Lesson Info
9. Custom Menu: Exp/ISO & Flash
Lessons
Introduction & Basic Controls
07:14 2Top Deck: Mode Dial
18:31 3Top Deck: Other Functions
13:56 4Back Side Features
30:24 5Left Side-Right Side-Bottom-Card Reader-Front-Lenses
08:00 6Shooting & Playback Menu
21:47 7Custom Menu: AF/MF & Button/Dial
12:21 8Custom Menu: Release & Display/PC
15:13Lesson Info
Custom Menu: Exp/ISO & Flash
To the next level, the next setting in the custom modes, which is dealing with exposure and metering. The exposure value steps, when you change shutter speeds, you can have those be in full steps, half steps, or a third steps. Most cameras have them in third steps as the standard, and most people like that. The camera has some noise reduction that it can do automatically for you, so when working with long exposures, you might get a lot of noise in your photograph, high noise in there. The camera will automatically go in and fix that. This is the type of thing where some people might say, hey that's great, let the camera do all the work for me, and other more serious photographers would say, no, I wanna take care of that, I wanna do it myself, 'cause I wanna do it with my own touch and style and get it perfectly right for that particular camera. And so, this is something that some people will like the convenience of it, other people will want to take care of it themselves. This does not...
matter on raw images. This is only gonna be applied to JPEG images. The Noise Filter, is basically the same thing. This is for high ISOs, and so if you shoot at really high ISOs, ISO 1600, 3200, and beyond, the camera can either apply noise reduction to that or not for you. And once again, average photographer might like to have that on, the more serious photographer might wanna do it themselves. You can select your ISOs. We've seen a couple of different places we can select it, but we also have it in here if we wanna assign it to one of the shortcut buttons. We can assign the third steps if we want to the ISOs. Some people like this so they can be very precise about the shutter speeds and apertures that they'll end up at. I know some people that prefer to leave these in full step ISOs so it's just less dial turning as they move from 200 to 400 to 800 and so forth. I think they're both pretty good options in there. I prefer to be really exact about things, and so I like that third EV stops for the ISOs. If you wanna use the Auto-ISO you can go in and adjust as to what the maximum ISO the camera will utilize when using Auto-ISO. You can also choose the default as well. And so, something along the lines of a high limit of 6400 with a default of 200 seems like a pretty good option for a lot of people, but adjust to your needs. And then, you can decide which modes you can use Auto-ISO in. I haven't really figured out why they have this. I would assume that you would wanna use it in all modes, but if you wanted to limit where they could be used, for instance, not being able to be used in manual, that is one of those options in there. Okay, next up is our Metering modes. We've seen this in the super control panel. I recommend the Digital ESP, which is their multi-segment metering system. So, the Fn1 button is currently operating as an auto exposure lock button. One of the options you have, is that when you lock the exposure, you can have that button choose a different metering mode than what you currently have activated. For some people it would be kind of a shortcut to using a spot meter. You just wanna spot meter, just this one little thing right away, this would be a way of making a shortcut. Auto means it is gonna use the same metering pattern that you have chosen otherwise in the camera. Which is, what I would recommend. It uses your current metering system. The Bulb/Timer allows you to set shutter speeds longer than 30 seconds, so from one minute to 30 minutes. The Bulb/Time Monitor, on this one, is gonna be the brightness that it's gonna be on the back of your camera, and it's potential that, that may cause a problem with the subject that you're actually shooting. It allows you to turn the brightness of the screen down. Live Bulb is an unusual feature that you don't find on other cameras. If you shoot a long exposure bulb, what it does, is it shows you on the back of the camera as that picture is being developed. It's very much like the days where you were in a dark room, putting a piece of film, or a piece of paper in the developing bath, watching it develop and become alive you might say. And so, there's a very unique feature here for anyone who likes to do nighttime photography or light painting. You can turn this on and play around with some of the different settings in here, because it doesn't have a completely continuous option you have to choose how many times it updates information from the sensor, showing you what that photo looks like. But it is a great option for doing nighttime photography, because you can see exactly how long of exposure you need, and as soon as it's the brightness that you think is appropriate, you can turn the camera off and it captures that image at that brightness. And so, we actually have this very similarly in two options, one is a bulb option, one is a time option. What's the different between bulb and time? Bulb, you need to leave the shutter release pressed down for that period of time, however long that happens to be. Time, means that you press the shutter release down to start it, and then you will press it again to stop it. It's a little bit easier in some cases just to do the time, because you get to choose the start and the endpoint without touching the camera or any sort of cable release. You can do the same live time to see those results coming out of the camera. It requires a little bit of playing around with the settings in here, to see which works for the lighting situations that you're working with. You can use the camera for composite images in a unusual manner. This one took me a little practice to figure out exactly how this works. Let me show you an image of a normal 60 second exposure. This image does not look very good because there was a lot of cars, we have a lot of traffic here in Seattle. Those cars have overexposed a certain portion of the frame. With the live composite, the camera is taking, rather than one 60 second exposure, it's taking eight second exposures. And then, it takes another eight second exposure and if it gets an area that gets really hot, lots of brightness, for instance, where those car headlights coming at us are, then it stops taking information from there and it just looks at the dark area to continue gathering exposure information. It's a really interesting way for doing nighttime exposures without blowing out the lights in many situations. It's kind of like a multiple exposure and time-lapse kinda combined into one mode. There's some very interesting effects that you can get out this. If you like to play around and experiment with the camera, this is definitely a good mode to do it. In here, you'll be able to select how long those composite settings are in length and time. Okay, so the built in flash, you can choose different flash settings as far as what's the maximum shutter speed that the flash can be used. 250th is the fastest, so it's pretty good default system. You can choose the slowest shutter speed that you want the flash to use. Here's where you have to judge yourself how steady can you hold the camera under low light conditions. A basic photographer may be a 60th of a second, for a pretty good photographer, who's skilled at holding the camera very steady, maybe a 15th of a second. You'll have to decide what's appropriate for you. And then we have the option of doing flash exposure compensation combined with exposure compensation. This is adjusting the brightness of the standard exposure and the flash. Do we wanna do those combined, or not? The novice photographer would probably say, yep just do both of 'em at the same time. The more advanced photographer is gonna wanna have individual control over flash settings, versus exposure settings in the camera. That's why they might wanna turn this off. If you wanna keep things very simple, just leave it turned on and use the exposure compensation. It'll make everything a little bit brighter or a little bit darker.
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Ratings and Reviews
George Vergottis
Greetings I joined the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II Fast Start class under Mr. Greengo. I have been using this camera for about 7 months and thought I could handle it well. This class taught me so many aspects of the camera from the word go. Very clear concise but illuminating with well placed illustrations and photos for easy understanding by all. Mr Greengo's English was very precise and clear even though he had to speak fast to cover all of the important aspects within a set time. The advice pass over was clearly from a person who was a master of his subject. I enjoyed the class very much and have signed up for more classes on Creativelive and photography my the same instructor. Well done Sir and thank you for your good advice. I recommend this class to all who have decided to reward themselves with this little miracle camera this Christmas.
a Creativelive Student
John is one of my favorite instructors and I really enjoyed this class. Just got this camera after Christmas and I'm loving it so far and can't wait to get out and use it more. Love Creativelive and thank you for all the wonderful classes!
Ray Bohn
Using the camera for a few weeks before jumping in really helped me to understand all the instruction. Based on the course, I feel much more comfortable with deciding which functions I will use and which to forget about, at least for now. Based on my utilization of the many lessons, I feel that the content was just about right for me. The instructor used good judgement when determining how much time to spend on every element. The parts that he spent less time discussing was still enough information for a student to learn on their own (homework is good!). Going back into the lessons to review an area has been very easy. I am sure I will be accessing this course for some time. There were a few areas that didn't seem to match up with my camera, but I plan to do some investigating into software version differences and what I may have done incorrectly before I jump to whiplash causing conclusions. The "Fast Start" title bothered me at first. I have seen presentations that are called tutorials which appeared to be simply sales hype. Based on my experience, you have a winner. I hope that I can find additional courses from this group that are of interest to me. Thank you for all the work that you put into this presentation, Raymond Bohn A Greatful old film guy
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