The film simulation dial on the Fujifilm X-E5 makes little sense to me in practice. On one hand, this is because I almost always shoot in RAW and develop my images later at the computer. But even if I were to rely completely on JPEGs straight out of the camera, I would need to be deeply into film simulations for such a dial to really benefit me in everyday use.
Usually, I stick to a consistent style for a photo series or a shoot. Maybe there's the occasional black-and-white variant, but otherwise I stick with one look. I can't imagine standing in front of a subject and first trying out different film simulations while shooting. I simply lack the time at the moment of capture, and if I want that freedom to experiment, I might as well shoot in RAW.
A dedicated, fixed dial on the camera only makes sense to me if you actually change the setting often and spontaneously. That's the case with shutter speed or exposure compensation, as I adjust these values constantly and before almost every shot. Film simulations are historically based on classic analog films, and back then, you wouldn't have swapped out a real film roll after every single photo either.
Even if you did want to change the look frequently, a programmable button would probably be the more practical solution. You could assign your personal favorites to a button and cycle through them with a few clicks. With the fixed dial, you're tied to the predefined simulations and only have three custom slots available.
To me, this component seems more like a marketing ploy, along the lines of, "Look, we have film simulations." I don't want to deny the quality of these color profiles, but the question remains whether this dial on the body is really the smartest place for it.
It's easy to criticize, of course, so I'd rather think about concrete alternatives. What could such a dial be used for more sensibly? One option would be, for example, the uncomplicated switching between different exposure settings. I miss that with Fujifilm and other manufacturers time and again.
At a wedding, you often switch between the dark church and the bright sunlight outside, or walk from deep shadow directly into the sun. Here, it would be extremely practical to simply save certain settings and recall them directly via a dial.
My personal wish would clearly be a classic ISO dial. I do shoot very often with auto ISO, especially when you're out spontaneously and don't yet know what will come in front of your lens. Still, I manually adjust the sensitivity again and again. Setting it via menus or an unlabeled wheel bothers me especially when it needs to be quick. You need several clicks and don't have real haptic feedback with fixed values. When I adjust shutter speed or exposure compensation, I can feel exactly how many clicks it takes.
Especially when working with flash, I miss such a real dial. When using flash, I like to work with fixed values, independent of the normal exposure metering. If I then want to take a few photos without flash in between, the digital switching is quite tedious every time. With a real ISO dial in that spot, it would be much faster, and you'd even see immediately which value is set when the camera is off. My wish to Fujifilm would therefore be quite pragmatic: for an X-E6, rather skip the film simulation dial and give us a solid ISO dial again.
