I have just uploaded my latest video lesson, How to Use Fujifilm’s Highlight and Shadow Tone Controls.
In this 10-minute tutorial, I show you how to make use of one of the most powerful and easy-to-use tools that’s found on every single X Series camera. The Highlight and Shadow Tone controls give you an very straightforward way to manage the contrast of your images.
By making simple adjustments with one or both of these settings, you can bring slight highlights under control, you can open up the shadows to reveal more detail and texture to the darker areas of your images, or you can increase the shadows for added contrast and drama.
With adjustment settings between +4 and -2, “plus” always adds more contrast, and “minus” always decreases contrast, and you can see the changes reflected in real time inside your LCD/EVF even before you capture your image.
Although you can make Highlight and Shadow Tone adjustments when shooting in RAW and adjust them further in Fujifilm X RAW Studio Software, they’re ideal when shooting in JPEG. They allow you to, in effect, process the scene right there in the moment, before you take the shot, and gain added confidence when shooting in tricky or high contrast situations.
They won’t allow you to make huge moves, and if your images is way overblown on either side of the histogram, there’s only so much you can recover, but for many scenes, a simple Highlight and/or Shadow Tone adjustment might be all you need to walk away with a better image that match your creative ideas for the scene.
You can watch the lesson on my YouTube channel here. Stay tuned for the next lesson, where I discuss how to further tweak your film simulations by using these settings and other tools found on the X Series cameras.