On 10/13/2024 3:43 PM, Steve Goss wrote:
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.
That's basically what the camera is designed for, to work at its best. With the two slots, you can set it up to use two
cards sequentially. I have pairs of 128MB UHS-II cards in my OM-1 Mk I bodies.
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.
That's not so. Just grabbed an OM-1, set Silent Mode, pointed it at stuff in my office; shutter speed 1/5 sec. Took the
shot. EXIF, in OM Workspace saith:
----------
Shutter: 1/5 sec
Drive: Silent + Single-frame
----------
Not sure what else might have given you that result. Hit Auto ISO cap in
bright light?
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.
Live ND does indeed work to give a slow shutter speed look. For me, finding the right ND setting for any particular
subject is trial and error. Results can be impressive. I have Live ND on an Fn button.
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.)
Press OK button, to go into SCP display, upper right sets ISO. On mine, it's "Auto 2500", because I have the Auto ISO
range set to max 2500 in the menus.
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.
It is an additional Function Button, just as though it were on the body.
Function when pressed defined in the Menus.
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.
You do have it a bit backwards. No, the A, S modes etc. may not become customized. This is good in one way. Fuss around
with the menus/controls and next time, they are as left. Also bad in a way, I can't often remember where I left things.
In fact, I should have said "I couldn't remember . . ." because I never (well, almost) leave the cameras in any mode but
C1. That's my known default settings. I turn the camera on, no matter what I may have been doing before, and it's in a
known state. Crucial for me. And that's why one must save any changes when using a Cx Mode. if you want them to persist.
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.
Have you tried Face/Eye focus? This should increase your hit rate for faces a
great deal.
Also, have you looked into the ProCapture modes?
In ProCap, press the shutter half way, and it starts taking frames and putting them in a buffer. Buffer full, the oldest
go in the bit bucket. Press all the way and the buffer shots are saved to card. You can even set it to take a fixed
number of frames after full press, in case your trigger finger got itchy too soon.
This allows following some action, then capturing the critical moment. It took me some retraining of mind and shutter
finger. Nothing I want to save happened, just let off the half press, and nothing is saved. Something good happened,
full press, then perhaps half press again. (Here's where the fastest cards rule.)
I don't usually shoot fast moving people. I do so with birds and bugs. Bird AF and ProCap are just plain magic. Face AF
and ProCap might do that for you. ProCap alone still works wonders for bees, flutterbys, etc.
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.
Perhaps you should have been shooting in A or S? A Custom Mode that isn't fixed
when chosen is no use to me.
https://link.shutterfly.com/dVc6tLcRyNb
If anyone has comments on how I might do these better, please let me know.
I've tried. 🙂
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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