Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

Now that you know about all the different bits and pieces let's kind of put them together, so if you're going to want to get your camera ready to go out and shoot something, whether it's your trip or a particular event, first and foremost, make sure you charge and install that battery and you have enough battery power for us long you're going to be gone next up, make sure that you have a card in the camera and probably preferred that you reformat that card before you start shooting so that it's got a good clean line of communication in there. You want to make sure that you have the correct image quality set? Are you shooting raw? You should j pay just so long as you know what you are doing and then just, you know, make sure that you have the proper settings. You were doing something really goofy doing long time exposures the night before, and you're doing something completely different the next morning and then if you're going on a big trip or doing a big shoot, it's probably good to s...

hoot some test photos and make sure that you don't have dust on the sensor and so that's just one of the precautions that a serious photographer would take with any camera, okay, so getting in. To how we're going to set the camera I figure that while there are probably one hundred different features in this camera there are ten that you were going to use on a regular daily basis on these air the ten most important modes in my opinion and so let's just go through a couple of set up scenario so a super super simple mode for setting this camera and ifyou're here in class and you have a camera in front of you you can follow along or at home as well put your camera the program mode I will kind of do the same with mine and you can kind of see where I'm turning things so let's just go to the program mode on the top we don't need to worry about shutter speeds and apertures because the camera will figure things out for the isil mode we're going to be using the super control panel on the back and that's that top left box we can jump into the box if we want or we can use is the front die along our camera and we're just going to set that it auto eso it's not where I normally leave my camera but we will for this very simple mode exposure compensation is at zero you'll notice on the back of the camera that's in yellow and that's controlled by the front dialogue as well when it's not in the super control mode the meeting is the s p, which is the multi segment metering system, which I confined on the super control panel. Right here. I can jump in there and we can see it said on espn, which is a good general purpose mode right there. White balance in general, I think auto is going to be fine. We can go to the white balance mode, which is right next to also isil, which is in the big box towards the top of the super control screen for focusing mode for general photography. Single auto focus will work just fine. Come down a couple steps, single auto focus continues, is what we'll use for sports. I like my camera and manual focus a lot, but single focus works out pretty good for simply for a super simple moment for focus points, you could go with thirty five point focusing and that's going to be right next to the focusing mode and the nice, easy way to get in there and hitting the lips. How these buttons there, sometimes too small that's the one complaint I have, and then going up and down to changing from one to nine to thirty five points and then finally, the drive mode get back out of this, and so the drive mode is going to be the box. Right below the white balance setting we have the different drive modes but just being in the single mode is going to be fine most of the time okay let's ah do a little old school retro styles you're used to shooting with an old film camera in a manual mode how would you set your camera well let's flip the camera around a manual on the top of the camera so that we can set our shutter speeds and apertures ourselves just for practice we consider shutter speeds to one hundred twenty fifth of a second that's a good you know general purpose shutter speed and let's go with f eight because there's a great old saying in photography how do you take a great picture f eight and be there so we're just going to set it at f eight it's a good very sharp aperture good general purpose aperture let's pretend we're shooting some try x film I s o four hundred and so on the super control panel we're going to go up to the very top left and bump our I sew up a couple of notches to ice so four hundred we're not going to worry about exposure compensation because we're in a manual mode we don't use exposure compensation when we're manually setting shutter speeds and apertures uh traditional cameras have a meter in system called center waited and so if you wanted to try that out you could go in and it's clips I went into the wrong area metering system buttons or too small go into the meter in system and change it to the second one in inches center waited metering white balance on that believe it's simple and just keep it at auto for focusing system let's try manually folk manual focus so you have to go in and go to where it was s a f and switch it over to imf. Unlike a lot of nei cons and cannons which have a switch on the outside of the camera this does not you have to electronically go in and turn it off. It is now manual focus, which means you don't need to worry about focusing points and you might want to set the camera at continuous low and so we could be ready for a little bit of action in here. So if I said this that continuous low let's take some pictures shooting off in about three and a half frames per second. All right, let's do some real photography with some examples here. All right? So first up let's do a little landscape photography and the idea here is that you want a lot of things in focus and there's a good chance that you should be doing this from a tripod and so this kind of assuming that you were working on a tripod I prefer to be emmanuel in these moz the shutter speed is totally going to depend on the lighting conditions but just for practice purposes you can put it at a quarter second if you want to follow along the ap teachers but more critical you're going to want to have something with more depth of field it depends on the conditions it depends on your seeing it depends on your lands f sixteen of twenty two of thirty two all might be good choices I'm going to go with have sixteen for this example your eyes so you're definitely going to want to have it at two hundred which is where the best quality images are going to come from in this sort of scenario no exposure compensation I would leave it on espn eatery good general metering I would leave it on auto white balance it's probably going to do a fine job for focusing you want to be pretty careful about where you're focusing so single out of focus should work fine you could also manually focus here is well for focusing points I would definitely go with single points you could be very selective about what you're choosing the camera to focus on and then for the drive mode you could use single if you are using the cable release in lieu of that I recommend using the two second self timer that way you're not touching the camera when the shutter is being fired all right, let's, go to the next scenario, which is portrait photography, so you're not on a tripod here you are concerned about shutter speeds to make sure that your subject is sharp and you're concerned about focusing so that you focus in the right area. So in this case, I also like to work in manual is, well, that way, I could be very specific about the shutter speed and aperture that I choose you want something faster, one hundred twenty fifth or faster would be recommended, you're aperture is something that you're going to want to have as low as possible in many cases. And so if you have one of those one point four one point eight lenses, now is the time to use it. Try to keep that isil was lois possible two hundred would be the preferred setting metering. We're going to keep this nice and simple just leave it on the espn and leave white balance on auto so that's the same as always focusing, I'm gonna leave this on single auto focus, and I'm also going to use just a single box that way I can focus on the person's face and then recomposed might be locking focus on their face and then re composing, moving him a little bit off to the side and then finally for the drive mode. I might leave it in continuous high because people's expressions and gestures change very quickly and you might want to fire off a burst of two or three shots just the right time now the camera is not great at whatever I could get this keyboard to go to the next one, which is action on dso tracking these pictures by the way, we're not taking with this camera the's are illustrating action, but not specifically with this camera, and so if you were going to shoot action with this, I would highly recommend the manual exposure mode you could use aperture priority pretty well, but I like to be able to specifically make sure that I have a shutter speed five hundred of a second or faster and this is where the faster lenses, the lenses that go down to two point eight our of big advantage and so if you can get a faster lens that will help you out quite a bit and there is a good chance that you're going to need to bump the highest. So up from two hundred, four hundred, eight hundred it's a very common place to be for sports photography, leave it at the espn monitoring and automatic white balance for focusing you're going to want to go into continuous focusing or potentially continuous autofocus with the tracking remember the tracking is where the single box or the nine boxes will move around with your subject and so you'll have to kind of play around with the sports and stuff that you shoot to see if that works for you for focusing points, I would probably go with the nine point focusing rather than a single box. It depends on the type of sports, the lens, your angle of you and everything else, but I think probably the nine points is a good place to start and then, of course, for the motor drive, if you are in the high mode, I do be aware that your camera is not going to be refocusing between pictures because it's firing so fast it doesn't have time to refocus. And so be careful the way shoot this asai said it's, not the world's greatest sports and action camera let's do another one here. This next one is called maximum sharpness, and so assuming you're on a tripod, you just want to get the sharpest picture possible have something that is not moving very similar to the landscape. I would be emmanuel exposure, whatever shutter speed is necessary for the subject and the light not so critical if you're on a tripod and aperture f eight f eleven on most of these lenses is where they're going to be at their sharpest setting. You'll definitely want to be at the lowest eso, which in this case is two hundred we're going to leave our media ring and white balance where they've been for the last few settings for focusing, I would definitely have it in single out of focus, so you could be very critical about where you're focusing. You could also manually focus, especially where it has the magnified view that would work out quite well and just use the single point with the focusing and then once again like landscape I would either you single in a cable release or the two second self timer, which I think works out really well and we'll do one final one. This is a good one to end the class on, which is just basic photography you don't know what your next picture is, so let's, just have your camera ready for anything that might come along and yes, I will act actually used a little automation here happens your priority. All right? So I'm not gonna worry about the shutter speed in particular setting it. I'm just going to choose an aperture that's reasonably wide open, maybe f four that gives me a little bit faster center speed to start with, I'm going to have my camera said it two hundred, depending on the conditions, I'm going to be ready to bump that up if necessary. We're gonna make sure my exposure compensation is set in the middle. I don't want my pictures to brighter, too dark unless they need it, and then I will add it in that espn metering works very well, in my opinion leave the auto white balance because I'm shooting ron don't need to worry about that. I'm gonna keep my camera and single out of focus so that I can lock onto something and recompose very quickly, and I'm just going to use a single box so I can be very precise about where I'm focusing and I'm going to keep the camera in the single mode. I generally don't need it in the motor drive note I can fire away pretty quickly just re tapping down on the shutter release, but that's how I would leave the camera set up for basic photography and so if you have hung with us throughout this entire class, I offer you congratulations. You are now and om d e m five expert so that said let's, go to any final questions could weaken kind of mop up all those questions at this point way have a good amount. Actually, I'm just going to go for it with this one, bobby, forty, sixty two, asks with john c this camera as a dslr replacement. Pros and cons, if you will. For me, it's not a dslr replacement, it doesn't have the versatility in the quality that I want out of a dslr. So for me, it's a second camera, this is the equivalent of that convertible I take out on weekends now for other people who aren't doing the type of work that I'm doing. It is totally a replacement, I think, for somebody who likes to travel a mom and dad just taking pictures, general pictures of the kids now, what's the kids start playing soccer and getting into sports, you might find some weaknesses with the cameras. And so for I think a good portion of the population out there it is a replacement, but not for everyone. Okay, it's, big news. Yeah. You know, there's, a lot of discussion in the there you go. All right. Well, we have about four or five questions about my sets. Can I get into that? Sure. Okay. Uh another question from c delicioso who said you also mentioned on my said that you have to be careful when you change a setting in a my set setting. If you make a change, how do you update the my set settings? Ok, so let's say you have a my set and you wantto do something more to it let's say it's my set number one you go to my set number one and you set your camera is my set one go make that additional single double many changes as you want go back into my set one and then what you would do is you would go to the right arrow and you would reset the whole setting as the new camera settings and so the kind of two things that you're doing is you're either going to a set or you're resetting it and that's the thing that's you're using the word set a lot so do you want to reset my set number one is the's new camera settings or do you want to choose that and so what you do is just set the camera exactly the way you wanted to go to my set go to the right which would be this direction for you and then you would set my set as the current camera settings so which is kind of nice because what's going to happen to me yes I don't have I didn't get my camera back the way I wanted it to under my set number two for me and every once in a while I'm going to go oh I forgot to add this to the list all you do is just go and change that one feature go back to my set and then reset it so you can keep incrementally getting it better fine tuned to the way you want it and the same thing goes for turning the future ofthe if you said oh I don't want this in my set anymore just go turn it off, go back to my set and then reset it so I don't know how to pronounce this gainey snowden said john if you could add something to the omg what would it be ad it um I would like that function one button to be bigger and easier to press uh as far as a functional button size I that that would be very handy to me I do like the grip of the camera which I'm thinking about getting that improves the grip quality to it I think the camera is falling very short for action photography and so for focused tracking in a e m six ten whatever they come up with next hopefully it'll have better tracking capability because it's just not a great sports camera this time it's it's it's it's it's great at how fast the focusing is on still subjects there's some other cameras that are in the similar genre like the fuji camera and actually I don't if this will date this too much but they just announced a camera today that has much, much better focusing than their previous one and their first x one hundred had very wonky slow focusing and some of the other cameras in this genre have had very still focusing and that's been one of the things that people have loved about this is it's the first of its type that is just super fast cool that kind of leads me to the next question from nico ha um, who would like to know if it's a better sports camera than typical points you yeah, because you can put on different lenses it fires at nine frames a second and if you know what you're doing and so when I say what you know what you're doing don't try to push the focus tracking on it. So if I was going to go shoot a football game and it was a high school football game or soccer game, I wouldn't stand in the end zone where players are running towards me. I would stand more on the sidelines where they're running parallel to me and their distance is not changing much because if somebody's staying the same distance you could pan with them get nine frames a second get some really nice shots whereas if they're coming straight at the camera is going to focus on the first shot and all the other ones are going to be out of focus and so by a certain technique and style you can make use of what the camera has, which is nine frames a second which is pretty amazing and let's just say for kicks you wanted a camera that shot more than nine frames a second um I think a sony will do it for three thousand dollars and that's like the next step beyond this one, so going back to them I set your settings s wait crew I don't know I'm going to mess up your name I'm gonna say screw ba screw ups car to I'm so sorry it's probably a really lovely name is there an easy button that can be programmed to switch between my setting settings so one of the things on the function controls let me just get my notes out and so function number one and len's function so the button on the back of the camera or the one on the side of the lens can be used to automatically go to one of those my sets on the land on the lids and so you could choose lens function to go to my set number two or my set number three you can program it to toggle between one, two, three and four but you could just go toe one set and then it would tell you in the viewfinder which might set your act pretty cool. Yeah ok mall sales would like to know if you've ever used a remote flash I have not used remote clash with this camera have used it with other systems canon and nikon and so I don't really have specific detail information on that. It requires multiple olympus flashes and in regards to olympus, canon and nikon in theory, it all sounds great. The problem is, is that you're paying a lot of money for little tiny flashes, and in order for the remote system to work, you need a number of these things. And so before you start having a decent set up, you spend a thousand dollars, and if you walk down to the lighting store or you go to a lighting department, you can get a lot of lights for a thousand dollars they're bigger, and so it kind of depends on what your demands are and what you want out of flash and the other problem that I have with remote flash. But I don't know about in particular in this one is that when you have a flash on camera and it's communicating with another flash, if it's not a radio signal, there is a slight delay and there is a blink problem. I've had an issue where I was needing to take some portrait's and I was trying to use an off camera flash system from other than olympus brand in the camera flash signal to the remote flash through a very quick flash, and the person I was taking a photograph of was extremely sensitive to flash. And they blinked when they saw that initial flash and I'm like, oh, you blinked in that picture let's do another one you blinked on that one ok, now really try to hold your eyes open you blanked on that one and they just couldn't hold their eye eyes open it was an involuntary reaction and so if you're trying to do serious flash at all he's gotta get would get away from that whole system and so it's it's another one of those wifi features that sounds cool in the brochure, but when you get to working with it in the field, you see that it's got a lot of little kinks in that he thinks in the armor. So a good question from soon not this suit but another sue out there watching can you tell us about cleaning the sensor? Cleaning the sensor is something that I don't recommend for everyone, but I do recommend for anyone who feels comfortable with working with small objects, it is a little bit easier to work with on this case because you don't have to get the mere out of the way because it does have a mere but what you can do is you can buy there's a number of different solutions the one I'm most familiar with his sensor swabs it's a really fancy q tip very clean, sterile environment you put a couple little drop of alcohol a couple drops of alcohol and you swipe across the sensor, sweeping it clean, and that way it gets anything that's kind of stuck on their off, and he just need to be a bit careful about sticking it in there and making sure that there's enough power in the camera nothing's going to close down and shutters are going to do anything on you and you gonna make sure you clean it out. And so you do have to be careful with it. Don't take the big can of air, you know, the compressed canadair and blow it in there it's it's very powerful and has propellants in it that if kicked out, they could damage your sensor. And so they have special blowers, which are squeezed blowers kind of like the bulbs and you can blow air in there don't do it with your mouth because hell in there really spit a little bit in there and you don't want that in there. So you get these old bulbs that blow air in there see you wanted to get the bowl blower and there and then get the sensor swap. But overall, the camera, I have been pretty impressed I haven't seen much dust on there, and I obviously switch back and forth between lenses so it does a good job I'm quite satisfied with a built in system