Picture this.
I’m sitting home one evening on my comfy couch with a warm drink on the end table beside me. It’s Friday night and I’m kinda planning for the weekend when I get the bright idea of heading out hiking with some cameras in the morning.
Normally, I would bring my Fuji XT3 on an excursion like this, but unfortunately, it’s become a bit unreliable- you know, small things like not powering on and freezing up. Obviously, this has created just a few trust issues and makes me second-guess taking it anywhere.
Instead, I reached for my XS10 (which has been my dedicated camera for recording video) and started programming some recipes into the four custom functions. I chose a few of my favorites- Kodak Gold 200, Tmax P3200, Fuji Natura, and a flat digital standard profile. Great! I’m all set and ready to have a nice time hiking.
Or, so I thought.
The next morning, I started taking a few comparison shots between the newly programmed recipes and realized there was a problem. Every time I would switch to C4 the LCD and viewfinder would furiously flash, and the aperture and shutter settings would cycle up and down non-stop.

So, if you’re ever in a situation asking “why is my Fuji camera blinking and flashing?” I might have the fix for you. It took me a moment to realize what was happening, but the issue was an incompatibility between P mode and manual focus lenses. Doh!
This seems obvious, as you can’t have the camera in P mode with lenses that can’t control the aperture, but when overwriting the custom functions I failed to make sure it was set for aperture priority mode.
Oddly enough, this only happens with my Voigtlander lenses and not vintage manual focus lenses mounted with an adapter. I think it is due to the electrical contacts of the Voigtlander communicating to the camera what aperture the lens is at, and the camera trying to adjust it in P mode which it’s unable to do.
And that’s it, easy-peasy! Kind of a rookie mistake, but the moral of the story is to make sure you’re actually in the mode you think you are. Duh.
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