The Electronic Rangefinder or “ERF” is, to my mind, simply a superb idea.
I don’t think there’s any other camera anywhere (X100T excepted of course) that has this function.
And before all you mechanical rangefinder users write in… PLEASE, aligning two images together in the centre of the screen is a completely different animal. Sure in certain situations that’ll be preferable, in others it wont. But at the end of the day it’s a completely different piece of tech.
There has been quite a lot of noise on the forums about the nomenclature of this feature (not a surprise), what is a rangefinder? Is it a mechanical device for achieving focusing or can it be digitised? If we can say it can (be digitised) then is not every camera with a EVF a rangefinder?
Yup, that one will run and run… For me? ERF sounds like marketing speak 🙂
Maybe we should call it a hybrid (as it features both OVF and EVF functionality in the same view) or maybe a split screen..
Or let’s just call it the ERF, as that’s what it’s been marketed as!
Call it what we like, the ERF is an exceedingly clever and well thought out feature.
I don’t tend to find that I use it all the time… But when I do I really like it a lot!
For me, in MF mode, the ERF is particularly handy for subjects that are neither moving nor sitting still! For example; someone sitting on a chair, they’re not exactly moving a lot, but equally they’re not 100% static either.
I find that for scenarios like that, I don’t re-focus between shots, but instead I move myself backwards or forwards a bit, keeping an eye on the ERF (with focus peaking enabled) to keep my subject in focus, whilst the OVF provides me with a real time live view to decide exactly when to take the shot.
The ERF has 3 view mode settings, 100% view, 100% of the focus box view and a semi-magnified view.
I’ve shown it above with the 100% view (as it shows up clearer in the picture) but for me, I prefer the semi magnified view.
The 100% view is effectively tiny – like the world’s smallest EVF!
The 100% contents of the focus box view, can be very hard to pin-point if the scene you’re shooting is busy and has repeated details.
The semi-magnified view is just about right, the figurative ‘Goldilocks’ setting 🙂
You can cycle through these three views by pressing (not scrolling, as per the focus views in the EVF) the rear command dial in. Personally I wish this was a scroll function, as the command dial is quite recessed and not always easy to press in.
The ERF isn’t just good at having your OVF cake and eating your EVF cake at the same time.
It’s also superb for determining parallax error. When using the OVF you are (of course) looking through a hole on the top corner of the camera, whilst the lens and sensor are (more or less) in the middle.
This means that in OVF mode – when you position the focus box to where you need it in the frame, it might not actually be where you need it! But a quick glance at the ERF will confirm whether or not you’re in the right place.
Superb.
So why don’t I use the ERF all the time?
Well it can a little distracting. I wrote above keeping an eye on the ERF but of course that’s the problem, you can only use one eye at a time in the viewfinder – so for times when I’m shooting something where I don’t need the ERF (for example a land or city scape, or if I’ve zone focused the lens or I’m using a focus trap) then it’s easier just to turn it off.
The battery life is a bit better if the ERF isn’t on all the time.
But also…
Apparently Fuji have made either a coding error or a (in MY HUMBLE opinion) poor judgement call in how the camera meters in ERF mode.
According to Rico Pfirstinger (the author of several EXCELLENT books about Fuji X cameras) in this post (on Fujixspot Forum) here and also in his book “115 X-Pert Tips for the X-Pro2” he states the following
In ERF mode the camera’s histogram basically displays ONLY what the ERF patch is set too… So basically if you have the ERF set to one of the zoom modes, then the histogram will ONLY meter that portion of the total frame.
This effectively makes the histogram unreliable (and being luminance only, it already needs all the help it can get!) in the non-100% view ERF mode.
I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature… But I do know, that I make sure I’ve done any metering that I need to do before I switch the ERF on.
Which is another reason why I don’t use it all the time.
The big take away for me on this, is that the X-Pro2 histogram is basically driven by the EVF, not the sensor itself. This has implications on how you set the jpegs up… for example, like big black shadows? Crank your shadow tone setting up to plus 4? Well your histogram now tells you that you’re cutting signal far sooner than you really are.
Of course, now that we know this – it’s not so hard to work around. You can set your jpeg tone curves to make the best use of the histogram (which is -2 for shadow and highlight tones); and you can use the OVF or any of the 100% EVF/ERF views to use the histogram.
I understand that for SOOC Jpegs, having a EVF that displays the shot you’ll get is a very worthwhile feature.
But still – one is left with the feeling that the histogram really should tell you what the sensor is metering, not what a fraction of the sensor is metering.
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Adam Bonn Fotografia 
Zoom using the feet; focus by leaning ^_^
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Yup, pretty much!
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hmm.. do you think Fuji will ever address this and fix the metering of the OVF/ERF as you’ve described? I imagine it should be fixable via firmware update
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I deleted the other comment as I think you double posted, let me know if that’s wrong and I’ll re-instate it
I honestly don’t know!
According to Rico, the X100T meters across the frame in ERF mode, so unless there’s some technical reason why that can’t be done on the X-Pro2 I should think it’ll work out as a FW update
That said; the clincher might be how the X100F behaves in the same ERF user case. If it behaves like the XP2 then maybe there’s some technical restriction to it
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Haha.. it’s all good. I can’t remember what I last wrote. there might have been the same comment, but maybe some other tidbits mixed in.. anyways, I know you don’t work for Fuji, but was asking all the same on your take just in case you somehow had a shallow window into Fuji works.
I have to say it never bugged me before until you mentioned it and I started noticing and got more bothered by the inconsistencies more recently as I was practicing using the OVF/ERF more and manually exposing.. just trying to better hone my skills..
Hmm.. the X100T is ok in this regard?.. Yeah, there should be no reason why the X-Pro2 can’t do the same thing.. it really should.. it really needs to.
But, then again you say the X100F reverts back to this metering/histogram issue.. ughh.. maybe they forgot to implement this feature? who knows?.. Fuji does, just hope they take this issue more seriously and fix it.
Thanks, again, anyways.
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Haha.. it’s all good. I can’t remember what I last wrote. there might have been the same comment, but maybe some other tidbits mixed in.. anyways, I know you don’t work for Fuji, but was asking all the same on your take just in case you somehow had a shallow window into Fuji works.
I have to say it never bugged me before until you mentioned it and I started noticing and got more bothered by the inconsistencies more recently as I was practicing using the OVF/ERF more and manually exposing.. just trying to better hone my skills..
Hmm.. the X100T is ok in this regard?.. Yeah, there should be no reason why the X-Pro2 can’t do the same thing.. it really should.. it really needs to.
But, then again you say the X100F reverts back to this metering/histogram issue.. ughh.. maybe they forgot to implement this feature? who knows?.. Fuji does, just hope they take this issue more seriously and fix it.
Thanks, again, anyways.
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Hi,
Well I’ve been told that the X100T doesn’t exhibit that behaviour and told that the X100F does.
I don’t know first hand with either camera
My HUNCH is that the behaviour is caused by Fuji not really metering from the sensor at all, and instead metering from the EVF (even in OVF mode) I SUSPECT all their X cameras do this, and it’s only the particular case of the X-Pro2 (and X100F I guess) that have these ERF modes to highlight the shortfall in doing this. For example the XT1 doesn’t even show you a histogram in a magnified view (so we cannot know if it’s metering the whole scene)!
So any remedial solution from Fuji would probably have to change a lot of code, will they do that? Who knows… sadly not me
I’d like them too though!
Thanks
Adam
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Do you know if the metering issue was ever corrected in a FW update? I am contemplating a second hand X-Pro2 but this is an important one for me. Thanks!
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Hi Johan,
If you mean the histogram metering with the magnified view of the rangefinder “patch” then no I don’t believe it was..
It’s not really a massive show stopper in real life, just an annoyance
Regards
Adam
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Hi Adam,
Thanks for your blog; it helped me a lot in setting up the X-Pro1, and is still useful for the X-Pro2.
One thing I have changed, which works a lot better for me, is to move the “focus check” function from the rear dial to the Fn button, next to the shutter button. That gives me two improvements: the rear dial is hard to press quickly, and now I only have to move my shutter finger a bit.
I actually don’t use the ERF that often, but mostly use “focus check” to bring up the magnified EVF view. Half pressing the shutter button (or pressing Fn again) brings me back to the OVF view.
So, unless I am in AF mode, my approach is as follows:
1) compose using the viewfinder
2) if needed, move the focus area using the joystick
3) if needed, press AF-L to acquire focus
4) if needed, press Fn to check or adjust focus (using focus peaking)
5) shoot (I have the DoF scale set to film basis; accurate enough for me)
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Hi Johan,
I’m really pleased that you found my blog helpful, thank you for telling me 🙂
I think back when I wrote this you couldn’t move focus check to the Fn button, so I had to use preview depth of field instead.
There’s quite a lot of configuration options with the Fujis (and no doubt other cameras too), but once they’re dialled in as we like them it’s worth spending the time to get them set up as we want!
Cheers
Adam
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