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[OM] New camera questions

Subject: [OM] New camera questions
From: Steve Goss <dallasgossfamily@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2024 17:43:17 -0500
Y'all might remember back several months ago when I asked which camera I should upgrade to. Well, after much discussion with my wife, and a rather large income tax refund, I finally got permission to upgrade. Since I wanted a camera that wasn't already discontinued, and one that could handle getting a bit wet, I ended up with an OM System OM1 Mark II, with the 12-40 Pro 2 lens from KEH. My initial impression is that it's like jumping from a CP/M micro computer directly to Windows 10. There's a lot of stuff it can do that I don't think I'll ever fully grasp.

What memory card do I need? It's been a while since I last looked at SD card specs, and I'm getting confused by all the SDHC, SDXC, UHS types and various class ratings. I got a single 64GB card with the camera, but it's turned out to be too small. While shooting whitewater kayakers I managed to fill the card in seven minutes. The 50 frame per second electronic shutter eats up memory fast... The card is a Delkin SDXC UHS-II It also says V90 II. I'm not going to be doing movies, although 50 frames a second is definitely fast enough for video. How high end of a card do I need? I can get a lesser spec card for a fifth of the cost of the one I bought with the camera. According to the specs Oly recommends "SD Memory Card (SDHC, SDXC, UHS-I, UHS-II compatible) Class 10 or higher SD card is recommended for movie shooting. UHS-II or UHS-I U3 card is recommended for 4K, C4K, ALL-I shooting." (What in the world is ALL-I shooting?)

It turns out that the electronic shutter has a fairly fast minimum shutter speed. I wanted to shoot between 1/30th and 1/60th of a second, but found that I had to use the mechanical shutter for that. Evidently the electronic shutter won't go slower that 1/640th of a second. Auto ND might help with this, but at the time I shot the pictures in the gallery below I had not found it in the manual.

When the camera arrived, it was doing ISO automatically. At some point I set it to a specific ISO, and now all the modes are stuck with specific ISO settings, and there is no automatic setting that I can find.  (I think I found it today. There's an option called auto 12800.)

The lens has a button on it that says L-Fn. The description I found didn't make much sense, and I'm not sure whether the button is momentary or not. Plus, when I went to the Olympus web site to see if there was more information on this lens I had to search for it manually, and then when I clicked on the picture of the lens to get more information it took me to a completely different lens. The OM1 manual says that some lenses support features of the camera, and some don't. At this point I'm not sure what camera functions this lens actually supports.

Is there a way to copy the settings from one of C1, C2, C3 or C4 modes back to the A or S mode, or am I looking at this the wrong way? I haven't had the option of custom settings before, and the manual doesn't give examples of how it might be useful.

The pictures in the gallery below are from a whitewater kayak trip with 8th graders and their dads. (All the shots here are of instructors.) I generally shoot with a fast shutter speed on Saturday, and then go for a slow shutter speed on Sunday. I like the apparent movement of the water, although there are much fewer usable images from a series. Usually there's at least one that has the paddler's face in focus and not blurred. There are two shots of Lindsay at the same spot in the rapid, one with the fast shutter speed, and one with a slow shutter speed. The third shot of Lindsay was a panning shot as she went by my position. The sequence of Grace does not seem to be in order, even though they were uploaded that way. The captions indicate the correct order. There are also two shots of Mike. He is good at blocking his face with an arm or paddle. While these are interesting shots, a blocked face means that the photo would not be usable for the dads and daughters or sons.

I also included a shot from a rock climbing / rappelling trip with 7th graders. The usual picture is of both dad and daughter rappelling at the same time. This dad decided not to wait up for his daughter. With this trip the photos are much different. Instead of capturing large movements, I need a fairly large depth of field to get both people in focus. I was using a custom setting, and tried to tweak the aperture. The manual mentions that changes to a custom setting are lost when the camera gets turned off, but it really sinks in after you get bitten a few times by it.  I'm not used to re-saving the custom setting after each mod.

https://link.shutterfly.com/dVc6tLcRyNb
If anyone has comments on how I might do these better, please let me know.

Anyone want a couple of heavily used E-520's?

Thanks, Steve Goss

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