Every term this course uses, in plain English, with where it lives on the X-M5 when it lives anywhere. If a lesson used a word you did not know, it is here.
A to E
| Term | What it means | Where |
|---|---|---|
| ACROS | Fujifilm’s best black-and-white film simulation, with grain that scales with ISO | Film simulation dial |
| AF-C | Continuous autofocus: keeps refocusing while you half-press. For moving subjects | AF/MF SETTING > FOCUS MODE |
| AF-S | Single autofocus: focuses once and locks. For still subjects | AF/MF SETTING > FOCUS MODE |
| Aperture | The adjustable hole in the lens. Smaller f-number, bigger hole, less depth of field | Front command dial in A and M |
| APS-C | Your sensor size, 23.5 × 15.6 mm. Frames like a 1.5× longer lens on full frame | — |
| Auto ISO | The camera chooses ISO within a default, a maximum and a minimum shutter speed you set | SHOOTING SETTING > ISO |
| Backlight | Light coming from behind the subject. Add exposure for a glowing portrait, subtract for a silhouette | — |
| Blue hour | The twenty minutes after sunset when the sky is deep blue and the lights are on | — |
| Bulb | A shutter setting where the exposure lasts as long as you hold the button, up to 60 minutes | M mode, mechanical shutter |
| Clarity | A local-contrast adjustment. Negative values give a soft print feel and slow the camera down | IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > CLARITY |
| Clipping | A highlight recorded as pure white with no detail. Unrecoverable, unlike a crushed shadow | Highlight alert on screen |
| Depth of field | The slice of the scene that looks acceptably sharp | — |
| Diffraction | Softening of the whole frame at very small apertures. Why f/16 and f/22 are not sharper | — |
| DR100 / 200 / 400 | Fujifilm’s highlight protection. It underexposes then lifts the midtones, so shadows get noisier | IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > DYNAMIC RANGE |
| Electronic shutter | Silent, reaches 1/32000 s, but reads the sensor line by line so fast movement leans | SHOOTING SETTING > SHUTTER TYPE |
| EV | Exposure value. One EV is one stop — double or half the light | — |
| Exposure compensation | Telling the camera to make the photograph brighter or darker than it calculated. ±5 EV here | Rear command dial |
F to O
| Term | What it means | Where |
|---|---|---|
| f-number | Focal length divided by the aperture’s diameter. A ratio, which is why it runs backwards | — |
| Film simulation | Fujifilm’s colour and tone renderings. A rendering instruction, not baked into the RAW | Film simulation dial, or the menu with the dial on C |
| Focal length | How much of the world fits in the frame, and — via where you must stand — how near and far relate | Zoom ring |
| Focus peaking | Outlines whatever is in focus, so manual focus works on a screen | AF/MF SETTING > MF ASSIST |
| FS1 to FS3 | Three dial positions you assign to simulations the dial does not carry | FILM SIMULATION DIAL SETTING |
| Full-frame equivalent | Your focal length × 1.5, for translating advice written by full-frame photographers | — |
| Histogram | A chart of how many pixels sit at each brightness. Watch the edges, not the shape | SCREEN SET-UP > DISP. CUSTOM SETTING |
| IS MODE | Where the lens’s optical stabilisation is switched on and off. Off on a tripod | SHOOTING SETTING > IS MODE |
| ISO | How much the camera amplifies the light it caught. More amplification, more noise | SHOOTING SETTING > ISO |
| JPEG | A finished photograph. Film simulation, white balance and sharpening baked in | IMAGE QUALITY |
| Learning mode | The distraction-free lesson view on this site, with the outline in the sidebar | — |
| Mechanical shutter | The physical shutter: 30 s to 1/4000 s plus Bulb. Honest about motion; your default | SHOOTING SETTING > SHUTTER TYPE |
| Metering | How the camera measures light. MULTI reads the whole frame; SPOT reads a small area | SHOOTING SETTING > PHOTOMETRY |
| Minimum focus distance | The closest the lens can focus: 13 cm at 15 mm, 35 cm at 45 mm | — |
| Noise | Speckle from amplification. Fine at ISO 3200, obvious at 6400, rough at 12800 | — |
| OIS | Optical image stabilisation in the lens, worth about 3 EV. Cancels your shake, not your subject’s movement | IS MODE |
P to Z
| Term | What it means | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Panning | Moving the camera with a subject at a slow shutter so it stays sharp and the background streaks | 1/30-1/60 s |
| Power zoom | An electronic zoom. On this lens the rear ring controls zoom speed, not position | Rear ring |
| Program shift | Sliding through equivalent shutter-and-aperture pairs in P mode. Disabled when DR is AUTO | Front command dial in P |
| Push/pull processing | Exposure adjustment during in-camera RAW conversion. The most useful control there | Playback > RAW CONVERSION |
| Q menu | The quick menu: sixteen settings you choose, one button away. Essential on this body | Q button |
| RAF | Fujifilm’s RAW file extension | — |
| RAW | The sensor reading before processing. More editable, not “better” — usually flatter | IMAGE QUALITY |
| Rolling shutter | Leaning or wobbling of fast movement, caused by the electronic shutter’s line-by-line readout | — |
| Shutter speed | How long the sensor is exposed. Your grip on motion, both the subject’s and your own | Rear dial in M, front dial in S |
| Stop | A doubling or halving of light. The shared unit of aperture, shutter and ISO | — |
| Sunny 16 | A meter in your head: in direct sun, f/16 with the shutter at about one over the ISO | — |
| Vari-angle screen | A screen on a side hinge that faces forward, up or down. Your viewfinder substitute | — |
| White balance | Telling the camera what colour the light is, so white looks white and skin looks like skin | IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > WHITE BALANCE |
| X-Trans | Fujifilm’s colour filter pattern. Yours is X-Trans CMOS 4, 26.1 MP | — |
| Zone AF | Autofocus within a block of points rather than a single one. For predictable movement | AF/MF SETTING > AF MODE |
Cannot find a term?
Menu items are quoted exactly as the camera spells them throughout this course, so searching this site for the wording on your screen — including odd ones like PHOTOMETRY and REFLECT SHOOTING COND. — will find the lesson that explains it.