The One Trick to Fixing the Fujifilm X-T5’s Diopter

Adjusting a camera’s viewfinder diopter isn’t something that many of us have to do often. If you wear glasses, you might become used to setting it up once when you pick up a new camera and then just leaving it there. And if you don’t wear glasses, you’ve probably never had to change it at all.

But when I first pulled the Fujifilm X-T5 out of the box, the viewfinder was horribly out of focus. As in, completely unusable. Fixing it should have been quick and simple — and it is, if you know the trick. Well, not really a trick, as such, but there’s just one simple step you’ve got to know: the diopter dial pulls out to unlock.

This isn’t hard. And for some, it might be obvious. But it wasn’t to me, and it had me stumped for a bit.

The adjustment knob is in the place you’d expect it to be. It even has small + and – markings. But it wouldn’t turn, and I didn’t want to force it and break it. And being so small, it’s hard to get a grip on it, so it wasn’t clear to me how tight it should be. You wouldn’t want it too loose, after all, or it would be constantly being bumped out of focus.

It turns out, that’s precisely the problem that the Fujifilm engineers were solving when they designed the diopter switch the way they did.

So what you have to do is to first pull that knob out. Then you can turn it.

When it’s pulled out, it looks like this:

Once you’re done, push it back in. It looks like this when it’s locked:

So it’s only a subtle difference.

One thing that makes this easier: judge the adjustment on the text and icons in the viewfinder display — the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO readouts — rather than on the scene itself. The scene can look soft simply because the lens isn’t focused on anything, but the overlay is generated by the EVF panel, so it should always be crisp. If that text looks sharp, the diopter is set right for your eyes.

As I said, this might be mind-numbingly obvious. In which case, I apologize. But it wasn’t to me. And I’m guessing that if you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance it wasn’t so obvious to you either. So I’m posting this here just in case someone else runs into the same issue.

You can see some of the photos I’ve taken with the Fujifilm X-T5 is these posts:

– Fujifilm X-T5 Sample Images (a general collection of photos taken under various conditions)
– Fujifilm X-T5 High ISO Sample Images (focusing specifically on high-ISO images under low-light conditions)
– Fujifilm X-T5 ISO Range Sample Images (sequences taken through the ISO range to help with assessing image quality at different ISOs)

What is a viewfinder diopter?

Photography comes with a bunch of technical jargon. Here a quick explanation of some of the technical jargon I’ve used in this post.

Viewfinder diopter. A viewfinder diopter is an adjustable dial that allows photographers to fine-tune the focus according to their individual vision requirements. It is especially useful for those who wear glasses or have imperfect vision. By adjusting the diopter, you can ensure that the scene you see through the viewfinder appears sharp and clear, allowing for better framing and focusing before capturing an image. On mirrorless cameras that don’t use an optical viewfinder, it also affects the focus of any heads-up display items that are included within the viewfinder display.

It’s important to note that this only affects what you see through the viewfinder. It does not affect the focus of the image captured by the camera’s sensor.

On the Fujifilm X-T5, the diopter is a small button dial that sits on the top of the camera. As you’re holding the camera to shoot, it’s just to the left of the viewfinder.

The adjustment range runs from −5 to +3 diopters, which covers a good spread of prescriptions. If your eyes need more correction than that, you’ll be shooting with your glasses on.