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Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

Lesson 10 of 31

Back Side: Shutters

Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

Lesson 10 of 31

Back Side: Shutters

Lesson Info

Back Side: Shutters

all right. Next up is our drive button, and I deal with a lot of different cameras and Aiken savory easily that this camera has more drive modes than any camera I have ever seen before. There's a lot of different modes in here, so let's go through what some of these symbols mean. First off, single shootings. Pretty obvious. You shoot one photo at a time. Sequential shooting for action or sports photography is very good. We have self timers. We have different lengths of timers that you can get into. And then we get into kind of the unique stuff for at least the way that Olympus does it a little bit different. The Diamond is an anti shock mode, which in reality means it's an Elektronik first shutter curtain. And then we have a heart, which is thes silent mode, which is an Elektronik first and second curtain, and so that these air kind of unique modes, as well as a high rez mode, which shoots multiple photos. And so let's talk a little bit more about what some of these modes do. First up ...

is the electronic shutter. I've explained how the normal mechanical shutter system works on this camera, but we do also have an electronic shutter system as well. So here's your normal shutter operation. We have sugar number one shooter number two. You take a photo shutter number one closes and then opens. And as it opens, there's a little bit of vibration in the camera because it opens so quickly as these motors air moving back and forth these blades in and out of the way. And there's a little bit of vibration that might cause a little bit of blurriness when you shoot a photo, especially from a tripod at particular shutter speeds and then the second shutter will come in and close it off. And so this is not good for certain types of macro and telephoto. When, uh, my that's not my microscope photography, but telescope photography as well. And so in the anti shock mode, what it's going to do is it's not going to move the shutter. The first shutter curtain. What it does, is it Elektronik. Lee turns the sensors, the pixels on row by row very quickly. That's the start of the exposure, and then the end of the exposure is finished off with the shutter unit. So it is part Elektronik, part mechanical in the way it works on. The whole idea is to not use that first shutter curtain, so you don't get that vibration during the exposure, and so you'll get sharper photos, especially when being used at slower shutter speeds from a tripod. The next mode is thesis islet mode, and this is where we're not using the mechanical shutters at all. It is only the sensors that are basically turning on and off, scanning on and scanning off. Now there is some restrictions when you do this, but it does allow us shutter speeds up to 1 16,000 of a second. Now there is a little bit of a problem, and it's called the Rolling Shutter or the Jello Effect. And I was using a test chart and and I was moving the camera back and forth using the mechanical shutter release using the electronic first curtain, and it was all very normal, and I'm panning back and forth with kind of a slow shutter speed. But when I go to the silent shutter, you'll notice the rolling effect here is that the lines start tilting to the left hand side. And even though I might use a faster shutter speed, it's sharper. But we still have this rolling AFLAC effect now in the real world What this looks like. If you were Japan, as a car drove down the street, the buildings behind it are going to take a very angled look to it. And if you have a cyclist that writes besides you, you'll notice that those wheels are no longer round. They're kind of oval in shape. And so this silent shutter, this Elektronik first and second curtain shutter doesn't work very well with subjects that are moving now. The high rez shot mode is one of the most interesting modes on this particular camera, So this camera uses a bear system sensor, which has a red green green blue layout of the pixels on the sensor. It's a megapixel sensor, and the camera has this unusual, high rez, multi shot mode where it shoots eight photos, and it does so in the following manner. It takes the 1st 1 It moves it. One picks the sensor one pixel over captures information from the other colored pencil pixels, and then it moves in between the pixels to pick up additional detail information. So the 1st 4 shots air to get the best color information. The second set of four shots is used to get more detailed information because it took eight shots. It's collecting, Ah, 116 60 million pixels worth of data, and it then reduces it down into a file that is a 50 megapixel JPEG file, 8000 lines across. And so if you wanted a 50 megapixel camera, you can do so right here. But that's not all, folks. You get more. You can actually get an 80 megapixel raw out of this camera, and that's over 10,000 lines of information directly in the camera. Now the big caveat is that the camera has to shoot eight photos, which means you gotta have the camera perfectly still, and you can't shoot anything that's moving. So even grasses or trees or things blowing in the wind landscape photography. You have to be very, very careful about now. You'll notice at the bottom the scream. I have a little ass tracked down there, not visible in camera. I was out shooting some test shots with this camera, and I wanted to shoot a high res shot, and I was trying to figure out why I wasn't getting my 80 megapixel raw. When you shoot this in the camera, it's not going to say that you've gotten in 80 megapixel camera. You do get it, but it's on Lee. When you download the images, do you actually get to look at it? And so you'll be able to look at the 50 megapixel camera. So I wanted to see how good a job this does, because this sounds very, very promising as what it could do. So let's go to the test results. And I wanted to go first in the studio just to check out how good it did at resolving highlight shadow and detailed information. And so I wanted to shoot it first with just a large J peg option and then shoot it with the raw option and then the high rez J peg and high rez raw, which is the 50 megapixel and the 80 megapixel. And just in case you don't have a good view of your screens right now, the high rez J Peg 50 megapixel does look sharper than the other two, as does the high rez raw, but it's not that much sharper, so it's a little bit better, but the file size on that 80 megapixel raw look at the file size at the bottom. We go from 10 to 18 to 22 2 all the way up to 131 and so that is a huge file that is going to slow your computer down. It does give you a little bit more data, but it is extremely large. So I wanted to take it out in the field to give it a test out. And so let's take a look at the sharpness that we're gonna get. So once again, cameras on a tripod and I'm shooting subjects that are not moving. And so we're gonna have similar file sizes here and in this case. And I can't really explain why the high rez J. Peg came out a little bit better than the high rez raw. And so this is something that you might reserve for an occasional use when you do need a little bit extra detail. But it's not very practical for most day to day type photography. It does work. It does to be does seem to be a little intensive on the amount of space that it's gonna take up in your camera. I think most of the time shooting raw is gonna be the best choice for getting your standard good photographs. But for a still life type photograph, it is a way of getting and pulling more information out of that subject with the camera. So it's It's a neat feature to have. I'm glad that it has it in there. And so a lot of different modes in there. And normally I'm just gonna be leaving it on the single shot mode. And I will occasionally, Sometimes when you really want that silent cheddar, you can get it very, very quiet. In fact, let me dio a little example here for you, and this is more of an audio example than anything else. So what I'm gonna do is I'm not I don't really care about we're taking a picture up, but I'm gonna put the camera into the single shot mode right now. And so this is what the shutter sounds like when I get my microphone close. All right. And so what I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna put it into the anti shock mode, and I don't think you're gonna hear much difference here, but just toe just so that you can hear. All right, so there it's on Lee using the second shutter curtain, and it is a little bit different in its sound. So let's go to the silent mode here, and I don't think you're gonna be able to hear anything. But let me just let you Ah, let's take some photos and I'm gonna turn the camera around so that you can actually see in the lands, and you might be able to see the aperture closing. But it makes no sound. Actually, make sure I can focus here, and I'm gonna get the aperture closing down really small so that we can actually see it. Hopefully, we can see it in the camera here, and so it is incredibly quiet. I think I just went into a very long exposure. I'm gonna try this again, but I am going to bump up the I S O so that we can shoot a reasonable time. And so we're at F 13 at 1/ of a second, and so it merely barely makes the least amount of noise, and the only noise that you hear is the actual aperture closing on it. So if you were gonna be in a courtroom or a theater or something where you needed to be absolutely as quiet as possible, that'd be a good time for using the silent mode. But you have to be very careful about any sort of movement. People walking or panning the camera around. You're going to get that jello effect, and it's not gonna look quite right. So good for static subjects were you need things very, very quiet. All right, so there is one other mode that I haven't talked about down here, and there is a silent high speed mode. And what this does is this fires at frames per second at 20 megapixels. No, you can't use the self timer flash, and you have to have shutter speeds that are 31 30th of a second and up from there. And so that's kind of a special note, and you'll notice the heart bite. So it's using the electronic shutter, and you know why There's gonna be very few modes where you need this. I'm trying to think of a good thing where you're gonna be shooting pictures of something 20 frames per second. So I'm thinking about things that are moving very quickly, but they're not gonna look very good with a silent shutter because of that ruling Cheddar effect. And so I guess you're gonna have to play around and find a good mode for that because I don't have a good one off the top my head. But that's that is the sequential shooting modes of the camera.

Class Description

We know what it’s like to dive right into taking pictures with your new camera. But dense technical manuals make for a terrible first date. Get the most out of your new Olympus PEN-F with this complete step-by-step walkthrough of the camera’s features.

Join expert photographer John Greengo for a fast-track introduction, and unlock your camera’s full potential. In this class you'll learn:

How to use the electronic viewfinder
How to take advantage of the customizable interface
How to use the video options

John is a CreativeLive veteran instructor and an experienced photographer. He has extensive experience teaching the technical minutiae that makes any camera an effective tool: aperture, ISO, the Rule of Thirds, and the kinds of lenses you’ll need to suit your camera body. This Fast Start includes a complete breakdown of your camera’s exposure, focus, metering, video and more. John will also explain how to customize the PEN-F’s settings to work for your style of photography.

Lessons

FOR ON-DEMAND ACCESS

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

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.