E-M5 II settings

For what it's worth I've appended my settings. But some background first...

I shoot mainly scenery and birds (while hiking). I like to capture what I see. There's not much that's artistic/photographic in my images. I mainly stick to A-mode.  I'm pretty much a full time EVF user with the LCD only being used in tricky situations.

My E-M5 II settings are based on what I used on the E-M5. Unless the situation looks tough, I mainly shoot jpegs and I find the Olympus out-of-camera jpegs are pretty good. I do post-process, mostly contrast, brightness, and saturation. Because I PP I mainly stick to Picture-Mode Natural and sharpness is dialled back a little. The E-M5 settings I use often result in a smidgen of unused area at ends of the histogram, and a little PP can make use of these.

I have one MySet for each kind of shooting (scenery, birds). The MySets are set to override the mode-dial iAuto and Photo-Story. If you have more than a couple of mysets, you should consider keeping a big-font picture of what each myset does in the camera. On the E-M5 I had four: birds, scenery, scenic-bracketing, and negative scanning (Olympus should allow MySets to have names).

I keep a CSV file of all settings so I can easily restore them after a firmware upgrade. I keep a photo of the settings in the camera and the CSV file and manuals in my phone.

I keep ISO, White-Balance, Shooting Rate on the arrows so I can quickly adjust to circumstances. I struggled to find a useful function for the lever, but settled on having it change between single-auto-focus and continuous tracking (it would have been great for switching mysets, but it can't do that).

Mostly I just made adjustments by working my way through the Olympus full manual (not the short printed one that comes in the box). I also bought the e-book The Complete Guide to the Olympus E-M5 II, by Gary Friedman and Tony Phillips and found it useful (but given I already owned an E-M5, perhaps I got less out of it than someone coming in cold). ( https://books.google.com/ebooks/app#reader/HKQ5CgAAQBAJ )

Here's my full list of customisations (using the common conventions for describing the icons such as the Cog icons):

• Camera 1,Image-Quality-Icon,Still Picture,LF
• Camera 1,Picture Mode,Mode 3 Natural,Sharpness,-1
• Cog A,AF Mode,Still Picture,S-AF+MF
• Cog A,Manual Focus Assist,Peaking,On
• Cog B,Button Function,Fn1,AEL/AFL
• Cog B,Button Function,Fn3,View Selection
• Cog B,4 Arrows Function,Direct Function
• Cog B,Right Arrow,Dial WB/Dial ISO
• Cog B,Down Arrow,Sequential Shooting Rate/Self Timer
• Cog B,Mode Dial Function,Myset1,Photo Story
• Cog B,Mode Dial Function,Myset2,iAuto
• Cog B,Lever Function,mode5 (switch AF modes)
• Cog C,RLS Priority S,Off
• Cog C,RLS Priority C,Off
• Cog C,Sequential FPS Image Stabilization,On
• Cog C,Image Stabilizer,Movie,M-IS 2 (Sensor Shift Only)
• Cog D,Info Settings,Playback Info,Highlight&Shadow
• Cog D,Info Settings,LV-Info,Custom1,Highlights&Shadows
• Cog D,Info Settings,LV-Info,Custom1,Level Gauge
• Cog D,Info Settings,LV-Info,Custom2,Histogram
• Cog D,Info Settings,LV-Info,Custom2,Level Gauge
• Cog D,Display Grid,Off
• Cog D,Sleep,1 minute
• Cog D,Auto Power Off,4 hours
• Cog D,Sound,Off
• Cog E,AEL Metering Spot
• Cog E,Noise Filter,Off
• Cog H,Copyright settings,Copyright Info,On
• Cog H,Copyright settings,Artist Name,Anon
• Cog H,Copyright settings,Copyright Name,Anon (anon@anon.blah)
• Cog I,Wind Noise Reducton,Off
• Cog K,Quick Sleep Mode,Off
• Cog J,EVF Auto Switch,Off
• Spanner,Rec View,Off
• Myset1,F5.6,ISO 200,Centre Normal Focus Target,iFace,Low Speed Anti Shock
• Myset2,F8.0,ISO 800,Centre Small Focus Target,Low Speed Anti Shock

I hope I haven't forgotten any, because this is the list I use to restore the camera.