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Top Deck: Other Functions

Now one of the things to note is that this camera is highly customizable. And you saw me changing shutter speeds and apertures with the front and back dial and if you said you know, I really don't like the dial that you have to use, you can flip these dials and you can change what they do. And so there's gonna be a lot of customization in the button, dial, lever settings of the custom menu where you can choose what these dials do. And so be aware that anything that kinda bothers you in the way the camera operates, there's a good chance that we're gonna be able to change it. And so, stay tuned for the menu section as we go through that. So that's the Mode Dial on the top of the camera. Next up, let's talk about this Function 1 button, which is kind of on the back, kind of on the front. It's the back corner of the camera. This is a button that you're gonna get to program to do almost anything you want. Right now, it is programmed to do auto exposure lock. So let's take a look at what it ...

does on the camera. I'm gonna move my camera back to the aperture priority mode and you'll notice that I have an aperture of F8 and a 50th of a second right now. But if I move the camera around, those shutter speeds change according to how much light they see. But if I said, you know I really wanna lock in this number here, which is at a 60th of a second, I can press in this Function 1 button and you can see this AEL over on the bottom left of the camera has turned on and it is locked in that shutter speed so now when I move the camera around, that shutter speed, aperture combination has been locked in. So this is something that would work in shutter priority. Let me go ahead and put this in program and let's say if I wanted to adjust using that program shift to find a little different combination, I could lock in that exposure and it is simply locked in with one press of a button. And then when I take a picture, it is still locked in and if I wanna get it out, I'm gonna have to press that button again. And so if you are using any of the automated modes which means program, aperture priority, or shutter priority, that's a way to lock things in on a temporary basis. Now, it would reset if you did turn the camera off. So, that's what the button is currently programmed to do, but if you want to program it to do something else, here is the list of different functions that you could program it to do. So if you don't use auto exposure lock, for whatever reason, you can program it to do any one of these other things. And let's see if there's anything on there that I would pick out. Focusing Home potentially. That would be a good one for getting the focus back to a particular place that you wanted to have it. Magnify, for people who like to do manual focusing. Or, white balance/ISO might be shortcut if you're constantly changing the ISO or the white balance on the camera. So, lots of good options. Lots of good way to customize the camera. And if you wanna get into that, you're gonna need to go into the Custom Menu and look for the Button Function in the B grouping of custom settings. Alright, next up is the Function 2 button which is currently programmed to be something called the Multi Function button. So this is one of those things that you can program to do anything else you want, but it is a little bit awkward in its function, so I wanna show you how this particular dial works on the camera. So there are two things that you can do with this button. One is you can tap it. The other is you can press and hold on it. So if I just simply tap on it right now, it brings up something called Highlight Shadow. And by turning the front dial, I can either increase or decrease the brightness of the highlights. And the same thing with the shadows. I can increase the brightness in the shadows or I can make them even darker in there. And so if you wanna tweak with the color or the contrast of your camera, you can do that. But there are some other functions that are secretly built into this button. If you hold down on the button and turn the back dial, we'll go from Highlight, Shadow Control to Color Creator to ISO/White Balance to Magnify to Image Aspect. So right here on Image Aspect, it's now programmed for Image Aspect and so I hit it once and now I control the image aspect ratio. And so what it is, is it's really a lot of functions and you get to choose which one is most important right now. So I'll press and I'll hold, and I'm gonna bring it down to ISO/White Balance, which I think is probably the best option for this because now when I press this button, I have the White Balance and I have the Auto which I can change by turning the back dial or the front dial. And these are settings that people often change quite frequently on the camera. And so by simply tapping that button, I have very quick control over two of the most popular controls that you're gonna have on the camera. And so that would be my temporary recommendation. But, if you wanna reprogram this button to do something completely different, you'll have that option as well. And so just be aware on that button, there is the kind of tapping it lightly to activate it or you're gonna hold it while turning that back dial on the camera to adjust and change the settings of what it's controlling. And that's what they mean by a multi function button. There are several functions that it's actually doing. And if you want to change this, you can go into the Multi Function Settings, which is deep within the Custom Menu options. Alright, what's after Function 1 and Function 2? Yep! Function number three. So you have another one, over on the left hand side of the camera. And this will bring up a number of options that you can also put in the camera as well. And so right now, it is the live guide which we took a look at earlier which allows us to change the brightness, the contrast of the image. And this is one of those buttons that I would highly recommend changing off to something that is more important 'cause I don't know that most of us are gonna go in and change these settings on the camera 'cause this is a specific look. If you shoot raw images, this is not doing you any good. It's not affecting the raw images and so this is a good button to program for something else. But it's there as it is right now. So that is the Function 3 button. And there are more function buttons to come along the way. So if you wanna get in and change that one, that, like the other buttons, is gonna be changed in the Button Function Settings within the menu. And, as I said, we'll be going through that and getting all those programmed in in the second half of this class in the menu section. Alright, we have our Movie Record button, and if you want, you can have that be a function button as well. If you never shoot movies, you can program that to do something that you find more useful. But, as it is right now, it will start shooting movies. If the camera is not in the movie mode, those will be programmed, completely automated movies. We have a built in flash with a lever. So if you go from off to on and a little bit further, that'll pop the flash up. We also have the addition of add-on flashes on this camera. So let's talk for a moment about some of the flash options on the camera. So, first off, the thing to note is that flash on these cameras is not good for very far distance. Things that are really close in front of you, ten feet, about three meters in front of you is what's likely to get illuminated. It's not illuminate those mountains in the background. There's a number of flash units available from Olympus. I can't say that I would highly recommend some of the smaller ones 'cause they're just not much more powerful than what you get with the built in camera. Their FL-600 is their top of the line flash. It's a little bit big and unwieldy on this camera, but if you did need a more powerful flash, that's probably the one that I would recommend. And that's gonna give you a number of features including wireless triggering, so that you can fire this flash from having the flash off the camera as well as giving you quite a bit more power and a much quicker recycling time so if you're doing lots of flash, that would be the preferred one to have. So those are your flash options. We do have stereo microphones up on top for getting good sound on the movies and then there is a little focal plane indicator over on the right hand side. So if you ever needed to measure the distance from your subject to the image sensor, the focal plane is an indication of where the sensor is within the camera. Moving our way to the back side of the camera. We have our EVF, very high resolution view finder in there. Great for composing your images. This is how I would use the camera most of the time, held up to the eye, because that's where you're gonna get the sharpest focus and best view of your subject, especially under bright light conditions. There is a diopter over on the side of the camera, more on the left side of the camera, and this adjusts the focusing of the view finder for your eyes. Has nothing to do with the final focus of the picture, but it's just the quality of view that you get looking through the view finder. And so if you wear glasses or you need to adjust your eyes to get the sharpest view, you'll want to just turn this dial in there. Be aware that it does get bumped from time to time and so if you look through the view finder and it doesn't look very sharp, just reach over there and adjust the diopter so it's good for your eyes. Camera does have a removable eye cup that is fairly soft rubber. Works pretty well against glasses. If it does wear out, you can replace it; and it is the EP16 if you need to order that part. Back of the camera has the big LCD monitor with about a million pixels on it, and you can also use that for viewing and controlling a lot of the features of the camera. There is an EVF/LCD button on the side of the camera. And so if you press that, it will switch back and forth between the EVF and the LCD. So it depends on how you want to view your images on the camera. There is an eye sensor that will automatically go back and forth between the LCD in the back and the EVF for your eyes. And so as you hold it up to your eye, it will automatically switch over to the EVF to look at, which is really handy under many conditions. But if you manually want to change it back and forth, you don't want it to go back automatically, because sometimes, as your hand passes behind the camera, it'll automatically switch to the EVF 'cause it thinks you're holding the camera up to your eye. If you wanna turn that off, you can do that in the Custom Menu system, and so that it is a manual switch back and forth rather than an auto switch in there. Now, as you look through the EVF, there are some options on the style in which the information is presented to you. There is three different styles in here and there's a couple; I don't like Style 1 'cause I don't like any extra colors in there 'cause that could throw off your color perception perhaps. And so I like Style 2 and Style 3. Style 3 I like 'cause it's the biggest image possible but I prefer Style 2 in the end run because I really don't like text overlays on top of my composition. It's just something that'll distracts you a little bit from what's in the corners and a lot of times you end up with little things that you have in the corners that you didn't see 'cause there was all sorts of numbers and text information. So, my preference is Style 2 but you get to choose 'cause it's your camera, whatever you want. And to make this choice, you will be doing this in the menu system And so, once again, we'll be passing by this in the full menu system. But if you wanna jump ahead and adjust it now, you'll be doing that in letter J, Built-In EVF Style. As you look through the viewfinder itself, you can adjust how much information you see by pressing the information button. And so there's gonna be some basic options that you can go in and customize. You can choose to see the histogram. You can choose to see this in either Custom 1, Custom 2, or in the Basic Info; and so you're gonna be able to select very carefully which features you want to see in which view settings. And so, histogram is gonna be one of the options. Another one is Highlight and Shadows. And this is where it will blink areas of extreme brightness and extreme darkness to show you that there is a potential exposure problem with the image. And then there is a level gauge which will show you if you are tipping the camera left, right, forward or backwards. And so if you wanna make sure that your horizons are leveled, this is another tool that will help you out. And so this is something that you'll, once again, be able to program once we get into the full menu system. In the view finder itself, there is lots of information about the status of various features of the camera; how good your battery is, if the flash is charged up and ready to go. There will be a little green dot for auto focus confirmation. Tells you what mode you have the camera set in. Whether you have the camera using the exposure lock, which we were looking at a little bit earlier. Will have our shutter speeds and apertures in the appropriate colors: yellow if there is something that we can change. You'll see the exposure compensation in a number form and a graphic form next to it which will show us the light meter as well as the flash light meter on the top side of that dial, or that indicator. If we have played around with the highlight and shadow options; we saw that before in the Multi Function button on the top of the camera, you'll see how it's been tweaked. You'll see where your white balance is set and your ISO is set. And then finally, on the far right hand side, you'll see how many individual images you have remaining, at least as an estimate, and how much time is left if you were to shoot video continuously. So all of that will be visible in the EVF.