It’s all in the AUTO – X-A2

With the sunlight beating through the window and falling across my work monitor I knew I had to take a camera out for a play. And I thought that this was the perfect excuse to really try out the SR+ AUTO mode on the X-A2 camera.

To give some background on the Fujifilm X-A2, it’s one of our entry-level mirrorless cameras which is aimed at photography enthusiasts and individuals that want great pictures without all the complicated settings that can come with DSLRs.

SR+AUTO MODE

The idea behind my little afternoon shoot (other than to enjoy the sunshine 😉 ) was to really see just how good the Auto mode is on this camera. I have so many family members who love to take pictures but they don’t know all about apertures, shutter speeds, ISO etc. They just want a proper camera that takes nice pictures and which is easy to use.

So this is what I did:

I drove to my local country park, put the camera in the auto mode and set about my walk.

For those who know the film simulation modes, I kept it on PROVIA to give the most true-to-life colours and tones. 

The thing that is nice about any AUTO mode on a camera, is if it works well, you can just enjoy your surroundings and let the camera do all the hard work. Not only that, but I know that if I was out walking with my family and friends, I wouldn’t want to think about all the settings. I would just want to snap away and enjoy the atmosphere and conversation.

Another area that this camera excels in, is the colour reproduction. I have not boosted the colour saturation in post-production – these images are pretty much all straight out of camera…

In fact, the only post-production I used was in Picasa (a free to download editing suite by Google – find it here.) to crop a couple of the images into squares (1:1 format) and a one click ‘Auto-Contrast’ adjustment, which basically creates a better balance between the brightest point and the darkest point of an image – in many cases this will make the whites brighter and the blacks darker.

I did this to make the images ‘pop’ out of the screen a bit more as our eyes are naturally drawn to high contrast scenes.

As I continued my walk on this beautiful day, I turned my attention to macro (close-up) photography. I wondered how the SR+ AUTO mode would cope with close-up photography. Now what I haven’t told you is what SR stands for – it stands for Scene Recognition, which basically means the camera automatically detects what the camera is going to shoot. This helps the camera decide what settings it’s going to use for a particular shot. Of course, for me, this just meant I could point and shoot again.

All in all, I was very impressed by the overall performance of the AUTO mode. Especially as I normally shoot using my own custom settings, apertures, etc. I think it really helps prove that having a good eye at photography is what it’s really all about. I didn’t have to fiddle with the settings on the camera, I only did that tiny bit of post-production which was to enhance my creative style, but it was certainly not necessary.

And the most important part was that I really enjoyed it! I could have gone walking without the camera and still had a nice time – it was a beautiful day after all. But because this mode does the hard work all I was left with was the fun part of photography, which made my walk a great one. I think I’d have to call SR AUTO carefree mode! 😉

If you’re looking for a camera that’s incredibly easy to use and takes great pictures, perhaps the X-A2’s the one for you. Please feel free to share this blog post with anyone else you think might be in the market for a carefree, no-nonsense camera.

Any questions, please leave a comment below.

Happy snapping! 🙂

Author: Dale Young

Dale works at Fujifilm UK HQ in the marketing department. He is an amatuer photographer & musician that loves to be creative and expand his own skills. With all that he learns he tries to give back to the creative community.

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