Skip to main content

Display Menu

Lesson 23 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

Display Menu

Lesson 23 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

23. Display Menu

Next Lesson: Exposure & ISO Menu

Lesson Info

Display Menu

okay onto Group D, things dealing with the display of the camera. First up, if you were gonna hook your camera to a TV of using the H. D. M. I plug in on it, you can control the resolution, depending on the resolution of your TV and the control of it. If you turn this on, you can use your TV's remote to go forward and back through the photos on your camera. It's probably fine if you leave it on, but most people don't usually use that feature of their camera very much. And so it's not gonna matter much. Either way, NTSC and pal are the different regions around the world that you might be using. Your camera depends on which country you live in as to where you're gonna wanna have this set. Here in North America, United States, they used the NTSC system, so the control settings in here allow you to go in and adjust the various features. A lot of these we've already kind of talked about before, but do you wanna have these options available for you when you are in either the program aperture...

, priority, shutter priority or manual modes? The art modes, the scene modes, the item of Do you want to be able to see and have access to these particular controls? In most cases, I say yes to all of these turnem Alon. I'm not necessarily looking at all of them. They're not always there. But I can turn him on by pressing the info button or the appropriate button to turn that particular feature on. But if you find that you never use one of these things or they're getting in your way or you just don't like looking at it as you're trying to find the items that you do use on a regular basis, you can go in here and you can uncheck these boxes and they won't show up for you then. So the info setting when you press the info button. This is where you get to really customize what information is displayed at you when you play back images. When you look at images in the live you, what sort of things are useful for you? So we've looked at things like the hissed a gram, the highlights and shadows and the light box, and if you find that you really don't use one of those once again just go in and unchecked those boxes. And so we have three different groupings. We have images that are being played back. We have live view, which is basically the back of the camera, and then we have the thumbnail settings. When we get back to the group of thumbnails, when you get the very small images to look a a group of them. So that's the playback grid options displayed grid and so on your camera. Do you want to see a grid pattern? And so, generally I like to leave. This turned off, but sometimes when I'm doing architectural photography or macro photography, or I want to align something up directly in the middle of the frame, I might want to choose one of these grids so that I have something to kind of base it against and so normally turned off. But there is the rule of thirds, which can help with composition. There is a 16 by nine, which can show you the HD aspect ratio and so types of things that you want to know that you can turn on and that you can jump in and do so as necessary. But normally I'd like to try to leave as clean a viewfinder as possible, which makes composition better. All right, picture mode settings. There are tones of different picture modes, settings and these air. Ah, lot of the different filters. And we saw this before with some of the other different modes in the camera. And this is just yet another way that we can get in there in select and control which ones that we see when we go to those other functions in the camera. If you want to tweak the way that the hissed a gram actually looks to you, you can change where the white point in the Black Point are. This doesn't change it on the actual photograph, but it changes that on the hissed a gram, which may be the way that you read that particular photograph. Don't recommend any change on that one. All right, so the mod guide is when you turn the mode dial on the camera, it brings up a little bit of information about the mode that you happen to be turned into a and when you first get the camera. This is kind of nice, helpful information. But once you get used to the camera, you don't want to look at this. You get tired of it, and it's not really helping you out at all. And so you're probably gonna want to turn it off eventually. If you want to leave it on at the beginning, it might help. You can also help you if you have the camera mounted up in a high position on a tripod, for instance, but probably gonna want to turn it off long term because it's you're gonna know where you're gonna have the camera set at. Okay, live view boosting. And so when you have your camera in manual exposure, for instance, do you want to look at the image or do you want to look at the light meter to determine the proper exposure? Well, I like the light meter and all, but I really like to use the image to get a preview of what my final image is going to be are going to be like and so you can control this in various settings, from manual shooting to Balto Life Composite and so forth. And so if you turn this off now, this is on the LCD on the back of the camera on Lee, it's going to simulate the brightness of the photo. So if it looks dark on the back of the screen, then you need to adjust your exposure. Now there is the option of on one and on to which will give you an optimal viewing. But it doesn't show you what the final photo is gonna look like. And so that would be of good use. If you are say in a studio, the camera is hooked up to strobe units that will fire when you take the picture. You want to see the best quality image on the back of the camera, and the exposure will kind of take care of itself. And so for most people, I would leave this turned off. In that way, it mimics the final image that you get to see. I think that's one of the great benefits of a muralist camera. The frame rate frame rate can be adjusted in the E V, f and the LCD, so that you get a better image. And so how quickly that frame is refreshed is gonna help out on moving subjects. And so I recommend using the high setting, it's going to give you a little bit sharper image to look at in the viewfinder. The art live view mode is essentially asking the question When you are using the art filters, Do you want to see the effect of the art filters, or do you want to see the best possible image? And if you have the art filter turned on, you probably kind of want to see what it's gonna look like. And so, in this case, I would normally recommend leaving it on mod one, unless it was really distracting you from trying to get your image. And so Mode one will show you what that final image is going to look like. Motew just gives you the best possible image. Flicker reduction can be left in auto. This is in case you're working under fluorescent lights. The flicker in the viewfinder on the back of the camera will automatically be adjusted so that you don't get flicker in those areas live, you close up mode, and so in this one, when you are focusing and you zoom in the half press on, the shutter release will cancel the zoom and when you're focusing, sometimes you don't want that. You want to be able to press halfway down and continue focusing. And so I recommend mode to in this case, and so you can zoom in. You can auto focus. You can take the photo with the camera zoom Dan. It's just a matter of how the camera works when you are zoomed in for focusing for critical focusing, whether it automatically zooms back or not. Next up is our depth of field lock button, and this allows us to do a depth field check. And so let's just do a little video here. And so when you press down on that button in the front, it closes down the APP eternal. Lets lets you see the amount of depth of field that you're going to get in that particular scenario and so tell you what I think we're doing okay on time. Let's do a little demo right here. And so let's go ahead and set the camera up so that we have something in the foreground and something in the background. And so I'm gonna change my focusing point to the near side right here. But I'm gonna make sure I'm an aperture priority, and I want to shoot with a lot of depth of field. So I'm gonna change this down to the most depth of field. I could get to F 22 so by pressing on the front of the button, you can't see it. But you can see my fingers reaching around to the front of button. When I press the depth of field preview button, you can see that it stops the aperture down so that I can see what's happening in the background and tell you what. Let's try pointing the camera directly at you, and let's see if you can see if this helps or not. It's pretty hard to see the aperture being stopped down. Let me zoom out to a different city now. You can kind of see it in there. Let's see if I can get this angle just right. Maybe it helps in a different angle, so you can kind of see it in there. But that's the aperture. And so I'm just pressing down, stopping down the aperture when we change it. Teoh, a slightly different aperture. This is somewhere in between. Think F 11 now It's a little hard to see looking in the lands, but that allows you to stop the aperture down to see exactly the amount of depth of field that you're gonna get from the final image. And one of the beauties of the muralist camera versus the SLR is it automatically brightens the image. So it's easy to see and so depth of field lock. And so the difference here is that that's what the depth of field button does. If you want to turn this on by pressing the button, it locks it in so that you don't have to leave your finger on it. Most people usually just press it for a few seconds to see what it looks like. But if you wanted to be able to have it locked on, you could turn this on, continuing our way, peaking, setting. So we looked at the Peking option earlier, and here's where we get to customize it. We can choose different colors. We can choose highlight intensities. How intense is this? Because if it's really intense, it gets to be very distracting as far as the general framing of your subject, and we can also adjust the image brightness as well. And so if you do like to do manual focusing and you like to use peaking, you can adjust these to your liking so that you can see that peaking a little bit better. All right, so backlit LCDs. So the LCD on the back of the camera. How long do you want it to stay on before it goes to sleep? And this is just a balance between convenience and battery life, and it's normally set the 30 seconds, which is pretty good, but you could shorten or lengthen it as need be. This camera has a couple of different sleep modes, you might say after a little bit of time. In this case, one minute it will go to sleep, which means that a light press of the shutter release will wake the camera up. There is also a deeper sleep that will take about five minutes to get to where the camera will actually need to be turned off and then turned back on for it to work properly. And so that is the auto power off. And so the sleep awakens by light press of the shutter. Release the auto power off you actually have to turn the camera off and then back on to get it working again. The beep will automatically sound when you have properly focused. You hear that little beep beep. I think we may have it set up right now, or I may have already turned it off. Uh, there it is. That's right. I'd move the focusing point. And so it's kind of helpful when you're first learning how to auto focus. But once you get used to it, it's kind of annoying to everybody else around you when your camera is constantly beeping. And so this is something I'd recommend turning off. If you want confirmation that your camera has focused, remember in the viewfinder that green dot in the bottom left. Look down there and you'll see that it turns on when you've properly focused. So if you are gonna hook this camera up to your computer or other device through the USB system, you may need to adjust the way that the connection is communicating with the device that it's with. Whether it's a printer or computer. Whether you're downloading firmware, for instance, for the camera or uploading images to your computer, you may need to adjust this. You're probably OK at auto, but be aware if it's not being recognized by your computer, you might want to go in and change this mode. All right, multi function settings. So this is kind of an unusual feature of the camera, where one button can be programmed to handle a multitude of functions and so that we could program function one on the back of the camera, and it would then become kind of a four for one button where we could have it adjust. I s a white balance magnify image aspect and an optical viewfinder simulated optical viewfinder, which will talk more about in the next section. And so these. They're just kind of shortcuts, and it's just a different way of having one button. Do multiple controls, and so you'll use different controls as far as pressing the button or pressing the button and turning the dials to change between them. And this just allows you to choose which one of those modes are going to be available. When you have that button set up now, right now, it's the camera is from the factory, and it's natural default state. There is no button that is set up with this particular system on it. And so it's not gonna make much change right now until you program a button as a multi function button. Men, you recall this will return the menu to where you last were when you were in the menu system. So if you go into the menu, you make some changes, and then you press the menu to exit out of it where you press the shutter release to exit out of it. You do some other stuff on the camera, and then you go back to the menu system. Do you want it to go back to the very top of the menu or where you last were? And so most people want to go back to where they last were to continue working in that area. And so if you set this on recall, it goes back, remembers where you were, puts a little page marker in there, and so that you can come back to that exact same setting, and so recall will make that a little bit easier to work with.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Olympus PEN-F Recommended Settings
Olympus PEN-F Keynote

Ratings and 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
 

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.

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.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES