Olympus camera (PM2/PL5/PL6) settings questions

CNY_AP wrote:

Cameras shoot way too fast for my purpose. I will be remotely shooting continuously (rubber bands holding down the shutter button - same as I do now with my Fuji F20/F30) on a R/C airplane and quadrotor " drone. I want to slow the camera down to around 0.5 or 1FPS so I don't have 1000+ images to look through (and I do not want to add complexity & weight with a servo or other "old school" triggering means).

GM1 would be the best for aerial photography, but that 1/50 shutter sync speed worries me.

So I'm considering buying the E-PM2 (used) or PL6. Their manuals do not give the min and max setting/value for the "L FPS" and "H FPS" settings.

1) I assume if I set "L FPS" to "1", it will shoot at 1FPS. Correct?

1b) Can I set "L FPS" to a value lower than 1? What are the valid ranges? 1 to 8 FPS I assume.

Ignore that and use burst mode set however you like, but set anti-shock to any of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 seconds and use a diamond shooting mode to get a frame rate from that selection.

2) If I have exposure bracketing selected to shoot 3 levels, and I have the shutter held down, what will happen? Will it shoot just 3 images, or will it shoot until the card is full?

3 images only.

(it would be great if I could create HDRs via post processing. Also useful to have multiple exposures to surely get some "keepers")

Shoot RAW and plenty can be HDRed out of that raw file.

3) What about other modes, such as HDR? Will it shoot HDRs until the card is full if I keep the shutter held down?

Usually those special modes will only shoot the set then stop.

For continuous shooting it can be jpeg, or raw or raw+jpeg, your choice.

4) What is the max number of shots that I can I set the self-timer to take? (if I can set this to a large number, perhaps it would work for slowing down the camera, similar to a time-lapse mode).

Not enough on those earlier models, and not much more on later ones. Some external programmable release would make most sense, like the Hahnel thing. http://www.hahnel.ie/index.cfm/action/productSearch/pid/80 radio link (possibly too short) or directly plugged into the camera.

5) Olympus' site states that the shutter delay for combating shutter shock can also be used for creating time-lapse delays. Has anyone tried this? Seems to me if I can set the delay to 1s, I should be able to slow the camera down to 1FPS. Or set to 2s delay for 0.5FPS.

Yes, as I mentioned above but selection range is in that 2x form from 1/8 to 30 secs.

6) Olympus is unclear what happens when the camera's buffer gets filled. If shooting "raw", and I hold the shutter down, will the camera totally stop at some point (after 10 to 20 shots), or will it keep shooting (slowly) after the camera's buffer is full? I hope so, hopefully at 1FPS or slower.

It slows down when buffer is full but keeps shooting. If a 1 or 2 second delay and shooting raw files only it may just keep going forever at the same rate, needs experiments to find out.

7) I'll be using the 14mm F2.5 lens (affordable, only 2oz, and seems plenty sharp enough "on paper"). I hope it works OK with the Oly cameras, or will chromatic aberrations and other issues not be removed via the camera?).

No CA correction on those earlier bodies in your subject line.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many settings Olympus has. If only they made the shutter mechanism "smoother/gentler" and/or made whatever holds the sensor to be "sturdier" (to avoid the dreaded shutter shock), these cameras would be nearly perfect.

Shutter shock is due to the focal plane shutter when in certain shutter speed ranges, most times not a bother at all. It won't go away until you use a fully electronic shutter operation or a global shutter which may arrive this century sometime.

The later addition of 0 second anti-shock on some later bodies uses electronic first curtain shutter and eliminates shock problems.

Frankly I'd be looking at (compact) cameras that use an in-lens shutter to avoid many shock and weight problems.

Regards... Guy