• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Olympus OM-D EM-1 (1 Viewer)

Hello guys. I've been looking at these Olympus OM cameras after having most of my gear nicked in Spain. Can anyone tell me if they are using it to digiscope. I have a new Swaro angled scope, 85mm.
Any advice tips and especially lenses you're using if you are digiscoping with it.

Cheers all. Steve Norton......
 
Hello guys. I've been looking at these Olympus OM cameras after having most of my gear nicked in Spain. Can anyone tell me if they are using it to digiscope. I have a new Swaro angled scope, 85mm.
Any advice tips and especially lenses you're using if you are digiscoping with it.

Hello Steve. i think you might find this interesting.
 
Hello Ammadoux.
Thanks for taking the time out to reply to my message I really appreciate it. I have been using a TLS APO with my old Olympus E600 camera and must admit to not really liking it. Obviously losing a lot of the cameras senses like auto focus doesn't help. I think I expected a lot more from the equipment.
I will be getting the new camera very shortly so may as well try the APO on it before I dismiss it completely and go straight back to the DCB 2. I have been told there are a lot of good points that will improve the focusing with the OMD range of camera to.
Thank you for your help and as I said I appreciate it.
Cheers, Steve Norton......
 
Niels, thanks very much for taking the time to let me see this.

Just been looking at the brand new model Olympus have released today, well not brand new but a mark two of the EM-5. Just need the time to get all this sorted out and spend my money on the equipment.

I appreciate your help mate. Cheers, Steve Norton......
 
just wanted to share some images of EM-1 with Sigma 70-200mm, a bit slow in focus, but very useful in low light situations.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ammadoux/20099782804/in/dateposted-public/

this shot is taken with the Sigma 50-500mm, AF is much faster than when using the E5. and as the bird was really far, i put on the DTC, so at 480 mm, its 960mm on the full frame plus the effect of the DTC.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ammadoux/20601160335/in/dateposted-public/

this shot is a bit sharper.

http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/536062/ppuser/71763

what made me share this is that i found that the bigma works much better with EM-1 than with the E5.
 
How has the EM-1 autofocus improved since the firmware updates?
How is the autofocus compared to a Nikon D7100?
Regards Gerard.
 
How has the EM-1 autofocus improved since the firmware updates?
How is the autofocus compared to a Nikon D7100?
Regards Gerard.
I think it has improved a little with the firmware update but continuous autofocus and tracking are still inferior to DSLRs such as the Nikon D7100. I hope they can close the gap when Olympus release the E-M1's successor.

Ron
 
Latest firmware update looks quite worthwhile.

Firmware update Version 4.0

Caution:
When the firmware is updated to version 4.0, settings other than AF Focus adjustments are reset.

This firmware brings several new features to your OM-D E-M1 camera. The main features added in firmware upgrade are:

1. Focus Stacking
2. Focus Bracketing
3. Advanced Focus Peaking
4. Silent Mode
5. Improved Anti-shock Mode
6. Advanced Olympus Capture
7. S-OVF (Simulated OVF)
8. 4K Time Lapse Movie
9. Live Composite on OI.Share
10. MF Clutch Disable
11. Menu Cursor Position Memory
12. Movie image stabilisation with 5-axis optical IS and digital IS
13. 24p (23.98p)/25p Frame Rate
14. Movie Info Display
15. Movie Rec Start with Release Cable (RM-UC1)
16. Time Code Setting
17. M-IS1 and M-IS2 supported
18. Slate Tone
19. Synchronised PCM Audio Rec with Movie Rec
20. M.Zuiko Premium + 14-42mm EZ movie aperture support
 
I have updated and have to say that Focus Stacking is rather impressive, although it only works with three lenses: 60mm f2.8 Macro, 12-40mm f2.8 PRO and 40-150mm f2.8 PRO. I had a quick play yesterday with the 60mm using default settings and hand held and it was surprisingly effective. It should be very useful for photographing insects.

Ron
 
I have updated and have to say that Focus Stacking is rather impressive, although it only works with three lenses: 60mm f2.8 Macro, 12-40mm f2.8 PRO and 40-150mm f2.8 PRO. I had a quick play yesterday with the 60mm using default settings and hand held and it was surprisingly effective. It should be very useful for photographing insects.

Ron

Thanks for the report. However, I don't have those lenses, and it's a pain to have to reset all your settings, so I'm thinking I'll wait till at least the next update before I give it a try. Not seeing much else that would be worth it for stills nature photography, which is what I use it for. If anyone thinks I'm missing something, please chime in.
 
Jim, I do not have any of the 4k cameras, but the 4k time lapse mode might be worth it if it works similar to the pana 4k modes I have read about where a good quality 8mp image can easily be extracted from any frame in the movie.

Niels
 
Thanks for the report. However, I don't have those lenses, and it's a pain to have to reset all your settings, so I'm thinking I'll wait till at least the next update before I give it a try. Not seeing much else that would be worth it for stills nature photography, which is what I use it for. If anyone thinks I'm missing something, please chime in.
I believe you can use Focus Bracketing with any M43 lens but you need a suitable application to do the Focus Stacking with the images. I tried my Photoshop CS4 and it seemed to work all right.

Incidentally there is also updated firmware for nine lenses, to allow MF clutch disabling if required with the new camera firmware (although I am not sure why) and improved lens aperture stability when shooting video.

Ron
 
I had forgotten how long it takes to re set up the M1.

With Lenses with the manual focus clutch ring such as the 17mm 1.8 and the 12-40mm folks have been accidentally knocking it on to manual focus and shooting out of focus pictures apparently. By disabling the automatic switch feature between AF and MF set on the lens it retains the AF until the menu is set to MF (not easy to do by accident).

Of course on a MK I M5 you continue to take out of focus images if you accidentally move the ring to MF.

I had to experiment to find this out, before bumping into posts by 12-40 users on the web complaining about their fuzzy pics - Olympus were less than generous with their explanations and details with this firmware update.

The new menu cursor positioning memory really speeds up experimenting!

It is also a pain updating each lens, as both the camera and the lens need the latest firmware for some features to function, mainly for the video improvement for me, fortunately the lens upgrade does not reset the EM-1 ......

I must admit that I rather like the automatic switch over, but I can see why they now give you the option.
 
Last edited:
I had forgotten how long it takes to re set up the M1.
Do you keep a record of your settings? I downloaded the spreadsheet from the Biofos site and every so often run through the menus, recording any setting which is different from the default. It made re-entering the settings much quicker after the update. No doubt I have missed something, though, and it will catch me out when I next use the camera.

I have a 17mm F1.8, which includes the manual 'snapshot' focusing ring, but I think I will not bother to disable it in the menu. I think it is a neat feature and it is usually quite obvious if the camera is not autofocusing. The only downside with the snapshot feature is that it does not allow focus peaking.

Ron
 
Last edited:
I understand that the later lenses such as the 12-40 mm do allow more useful manual features such as focus peaking using the ring to switch than the earlier lenses such as the 17mm 1.8 and my first thoughts were that this change affected these.

My guess is that this accidental switching has mainly affected this zoom as the zoom and focussing rings are in close proximity, and with the primes the only two times this is likely to happen by accident is mounting the lens or forgetting to turn it off.

No I don't keep a record of my settings, but I tend to set up any camera so that it operates like a 'souped up' OM4Ti (disable all sorts of things) and after a major firmware update with new menu entries I tend to locate and test them if relevent to me. As I almost always shoot with a viewfinder the info on the screen is usually off and with the later E slrs the screen was reversed for protection. A bit old school but it works for me - as I am a dominant left eyed freak an active touch screen would be controlled by my nose anyway!
 
Last edited:
I updated mine this morning and reset everything from the spreadsheet that I had previously downloaded via one of the user-group websites and everything seems to be ok. Some new settings to decide on, of course, but I hope I've set it up correctly. I don't do much video, so I haven't looked closely at any of the new features there.

A moment of panic when I pressed the Fn1 button to check auto-focus and nothing happened! (I upgraded the 17mm lens as well and had left it in 'manual focus' mode, so panic over when I pushed the focus ring forward!). Had to scratch my head for a couple of minutes whilst I tried to remember how to re-set the 'small area' for autofocus but it suddenly came back to me!

'Silent mode' seems good though it's not quite completely silent as there's just a very small 'click' sound which might not be audible out in the field. I'll give it a good run-out to see what the limitations of electronic shutters are in real world situations with fast-moving subjects, etc.

Anybody know what 'Slate Tone' is, or indeed, where it is?
 
Last edited:
Warning! This thread is more than 7 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top