Ready made setting for OM-D EM-5 Mark II

[Antonio Correia]

When a couple of days ago, I updated my Olympus OM-D EM-5 II software (and lenses) it did not came to my mind that one can/could share other people's settings working with the same cameras.

How about that ? Would you like to share one, two ?...
I can tell you that mine - just one for the moment - is very, very basic...
Perhaps there are lots of them on web waiting for us. I do have Googled but so far...

A this morning photo to make the thread more attractive

r

[Manfred M]

In my view, sharing settings is not something that really makes a lot of sense.

Unless the shooting conditions are virtually identical, the settings should not be. So how does sharing them add any value?

[Antonio Correia]

Perhaps you are right Manfred.
There are basic customization like shooting RAW, no sound on click, focus peaking yellow, and so forth, that could be used as a starting point for customization.
Of course, in a deeper customization other setting could be applied.
The advantage of this, could be changing informations about how experimenting and testing new customizations.
Example: I saw that there is a bunch of setting to shoot fireworks. An implemented setting could be of some use.
Well... may be it is not a good idea.
And you know Manfred... I hate - like many - to read and study the f** manual !

[shreds]

I disagree in that there is much to be learned, puzzling out why certain settings may have been utilised.

I agree that each case is different and you have to make your own decisions in each case, but getting to understand why an experienced photographer may have set it up in a certain way is a good learning point especially if a discussion follows.

What I dislike is those publications that show a view and give the grid points and directions to get there to take an identical shot. That creates hundreds of identical shots that are effectively not original works, but clone copies of the original by a variety of unthinking individuals. These then bring moronic comments such as 'nice shot'.

Be different and original and think it through for yourself, that should be where everyone should be striving to progress to.

[xpatUSA]

What I dislike is those publications that show a view and give the grid points and directions to get there to take an identical shot. That creates hundreds of identical shots that are effectively not original works, but clone copies of the original by a variety of unthinking individuals. These then bring moronic comments such as 'nice shot'.

No need to sugar-coat it, Ian, just tell it like it is ...

[Antonio Correia]

OK guys... OK !

[Manfred M]

Perhaps you are right Manfred.
There are basic customization like shooting RAW, no sound on click, focus peaking yellow, and so forth, that could be used as a starting point for customization.
Of course, in a deeper customization other setting could be applied.
The advantage of this, could be changing informations about how experimenting and testing new customizations.
Example: I saw that there is a bunch of setting to shoot fireworks. An implemented setting could be of some use.
Well... may be it is not a good idea.
And you know Manfred... I hate - like many - to read and study the f** manual !

Antonio - I can't say I'm someone who loves my camera manual, but I do tend to scroll through my camera's menu selections to see what I can change and will get into reading those parts of the manual that explain some of the functions that I don't fully understand.

As an example on my mirrorless camera, I can change the focus peaking colour, but have been shooting with the default settings for so long that I see no advantage of doing so. The default setting produces a colour I would rarely see in normal shooting, so I would have no reason not to use it.

The "no click" setting definitely has some advantages when shooting in a quiet setting, but the purely electronic shutter does have some drawbacks and getting the auditory signal that the picture has been taken is something that has become part of my workflow that started with shooting the DSLR. I find that I will stand close to the camera body when using "mirror up" mode during long exposures to confirm that the shot is being taken on my DSLR.

The issue I have with presets of any sort is wanting to understand WHY the user is doing so. This is often much more important than knowing how to do things. To give an example; I have set up my camera to use continuous focus mode with a single focus point and back button focus. When I hand my camera to someone, to take a shot they will usually tell me that there is something wrong with my camera, as they tend to shoot with default settings. Without the explanation as to why I have set up my camera this way, which gives me a very high success rate of sharp images, but I have to use a "focus and reframe the scene" workflow to make it work. Understanding my presets is important to getting a good image; using them without that knowledge will give terrible results...

[davidedric]

When I first got my m4/3 cameras, I did find the menus and sub menus a bit overwhelming - not confusing, but there are an awful lot of items to set or not, and so on.

I found the ideas in the CameraErgonomics blog very helpful.

The author splits shooting into three phases: Setup, Prepare and Capture.

Setup are the settings you make at home and rarely change (of course you may change them from time to time)
Prepare are the settings that you make during a shoot, though probably not for every shot
Capture are the adjustments you make before each shot.

He then goes on to describe his Setup phase, what settings he uses and why.
Then how he configures the camera such that the Prepare and Capture settings are readily accessible during a shoot.

I think it is useful to compare Setup settings, and camera configurations.

However, these are all very camera, or at least camera family, specific. There are quite often discussions like this on the m4/3 forum on DPR (and I expect in other forums too) and I think that's probably the best place for them, since they do get very detailed.

Dave

[xpatUSA]

When I first got my m4/3 cameras, I did find the menus and sub menus a bit overwhelming - not confusing, but there are an awful lot of items to set or not, and so on.

I found the ideas in the CameraErgonomics blog very helpful.

The author splits shooting into three phases: Setup, Prepare and Capture.

Setup are the settings you make at home and rarely change (of course you may change them from time to time)

Prepare are the settings that you make during a shoot, though probably not for every shot

Capture are the adjustments you make before each shot.

Interesting.

One of my cameras almost conforms:

First, it has "SETUP" actually engraved on a knob:




In the SETUP position, the menu items are things like format the card, set date/time, etc.

Then, it has a 'Quick Set' (QS) button (Analogous to "Prepare") which accesses commonly-used functions like WB, raw/JPEG, image size, etc. to a total of 8 such. Also, there is a useful FOCUS button which toggles between Auto and focus-by-wire Manual.




... leaving the final "Capture" settings to another button and the four-way controller.

[xpatUSA]

When a couple of days ago, I updated my Olympus OM-D EM-5 II software (and lenses) it did not came to my mind that one can/could share other people's settings working with the same cameras.

An equivalent thought is the possible sharing of 'sidecar' files between users of the same Editor, such files as xxxxxx.xmp or xxxxxx.pp3?

If someone asks "how did you do that?" - instead of remembering and typing every adjustment you did into a post or an email, simply send them the sidecar file, or relevant part thereof. Ive done that elsewhere a few times. It's easy enough with a .pp3 (RT text file) but a little harder ** with an .xmp (Adobe).

And sidecar files can be applied to an image file by replacing it's .xmp file with the sent file and then making the sent .xmp file-name the same as the image file-name. (from experience long ago with ACR6, may not necessarily be true today.)

** Adobe's .xmp sidecar file is based on XML format and is best viewed in an HTML editor. It can be viewed in Windows' NotePad but just looks a horrible mess because of no return (CR) characters.

[Antonio Correia]

@ Manfred, Dave and Ted: Thank you guys for your comments.

I spent this afternoon or part of it, looking and following this video
I found it quite useful for two main reasons: one because it made me go through all the setting and secondly because I was able to change my camera to his setting (saving them as user number 2) as an exercise.

Now, I can go and setup my camera with some setting which I have done myself (user 1) with those from user 2 creating one best fitted for me or to the way I like to take pictures.
I think I will see more of his videos as they look very informative and are much about Olympus cameras.

I own also a Panasonic (GX7) which setting are simpler but the Olympus settings are better even being a little more confusing at the beginning. It is funny because I was wondering why they seem not to have a setting to change the color of the grid...

I was able to go through the software available by Olympus, save my setting in the computer and export them to any Olympus OM-D camera when necessary. Fine. I like that !
I can even mess everything and get back to my saved settings.

[Antonio Correia]

How about this way to remember to customised settings of the camera ?

[Shadowman]

Perhaps you are right Manfred.
There are basic customization like shooting RAW, no sound on click, focus peaking yellow, and so forth, that could be used as a starting point for customization.
Of course, in a deeper customization other setting could be applied.
The advantage of this, could be changing informations about how experimenting and testing new customizations.
Example: I saw that there is a bunch of setting to shoot fireworks. An implemented setting could be of some use.
Well... may be it is not a good idea.
And you know Manfred... I hate - like many - to read and study the f** manual !

I think sharing of settings might work if you are shooting in a group and everyone has the same camera and concentrating on the same scene, perhaps if being led by an instructor. Will the final output meet each photographer's vision, maybe not but if you are trying to emulate a particular style then perhaps so.

[Antonio Correia]

Thank you John for your comment.

The settings are just mine as I rarely shoot with a group and even less with people who use the same camera.