John King wrote:
alexisgreat wrote:
John King wrote:
alexisgreat wrote:
Thanks, John, those are some spectacular images!
Thanks, Alex
After some "testing" I set mine to 200-6400.
Probably best to set the upper limit for Auto-ISO to 1600-2000 at the start. No mFTs camera is in the same league as e.g. a Nikon D4s, where you can get away with blue murder at ISO 6400 (and above ... ). You have to make sure that you get enough light on the sensor in our cameras (wide enough f-stop and sufficient exposure time - I have tried to work out what those values are in a desultory manner, but got lost ... ), or the noise will be horrendous, even at ISO 3200. The lesson being is that we cannot just ramp the ISO and to heck with the consequences! Lots of trial and error test shots help ...
Thanks, I see what you mean with the ISO 6400 shots not being exactly what I was looking for- I set the AUTO ISO downward now. One little disappointing thing is the IS isn't all that great (maybe 1 stop?) but that could also be because the camera body is small, from my experience, the larger the body the less it "shakes."
I did some research on the sensor and found something called ISOLess- the camera becomes ISOless around ISO 1200. What this basically means is that anything above ISO 1200 is unnecessary because you can achieve the effect in PP by postprocessing the RAW image and adding EC. So let's say you took an image at ISO 1600 and wanted to brighten it later to ISO 6400. Take the RAW and brighten it by two stops and there you have it! The result will also have more noise, but perhaps not as much as taking an ISO 6400 image directly. Or at the very least, it will be the same amount of noise.
Going to do the contrast and sharpness now too.
I'm not quite as brave as Guy as regards setting NF = Off, but STANDARD is way too aggressive, and forget about HIGH as if it didn't exist, unless you like your photos to look like oil paintings done with a palette knife ...
However, he might want to PP his JPEGs sometimes. Mine are only ever used for web upload, etc, for which I almost never start off with the RAW file. Our needs and methods are always going to be different - I can guarantee that!
I did a compromise and instead of turning everything off or to its lowest settings, I put NF on Low, Sharpening to -1 and Contrast to -1
Sounds reasonable to me ...
Do you use multimetering and no EC also? I was experimenting with multi, spot and average metering.
IMHO, many posters here do not realise just how important metering (and AF) modes are. Changing metering mode will almost always get you out of trouble with highly back lit subjects and other difficult lighting situations. Also IMO, changing metering mode is often preferable to using EC. Also experiment with HIGH and LOW key metering modes. Auto-Gradation sometimes has its uses too (not very often, IMHO ... ).
Learning when it's appropriate to use Spot, Centre-weighted average and Matrix (ESP) is critical IMO. Also learn where the limits are of spot and CWA modes.
When all else fails, the camera is a wonderful light meter! Take a shot, and see how it turns out ... Then work out what you have to set and what to in order to 'correct' the 'errors' the camera has made to achieve the shot you want.
This photo required about 3-6 test exposures to work out why the camera was being fooled, then set it up manually to get the image of the illusions I wanted. Portrait of the artist:
Multiple illusions. What's real? What's a reflection?
Wow is that image from multiple exposures?
Single shot ...
I like the effect!
Thank you. It took some getting.
About metering, I was trying to ascertain how large the "spot" is when spot metering. The moon is 2 days before new right now and I'm not sure if a moon that small properly registers on the camera's meter (I had the focal length set at 42mm to get Venus and some background in the same field of view.)
The centre spot is quite small. Centre weighted average meters the area over the whole frame, but gives most weight to the area in about zone 1 (of the three zones that make up the frame).
John, one thing I really like about this camera is having what Olympus used to call the "Direct Live Histogram" (on the old C-7070/8080) the "zebra stripes" on in Live View in manual exposure mode and setting ISO to AUTO ISO in manual mode with spot metering and seeing exactly what the ISO will be BEFORE you take the shot! In 1/3 EV steps. That is a huge amount of control over the exposure.
About the AE/AF thing, is there a way to focus from one part of the frame, but spot meter from a different part of the frame, and neither spot be in the center (in other words, not tie the metering spot to the focusing spot in spot metering mode.)
I set focusing mode to S-AF+MF like I have with my E-520. In my experience this is the best focusing mode, the camera does a coarse autofocus and if you want a finer adjustment you do MF.
Yeah, same here. The MF magnification feature is great if the E-PL6 has it.
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Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
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