jerryy

Have you tried pulling out the main battery and leaving it sit on a shelf for several days to let the settings backup battery / capacitor completely discharge? This should cause the settings memory chip to lose all of its current settings and go back to the factory defaults — as of the last update.

I do not see a brightness button on the back in your image, but if it has a button whose emblem is a circle with a lot of lines popping out from it, Fujifilm usually uses that as a lcd brightness controller. Do you have the manual for the camera? If you have an external card reader, the video and images on the SD card can be copied over to your computer.

This may help you some: http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Film_Simulation DarkTable: https://www.darktable.org/2019/05/new-module-lut3d/ also has some tools for doing that type of work. Yeah, shoot in raw is a good idea, but stuff happens.

One Ring ... Messier M57 The Ring Nebula (This is equivalent to a just over 94 minute exposure.) https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-57-the-ring-nebula https://www.solarsystemquick.com/universe/ring-nebula https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/evenings-with-the-ring-nebula/

Yawn, stretch, .... 😀 You might try over at fujirumors.com, they usually keep up on things like that.

If you give the shutter button a half-push the focus box changes to green (when the camera af is on letting you know af has locked on to something) you may be able to use that idea to locate the box and then move it as you need to. The idea is based on the technique called “focus and re-compose”. Essentially as you start to look through the viewfinder, half-push the shutter button, by the time you get the camera to your eye, the af should have the box color in green.

If you ever get squeamish about your diy approach or want different nd values, there are several companies selling clip in filters for Fujifilm cameras.

Fujifilm's Raw File Convertor will allow you to apply the film simulations your camera natively supports and you can export the files as TIFFs. https://fujifilm-x.com/en-us/products/software/raw-file-converter-ex-powered-by-silkypix/ DarkTable also does this: https://www.darktable.org/ Actually, just check the docs for the raw convertors you like, to see if they support the films simulations you like, (mostly they will only support the ones that are native to your camera -- you will not be able to use the ones for the X-T4 in your X-T30 files, etc.) just about all of them lets you export files as TIFF, it is a standard file format.

https://www.fuji-x-forum.com/topic/13922-which-exif-attribute-contains-the-shutter-actuation-count/ Scroll down to the third reply by @Greybeard, he has a link there that may help you. He does pop in from time to time, so he may be able to give you more information if you are patient enough to wait until he gets back.

More contrails to come ...

I am asking a question to clarify things. Is this counter the one that is for shots remaining? The one that is in the top right of the display? Not the number that is given to an image when it is stored? If it is the one in the top right, that is the ‘frames remaining’ indicator part of the standard information display that lets you know how many more shots you can take and store on your current card — using your current camera settings including whether or not the images are stored as raw or jpeg or both. That number also depends on the capacity of the card, 64GB cards will have a higher number than 16GB cards. You can change the setting that lets this be displayed by customizing the screen setup menu. Your friends probably do not have that display option turned on.