I have been using the camera for the past couple days and wanted to share a few thoughts on firmware version 2.
The battery update was worth it alone. Finally! The battery starts flashing red at 10% left. It stops counting at that point. So if you see your battery flashing…it is just simply time to put a new one in there. Until then, you are good to go. I am so glad they did this. So much better than 30%.
Second nice feature are the small focus points. If you don’t know… When you go to select your focus point, you can turn the front dial to select different kinds. Now there are single points that are “small” points as opposed to the standard size points. This is like the original E-M1 now. These are only selectable as single points, no groups. It lets you be a little finer with where you place the focus point on your subject. I prefer them personally.
Flicker scan is interesting too. If you use electronic shutter, go to menu E2 to find the Flicker Scan option. You cannot use Auto ISO for this. So if the option is greyed out, check your ISO speed. It needs to be manually selected. Once you turn Flicker Scan on, you can press the info button to get in and out of it when shooting. You can basically fine tune your shutter speed to some pretty exact numbers in order to see what shutter speed eliminates it. At that point you can adjust your ISO and F-stop to get the exposure you need. I imagine it will help in some scenarios for sure. I need to play with this more to judge how effective it is when selecting these fine-tuned speeds.
I cannot try fisheye compensation since I don’t have the fisheye on hand right now. That is a JPG only feature, just like keystone compensation. Still handy to judge composition if you intend to de-fisheye later. See my post on defishing! You will get a raw file that is untouched, and a defished JPG however.
The other neat feature is under custom menu D2. Playback magnify Default setting. If you set this to “equally value” and playback an image, zoom in with the rear dial and it will automatically go to 5x which is equivalent to 1:1 on the computer. (it indicates this now too) You can also opt to select other default magnifications. I always wondered what was too much zoom on the rear.
Bleach Bypass art filters are now at the end of the art filter list. There are two of them. I will play around with these and hopefully add them to the art filters set. Be looking out for an update there in a while hopefully.
In terms of stability of operation, color improvements, c-af and stabilizer improvements…I have nothing yet to report. I probably won’t be doing critical testing. The camera worked great for me before, so anything better now is just bonus to be perfectly honest. I will comment as I discover things.
The only thing I REALLY wish Olympus would add that they still have not added is a delay setting for HDR shooting. Still no pre-shot delay for HDR! I don’t get it! Olympus! What is up with this!
Things with this firmware seem solid. I would feel safe in updating if you haven’t yet. There have been some reports of viewfinder blackout and locking. Have you experienced any of this? I haven’t yet. If you have, what conditions were you shooting under? I’de love to see if I can recreate this on my camera as well.
Hear hear!
I was out shooting blue hour HDR. What! Yep.
I was really missing the 2 sek delay.
What about the new FW 2.1 for om-1 Mark II
Yes for HDR delay.
Also how about a full histogram that updates as you scroll in? Nikon does it. Invaluable. Means you can scroll into someone’s face to see if any of the channels (usually red) is blown out.
Within HDR there are also a lot other missing functions:
– no electronic shutter with HDR bracketing
– no High Res with HDR bracketing
– no visual counter during long time exposure in bracketing
all these features could be done with firmware only…
My dream of a perfect HDR camera:
The pictures from the HDR bracketing sequence are combined to an HDR picture in the camera and saved as .exr to the memory card.
Also just firmware…