Lessons

Lesson Info

Exposure & ISO Menu

Welcome back, everybody. We are in the midst of talking about the Olympus pen F and its menu system, and we're ready to dive back in and continue our route through the system. All right, Next up in the menu system is exposure metering and I eso features. First up is the exposure value steps. We can have these in third stops, which is the way most cameras are, so that you could choose very fine increments to make your photos just a little bit lighter or a little bit darker. But if you prefer half steps or full steps, you can do it. But most people will leave it at 1/3 steps. Next up is noise reduction, and we have the option of on or auto. And this is for long exposures. And the way this works is, let's say you have a 15 2nd exposure. It takes 15 seconds to take the picture, obviously, and then what the camera will do is it will go through some noise reduction processing, which takes another 15 seconds. And so the question that you need to ask yourself is Is this processing time this ex...

tra 15 seconds? In this case, Is it worth what it does to the actual photo? And so I did a little bit of testing, and here are my results. I shot a J Peg image using a 15 2nd exposure. And then I added the noise reduction option, which takes a total of 30 seconds to do the exposure. And I looked really closely and I couldn't see any big difference. I tried it with the raw images and I took arrive. I took it with a raiment, and then I just used post production software light where? Light room. Excuse me. And I added noise reduction. And I was able to clean the image up much, much better than the cameras in camera processing, which seemed to do next to nothing in my book. And so this in camera noise reduction just doesn't really seem to do much at all. And so I'm thinking, for most of the advanced users out there, you're gonna want to leave. This turned off and you're gonna want to handle it in some sort of outside program on this is going to save you that extra 15 seconds. When you're out there shooting, you could be shooting photo rather than waiting for your camera to process this information because it's just not doing much good. Next up is our noise filter. And so this is for shooting at high I s O. So if you shoot it, I s o se 1600 up. You can use this to go in and reduce the noise. And so once again, let's go in and take a look at how much this does. And so this example is from I s 3200 and we'll start with R J Peg image. We then used low standard at high. And if you're not getting a good look on your screen, I'll just simply describe the fact that with the noise filter off, we are getting a fair bit of noise, and it is just simply a step better in all of these when you get to the high setting, it is cleaning up a lot of the noise, but it's also mooring some of the detail. And so we It's a compromise between detail and smoothness, and the high is a little bit strong, in my opinion. So I took the J. Peg and I worked with it myself in post, and I could achieve the same result. And so if you want to achieve the best result, you're probably best off shooting raw and adjusting in post production. I decided to take it to the next level at 12,800. You can see a lot of noise in that straight J Peg image. It does improve a little bit as we go from left to right as we increase the intensity of that noise filter. But we do start mooring and losing some of the detail in edge sharpness when we turn that noise filter all the way up too high. If we take that J peg, we can fix it in post. I'm not saying this is the best that it can possibly be done, but it gives you a lot more options if you want to work with it later in post. And so I would tend to want to leave this either off or in a moderate position. I wouldn't want to put it too high. And so, for a basic user who doesn't want to do postproduction software fixing of their images, Leavitt and Standard and for the more advanced user I would go ahead and turn this off and work with the images yourself. If you're have some decent software and some decent skills, you'll be able to outdo with the camera can by a long shot. The ISO setting Once again, this is just the basic sensitivity setting of your sensor, same as the dialogue on the back of the camera or the button on the back of the camera as well as the super control panel has an option. For this, we can control the isso step. A lot of photographers like to have very fine tune steps between the exposure so that you could get exactly where you want your shutter speeds and apertures. Some people move there eyes those up and down very quickly, and they quickly want to go from 200 to 1600 in which case it would make sense to changing this to one e V steps. And so, if you don't need those third steps, you can save yourself a bunch of clicking and simply go Ah, full stop at a time. The camera has an auto eso option where it will automatically set isso and will adjust it as you adjust your shutter speeds and so forth. In this case, you can really design and set up the parameters that you want it to work. You can say the default I s so that it starts at and what's the maximum I its eyes so that it will go to So think about the isso tests that you might have done with the camera or the ones that you saw here in the class. What's the highest acceptable isso to you? Put that in the high limit. Most people are gonna leave the default at 200 which is the lowest native sensitivity of the camera. And then it will fluctuate between that according to the other needs of the light of the camera. And so the I s O auto allows you to use the auto I S O feature in all of these shutter priority aperture priority and program modes. I don't have a real good explanation as to why you would want to limit that. But this makes auto I eso available in all your shooting Moz metering system. We have five different metering systems. We talked about this earlier. Most cases it's gonna be left at digital E S P because it's a good multi segment metering system auto exposure lock. Currently, the function one button on the back of the camera is your auto exposure lock, and it is going to automatically lock in the exposure using the metering system that you currently have selected. If you would prefer to lock the exposure with a different metering system, you can choose which metering system it jumps to when you press the function one button. And so you want to be very careful about selecting anything other than auto in this case because that could really change your exposure dramatically. Spot Me eatery and in this one here this links this spot metering with the selected focusing point and you could choose either ah, highlight or shadow. If you prefer that to be linked with your auto focus spot meter, you could check that box. Many people are not going to wanna have metering and focusing done in the same place. Some people will, and if you do, this is where you can come in and check off that spot box. If you wanted it to always over exposer over under exposed, you could select the spot highlight or the spot shadow. The bulb timer will set the maximum exposure time that we can set on the camera. And so, since this is something that you get to dialling yourself, I say I set this at the longest period of time so that it gives you the greatest amount of options. When you're out in the field making those setting changes, the bulb and time monitor will set the brightness on the back of the screen. Now, normally, I like to have a nice, bright screen in which to see what I'm doing in the camera. But when you're doing bulb exposures, it's very dark, and sometimes that light from the back of your camera might be so bright. It might be throwing off your night vision so you can adjust the brightness of the screen on the back of the camera when it is specifically in either a bulb or a timer option. And so this is something that will be a very personal is toe. How break you like that screen when it's in those two modes, the live bulb mode. We talked about this a little bit earlier. This is kind of cool where it shows you the image developing as you're doing a bulb exposure. And so if you have the camera set for a 32nd exposure, perhaps every two seconds you will see the image updated to its new brightness level. Now there is a limit, and you can see that graph there in the bottom right hand. Part of the It's not really a graph, but it's a listing, depending on what I s So you have setting is how many times the camera will be able to update and show you a new version of your bulb setting. But if you enjoy nighttime photography, I highly encourage you to go out and play with this mode because it really allows you to have more control and see your photos as they're developing as you're actually shooting them out in the field. And remember, the bulb option is where you're leaving your finger down on the shutter release or using the cable, and you're pressing down the whole time. The similar next door neighbor to it is live time, which is one press to start and one press to end. The exposure works very much in the same way and it's something I would probably use for longer exposures that you don't have to keep your finger down on the shutter release for much length of time. The composite settings. This is used for the composite mode where it's shooting a series of photos, but it's compiling them into one long exposure. Now the example that I showed you earlier I'll show it to you again. A 62nd exposure over exposed the car headlights, but the life composite took groupings of I think this was eight seconds per exposure and then added him up. And if they got too bright, it kind of threw him aside and said, We don't really need this new exposure because we have enough light toe work with their And so this could be really interesting for anyone that's photographing lights that are moving around could be very good with fireworks, for instance, so that you don't get blown out. Highlights in one area that are two X over exposed and you're going to need to play around depending on your settings. How long your exposures are, how bright your lights are really hard for me to give you a great example. As to where to start this. But one second is a good starting point, and from there you'll need to play around, according to the scene that you are photographing.