1 behavior, but this would only work if you shoot RAW; if you shoot RAW but set film mode to B&W then your display / EVF will reflect B&W but of course the image files would just be RAW.

Only works if you plan to shoot RAW only, and you don't want to use a different film emulation mode like Velvia.
 
I was really hoping that, together with the 18 October new firmware released for the X100, Fuji was releasing (or at least announcing) a new firmware for the X-E1 (and X-Pro1) to add colour peaking and minimum shutter speed settings in auto ISO.
I still have some hope Fuji will do this in the future but, following Rico suggestion, I think it is better all of us interested in such feature(s) write Fuji our feedback/requests about these. The more we are, the more likely they will take us seriously.
 
For whatever it's worth, peaking in the NEX7 EVF was also much worse compared to peaking in its LCD. I found it to be nearly useless for me.

Peaking in the X100 even on the LCD with the new firmware is pretty bad too. Shimmering pixels are just way too few.

On the Sony's, I've noticed that the peaking is more sensitive to the contrast of even a similar color surface. For example, a wrinkled shirt sitting on a couch will display shimmer on the wrinkled folds and not just on the outline of the shirt against the couch.

Fuji, give us more shimmering pixels please!
 
Okay, here's some more information: although it's very nearly invisible in the full scene view in the EVF -- and in some low contrast scenes I can't see it at all -- when you press the control dial to magnify the image it's extremely visible.

So to sum up:

  • Focus peaking works great on the LCD without magnification
  • Focus peaking is marginal at best in the EVF without using magnification
Guess that pretty much answers it. It would be nice if Fuji made the focus peaking as visible in the EVF as it is on the LCD without magnification.

I would go even a bit farther to say focus peaking on the XE1 is overall pretty terrible. There is very little difference in high, low and off using the EVF and it becomes merely okay when using the LCD (Sony knows how to implement focus peaking properly). I like my XE1 and it does so many things well but focus peaking is not one of them.
 
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