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Top Deck: Exposure Dial

Lesson 5 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

Top Deck: Exposure Dial

Lesson 5 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

5. Top Deck: Exposure Dial

Lesson Info

Top Deck: Exposure Dial

next up is the exposure dial over on the right hand side of the camera, and this is going to allow us to over expose or under exposed our photos from what the camera thinks is a normal exposure. And so is by simply dialing in minus. You're gonna get darker photos. By going to the plus side, you're gonna get darker photos by +123 stops or the increments in between these this is gonna be most beneficial when you are using shutter priority, aperture, priority and program and so very helpful. If you want to get a slightly lighter or darker photo fact, let's let's do a little demo here in the class just cause I see we have some reasonable amount of time. And so I'm gonna put my camera in aperture Priority. Yeah, let's zoom in just a little bit here, all right? And so let's set an aperture of F eight. There's FAA. It's always good F eight b there, and so this is a normal exposure, and we can see that if I want to make it a little bit lighter, I can just turn the dial in third stop increments...

to one stop over exposed two stops overexposed, and you can hear that shutter speed getting longer and longer. In case you're wondering how it's doing this. Let's go back to zero and notice that we've set F eight and we're at 1/4 of a second. But as we go down to plus one, we're at 1/2 2nd plus two is one full second and plus three is a two full second exposure. And so if we go to the minus side, it's just going to be simply changing the shutter speeds on it. So when you were now at an eighth of a second, which is one stop under exposed, we could go down to two stops under exposed down to three stops under exposed. And so if you have a scene that you know is particularly brighter or darker, in fact, the background right here in the studios is great for this. If we look at our little focusing stand here in the background, we have some cameras over there, but we have a white background, and this camera looks a little dark and dingy here. And so if I shoot a picture at zero little dark and dingy over here. So I'm gonna set this two plus one and take photo. In fact, I'm gonna go up two plus two, just toe do a little bit of a manual bracket on this. And so let's play back these images. Yes, change or displays here so we can see what's going on. So here's our plus two are plus one and are zero. And so, with a very white background, I would probably wanna have maybe well, plus one two is a little too bright ones not quite bright enough. So maybe one and 1/3 1 and 2/3. So it depends on how bright the situation is or how dark it is. Would you want to adjust that setting away from that zero setting? But definitely one of the most important things to remember is to return that to zero when you're done playing with it, because it is a physical dial that stays exactly where you leave it in there, so very important to return that to zero. All right, we have our movie record button. We've already kind of talked about that a little bit, and if you do want to go in and control how your camera works, whether it's the program mode, the aperture priority mode, shutter priority mode. While it's shooting movies, you would jump in to custom menu, go to the movie setting and go into moving mode, and you can choose whether to shoot your movies in program or manual or some other mode. If you just want simple movies, probably said it in program. If you're a cinema buff and you like to really get your specific shutter speeds and apertures set, you can set it into manual and have very specific control over those things. Now, if you said I bought a still camera and I don't want to shoot movies with it movies or dumb, I don't ever want to shoot movies. Well, you can reassign this button. This is one of many buttons on the camera that you can reassigned to do something else and on the left hand side of your screen here, you can see all the different ways that you can customized this button, and I'm not gonna go through all these right now. We're gonna talk about most of the mess we go through the class, but these air this is gonna be a way just to re program this button to do something that you find valuable. And so it all depends on how you like to use your camera. All right, on the back of the camera, we have a function one button, and this is definitely one of those buttons that you can dive in and re program to do anything you want. And so you'll do that by diving into the custom menu button and IOL and then the button function and you'll see that button listed you'll be able to dive in and make it change to any one of these other functions. For right now it is an auto exposure lock button. And so let's do a quick little demo on how auto exposure lock works on this camera. Actually, we're gonna go back on the keynote and do auto exposure. Lock on this. Okay, so let's put our camera in aperture priority again. Yeah, let's get our subject in front of us. All right, so we're gonna stick to F eight and what have we got for our shutter speed? It's 1/4 of a second. Well, if we were to Let's go a little bit wider. Let's change our framing. You can see how are shutter speeds right here are changing from 1/5 of a second Teoh 13th of a second and changing around. And so if we figured that we we liked this exposure, But when we changed it up here, we wanted a different composition. But we didn't want our shutter speeds to change by pressing the F one button up here. We're going to get an auto exposure lock over here, and that is gonna lock the exposure in. And so it's a press on and press off, and you can very clearly see if I like this exposure and lock it in. I can move it anywhere and it stays locked in. And if I decided, I let's turn it off. You can see the exposure change and so very handy when you are shooting in a situation that has tricky lighting, a couple scenarios that might work out for using auto exposure. Lock is where somebody is standing next to a very bright window. When you focus on them, it's kind of dark on the inside, and then you bring them back into where you want compositionally It includes a large, bright window that's going to throw off your exposure so you would lock your exposure and then move the frame over. Another good example is shooting a sunset, and if you point the camera straight at the sun, the aperture is gonna close down. You're gonna get really fast shutter speeds, and it's going to generally get really dark because the sun is so bright trying to compensate for it oftentimes, what it's better to do to get better color and better lighting this point your camera a little away from the sun, locked down the exposure and then bring the son back in the in the frame. Now there are multiple ways of doing this. You could not use the exposure lock and simply used the exposure compensation, or you could use manual exposure. And so there's multiple ways of achieving the same result some people myself included. I pretty much never use auto exposure lock. And so this is a button that I would probably re program to do something that I found more useful. So it all depends on how you work. One of the great things about this camera is that it is so customizable

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

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