Olympus OM-D E-M5, E-M1, E-M10 - Mk1, Mk2 & Mk3 Owners Thread

On a recent photo club night shoot I was using Live Composite for the first time. And other photographers were looking over my shoulder as the scene appeared like a print in a developing tray. And as cyclists and head torch people came into the shot we watched red and white light trails slowly extending across the frame. Yet the street lighting didn't burn out.
 
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Boys help me understand something being a noooby...

Taking landscapes with long shutters speeds, what's the advantage, I was looking at one of the magazines and a guy shot a landscape using a ND filter and had shutter open 64 seconds, the clouds looked good but is that what he was trying to do, or does using a long shutter Iike live composite get you more quality pleasing images....

Pros and cons?
 
I thought it was mainly for water effects. But sure, smeared clouds can also look good. But I can't see any quality benefits at all. The dynamic range will also not improve.
 
Yeah that was what I was thinking... I wonder if you shot a landscape with clouds and a beam of light shot through it would prob capture it, I,ll have to try if the sun ever shines again in the UK lol.
 
littleted said:
Boys help me understand something being a noooby...

Taking landscapes with long shutters speeds, what's the advantage, I was looking at one of the magazines and a guy shot a landscape using a ND filter and had shutter open 64 seconds, the clouds looked good but is that what he was trying to do, or does using a long shutter Iike live composite get you more quality pleasing images....

Pros and cons?
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Long shutter speeds are used mainly for effect such as getting cotton candy waterfalls, or perfectly flat water, or in the case you described movement in the clouds.

Cons are that the longer the shutter is open the more chance there is of noise in the image (especially night shots), and also more chance of blurred images if your tripod isn't perfectly stable.
 
Yeah, just to smooth water and put dramatic movement in clouds - that's pretty much it.

Live composite gives a slightly different effect as it depends on brightness changes only, that said you can still get pretty cool clouds with it.

edit: too late.
 
Thanks snerkler, I have done a few 10 stop ND which i like doing as the I've comp really makes it easyish...for the fluffy water...
 
One of the things that is difficult with very long exposures is getting the exposure right.

The live bulb function on Oly cameras completely eliminates the guesswork.
 
i used LC a few times during the week for shots across the street at a car meet. Handy as you can tell when you've F'd it up completely so you can give up and start again :LOL:
 
Can't see that this has been discussed before, and apologies if it has, but I was wondering what PP software people use with their Olympus cameras. I have Lightroom, but I am a novice and still trying to find my way round and struggling ( old dogs new tricks perhaps?)! Is there anything easier or better, or should I just persevere? Are there any recommended pre- sets people use, or would that change on a shot by shot basis. Sorry for all the questions, but I don't want to spend out on Lightroom books when I could have more success using something else.
Thank you in advance for your help
 
I use Lightroom CC for the basic stuff and Photoshop CC

The LR presets I use are;
Zero any default changes LR made (including noise reduction) when the photographs are imported (always).
"Increse contrast" (sometimes)
"Punch" (sometimes)

That's mostly it.
I do any exposure tweaks, if needed, whilst looking at the histogram.
 
wellyboot said:
I was wondering what PP software people use with their Olympus cameras.
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Digikam to manage all the pictures and quick edits, Gimp for layer based editing, Raw Therapee for Raw conversion, Hugin for panorama stitching and Luminance for HDR.
 
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Persevere with lightroom. For making basic changes to a whole selection of pictures in one click it is really simple. It just saves correcting pictures one by one. I have photoshop but very rarely use it now.
 
wellyboot said:
Can't see that this has been discussed before, and apologies if it has, but I was wondering what PP software people use with their Olympus cameras. I have Lightroom, but I am a novice and still trying to find my way round and struggling ( old dogs new tricks perhaps?)! Is there anything easier or better, or should I just persevere? Are there any recommended pre- sets people use, or would that change on a shot by shot basis. Sorry for all the questions, but I don't want to spend out on Lightroom books when I could have more success using something else.
Thank you in advance for your help
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Persevere with LR it can be quite straight forward yet very powerful. Plenty of great video tutorials on YouTube, I find Anthony Morganti (think that's how you spell it) very good and easy to follow. He has loads of videos from basic to advanced.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions and encouragement! I think on blance I will give LR another chance and use some of the turorials suggested! Hopefully by Christmas I will be more than just a novice!
 
Another +1 for staying with LR. As already said, there are a lot of good tutorials on YouTube, but be aware that while Anthony Morganti does explain things quite well I think he is a little colour blind ;)
 
Tony northrops book is good that's where I started, main thing that throws people is the import stuff... Just get your folders nice on whichever drive then import them, all it's doing is indexing them it doesn't move them, then go for it.

I normally use auto a few times or punch add a bit of clarity but not much else. ps I use for more complex stuff but it's a good addition and worthy of the Adobe cloud sub
 
I use LR CC as it much easier and quicker I am a convert from PS and hardly use PS now
 
Another LR advocate, but I do find the standard Abode rendering of the Olympus raw files a bit flat, so the first thing I usually do is go to the "Camera Calibration" section at the bottom and set the profile from Adobe to "camera natural". For me at least it gives a much better starting point.
 
Sootchucker said:
Another LR advocate, but I do find the standard Abode rendering of the Olympus raw files a bit flat, so the first thing I usually do is go to the "Camera Calibration" section at the bottom and set the profile from Adobe to "camera natural". For me at least it gives a much better starting point.
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That is a very useful tip Andrew, thank you for sharing, and also pointing out where "Camera Calibration" is loacated as being new to this, I struggle to find where anything is!
 
Sootchucker said:
Another LR advocate, but I do find the standard Abode rendering of the Olympus raw files a bit flat, so the first thing I usually do is go to the "Camera Calibration" section at the bottom and set the profile from Adobe to "camera natural". For me at least it gives a much better starting point.
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+1. Definitely use the Oly profiles, I found they can help a lot, esp Portrait for people.

Also, I find that most of my lenses benefit from a general contrast bump to really bring out the best in them, so that can be a standard import preset as well.
 
Thank you for that useful info too Will! If anyone else has any tips it would be great to share them, not just for me, but for other novices too!
 
wellyboot said:
Thank you for that useful info too Will! If anyone else has any tips it would be great to share them, not just for me, but for other novices too!
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Presets can be a good place to start. There's plenty of free one's on t'interweb such as these

http://www.on1.com/free/lightroom-presets/

You can use these to give you a particular look to an image and then tweak them to your own personal preference.
 
Something else that some of you might not know. If you shoot raw in one of the non 4:3 aspect modes (say for instance 3:2 or 16:9) on an Olympus M43 body, if you click on the crop tool in the develop module and hit "reset", you end up with the full 4:3 16mp image even if you shot it in another aspect ratio. Useful if you want a bit more field of view and were a bit tight with your in camera cropping. It seems that the whole image is saved in Raw mode irrespective of aspect ratio settings at the time.
 
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Sootchucker said:
Something else that some of you might not know. If you shoot raw in one of the non 4:3 aspect modes (say for instance 3:2 or 16:9) on an Olympus M43 body, if you click on the crop tool in the develop module and hit "reset", you end up with the full 4:3 16mp image even if you shot it in another aspect ratio. Useful if you want a bit more field of view and were a bit tight with your in camera cropping. It seems that the whole image is saved in Raw mode irrespective of aspect ratio settings at the time.
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Yep, I shoot 3:2 but do use this to my advantage from time to time :)
 
So I have a dilemma d810 for 500 quid and my setup. Brand new. Would you or wouldn't you ? In with the deal I would need to buy a 24/70 or similar not the Nikon version as my dads got that one but maybe a 24/120 or sigma Tamron unit
Did think about the a7rII but I'm pushing it

D750 is 399 more with a lens included
 
littleted said:
So I have a dilemma d810 for 500 quid and my setup. Brand new. Would you or wouldn't you ? In with the deal I would need to buy a 24/70 or similar not the Nikon version as my dads got that one but maybe a 24/120 or sigma Tamron unit
Did think about the a7rII but I'm pushing it

D750 is 399 more with a lens included
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Is this question on the right thread me aks?
 
LOL its ok i won't be doing it, spent all night with a D800E and im disappointed with the amount of blurring i get, ok so I'm no expert with a Nikon nor Olympus, but this looks like its tasking a good shot then you look and its all burred.. Camera shake stuff...and yeah its a heavy bast...
 
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