Lessons
Class Introduction
13:22 2Photo Basics
07:14 3Top Deck: Overview
05:31 4Top Deck: Mode Dial
26:46 5Top Deck: Exposure Dial
07:39 6Top Deck: Flash & Mic
02:10 7Back Side: Electronic View Finder
09:00 8Back Side: Info Options & Play Back
12:02Back Side: ISO
06:35 10Back Side: Shutters
11:29 11Back Side: Focus Area
06:21 12Back Side: Super Control Panel
13:19 13Left, Right & Bottom of Camera
05:57 14Front Side: Creative Dial
19:51 15Olympus Lenses Overview
06:23 16Shooting Menu 1
08:16 17Shooting Menu 2
15:38 18Playback Menu
03:19 19Wi-Fi Set Up
04:54 20Custom Menu Overview & AF/MF Menu
11:25 21Button/Dial/Level Menu
03:02 22Release Menu
05:22 23Display Menu
14:48 24Exposure & ISO Menu
11:00 25Flash/Color/WB Menus
06:17 26Record & Erase Menu
04:27 27Movie Menu
05:09 28Built-In EVF Menu
03:08 29Utility Menu
05:03 30Setup Menu
04:01 31Camera Operation Overview
12:32Lesson Info
Shooting Menu 1
Okay, folks, it is time to move on to the big menu section of the class. And so this is where it's gonna be very handy to have the PdF hand out where it has the entire menu on one page. And what we're gonna dio a lot of items on here, but we're just going to quickly go through all of them and talk about what they dio and the types of photos you can get with them with lots of examples. All right, so let's dive in to the menu functions of Penn F. So when you hit the menu button on the back of the camera, you're gonna have the option of navigating to several tabs where different groups of information are stored. And it's pretty obvious, you know, shooting menu one. And to some few items in there. A few items in the playback and the set up men. You have some a few basic options, but it's the custom menu that's going to really get you, because the custom menu is a rabbit hole that leads to many, many other sub menus within their and so most of our time is going to be spent in the custom in ...
you, because that is where most of the information is, but we're going to start up. Excuse me at the top of the list with shooting menu number one. So some basic features about shooting with the camera first up is your card set up. So this is where you get to format your memory card, or you can erase all of the images on the car. And so it is the standard practice of most good photographers to regularly format their memory cards. So once you have downloaded and back to your images up properly and you're ready to go out on the next shoot, you want to put the card in the camera and you want to format. The card gets rid of the images, the data directories, the ghost files, anything else that's on the card that doesn't need to be there. It gets rid of all of that, so format that card on a regular basis. But make sure your images are backed up because once you format, it's not impossible. But it's very challenging to get those images back. All right, we talked earlier about the C one, the custom 123 and four settings. And so this is where you get to set them up. And what you do is you would set the camera up exactly the way that you want it operate and then go in here and you would basically a sign it that particular mode. And so, if you, uh, put your camera into a landscape, he type mode, you'd have all those features set in. Come in here to the menu, and you can assign that to any one of the sea options. And so when you dial the camera, you turn the modi along the top of the camera to that setting. All of your features will then be taken into effect. Now, the reset option is there if you want to reset everything but the date and the language. And so if you've been playing around with your camera and you've made all sorts of crazy setting adjustments and you say I just want to get it back to the factory, refit reset settings, then you could do a reset on all the basic camera functions right there. Picture mode. This is something we looked at earlier. It was in the super control panel. This is kind of the film. Look to your images, and so you can have a little bit more saturation or less contrast. Or you can have your own particularly look to any of the individual images. Now, as we go through this, you're going to see that I'm gonna make some recommendations. And e. I realized there's a lots of different type of users out there, And so for them or basic user, I would recommend I enhance, which basically looks at your image and enhances it as needed, according to whatever is in the photograph, the natural will kind of keep it on him or simplistic will not do as much work on your photograph. And so I would recommend that for your advanced users, next up is image quality. We did touch on this earlier. It was in the super control panel, but we see it again here. And so once again, for the serious user, you're probably gonna want to be in raw. If you're more basic user, you want to be, at least in probably large, fine quality J peg, and so we'll just have different size J pegs according to your needs and so if you know that you don't need a large size image, you can choose to shoot it on a smaller size. But if you're unsure, it's better to shoot it large and try to scale it down later. Inside image quality. We will also have our movie quality settings. And so here's where you get to choose the resolution and the frame rate of your movies. And so the first options full HD an HD are pretty simple and obvious. We have one where that will shoot short movie clips, which is a little bit on the funky side if you just want to shoot short clips and you want to be regulated to shooting short clips. And then there is the custom custom movie setting where you can go in and really tweak with the fine tune controls about how fast you're recording, how many frames per second, the bit rate and so forth, and I'm not gonna get too deep into this right now. But if you are shooting movies and you do want to customize it, there are lots of options in there for you to be able to do this. And so one of the options is a slow, fast option where you will shoot either mawr or less frames per second. And then it's played back at usually 30 frames a second, and that will either speed up or slow down your video. And so you can do slo mo or, ah, high speed time lapse built in right into the video functions of the camera image aspect we touched on this once again in the super control panel. The sensor on this is a four by three aspect ratio where you're normally gonna want to keep it. But if you want to adjust it, you can do so here. The camera has a digital telecom birder. In any time you see the word digital tele converter, you should usually run screaming away from it. This is where it crops the image, and it will show you the remaining crop of the image in the viewfinder. And so this is in lieu of having a larger telephoto lands. But this is nothing more than you could simply do after the fact. The only difference is is that you get to see it in the viewfinder. So it's something that most people I would think we'll never use on this camera, but if you needed it, it has it. The drive mode is the same as the drive mode, on the back of the camera and in the super control panel. Same features that we've talked about before. So one of the options in here is a time lapse movie option. And so if you go into the time lapse movie option, you can go into on and then it's gonna get you to a sub menu, which is gonna allow you to select the number of frames and how long of interval it is between the shots and some other settings about the movie. So one of the options in here is called Time Lapse Movie, and this is where you shoot individual photos, and so you'll end up with potentially hundreds of individual photos. And if you turn the time lapse movie mode on, you will also get a compressed file with a video of your time lapse. And so, if you want to shoot a time lapse and you want to see it out there in the field, what it looks like you want to turn the time lapse movie mode on. It's gonna build it in camera, so there's not any adjustments that you could make to it. But you'll still end up with all the original images. And so if you're not familiar with time lapses, time lapses are lots of individual photos that are compressed into a video format. And this one was used with a slider, which is how we're getting the side to side movement. But each of these photos is roughly 10 seconds apart, another one where the photos are about 10 seconds apart. And this is over about a 30 minute period of time. Now the slight, zooming back function that you're seeing with something that I did in postproduction afterwards because generally the cameras have way more resolution than is necessary for HD TV, but can be a lot of fun. And there's a lot of good places where it's fun to compress time into a short period of time. And so time lapse is a great little activity to do encourage you to use this camera to do it
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Jay Linsenbigler
Awesome course and thorough description of the PEN-F capabilities and functions. HOWEVER, John's "big boy camera" bias comes through when he describes some of the creative functions as "just fun". I highly disagree- because like other tools and features- it depends on HOW the photographer uses the tool or feature. Like HDR, the creative features can be used tastefully or look "overcooked". Film photographers who use a variety of different films in film cameras- is this "just fun", or do they offer creative options? I encourage John and any listeners to look up the Olympus Visionaries and many other professionals using Olympus cameras in their daily work to see the amazing results they create with them. Instead of the same old Nikon and Canon "muscle-flexing" biases- lets look at what the pros produce with the camera tools. All modern cameras are superb and capable of great results. And this PEN-F camera offers groundbreaking control over the image making IN CAMERA at the time of exposure- which can be used to adjust an accompanying RAW file if needed. Not everyone wants to sit in front of a computer for hours doing post processing.
Jay Linsenbigler
Awesome course and thorough description of the PEN-F capabilities and functions. HOWEVER, John's "big boy camera" bias comes through when he describes some of the creative functions as "just fun". I highly disagree- because like other tools and features- it depends on HOW the photographer uses the tool or feature. Like HDR, the creative features can be used tastefully or look "overcooked". Film photographers who use a variety of different films in film cameras- is this "just fun", or do they offer creative options? I encourage John and any listeners to look up the Olympus Visionaries and many other professionals using Olympus cameras in their daily work to see the amazing results they create with them. Instead of the same old Nikon and Canon "muscle-flexing" biases- lets look at what the pros produce with the camera tools. All modern cameras are superb and capable of great results. And this PEN-F camera offers groundbreaking control over the image making IN CAMERA at the time of exposure- which can be used to adjust an accompanying RAW file if needed. Not everyone wants to sit in front of a computer for hours doing post processing.
Kate Mooney
The Pen 5 is an amazing camera - however it is capable of so much that getting to know it can be somewhat overwhelming at first. John systematically and logically works through every part of the camera in really clear and easy to understand steps, quickly converting my initial apprehension into confidence and excitement for the endless possibilities of this camera.
Student Work
Related Classes
Camera Guides