Olympus e-PM2 - what am i doing wrong?

KeMc wrote:

Pikme wrote:

None of the settings for your photos, both batches you have posted, make any sense at all. The auto setting would not be choosing those settings, so something is wrong. Maybe you need to do a complete camera reset (to eliminate any crazy settings that were accidentally set somewhere along the way) and start over.

What kind of settings would you expect to see? I did a factory reset but i'm not sure if it has made a difference. Here's some new photos:

Dear friend, look, you'd come a long way and the improvement was quit remarkable. These 3 images were better than your previous batch.

If you were shooting in whatsoever auto mode, it seems your camera had a tendency to use small aperture (because of the strong sunny day, not sure?) as other senior members had commented.

When you have another chance, would you try to shoot in A or S mode? On a sunny day as per your samples were taken, start with f/8.0 or larger (f/3.5 is the largest of your lens, in S mode, set shutter to 1/250" or faster), to force your camera to use a much faster shutter speed or a faster aperture. (if shooting low light, use f/3.5 or 1/60" as starting point for the fastest shutter/faster aperture that you could use then). As said, at f/10 or f/11 your image IQ would start suffering.

I suppose that beautiful blue should be the famous Olympus blue. It is the sort of color be embraced by oly fans. They indeed look good.

All 3 images were under extremely high contrast lighting condition (in fact a very difficult shooting environment). As the very bright sky accounted for a not small portion of your images, the strong light dominated background caused your camera to expose darker to preserve highlight. Therefore, the dark/shadow part of the scene became too dark. It is where Exposure Compensation needed. Through the real time preview in the LCD, when + or - ev, you should be able to see the image brighter or darker. If you would like to reveal more of the bridge and the buildings or the ship etc, you can +ev until the bridge and buildings or ship lighting up to your satisfaction. Of course, no miracle at all, the sky would turn to very light blue or even pure dead white (no more clouds) due to over exposure on the highlight area. It would be a choice of us. The best way is not to shoot in mid of the day under strong sun overhead.....

Keep on your good work. Soon you could be the master of your gear instead of be its servant.