Setting up new E-PL6

Helen wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

I really don't know what is happening with your camera, but on my E-PL5 the LCD bottom left corner looks like this........

Horrible shot but hey, it gets the message across. The touch AF Icon lives there, and that cycles though touch shoot and off when touched. I have a body cap on and no lens hence the 3.2 sec and f/-.-

On mine it only takes a very light touch to cycle.

Regards........ Guy

I was thinking about describing something similar when your shot said it more eloquently (but succinctly!) than I ever could.

Alex: are you maybe touching the opposite screen edge at the same time as you try to cycle the touch symbol? That would stop it responding; otherwise, as Guy says, it responds to a very light touch (even with my currently freezing cold, dry finger) or the "press" you mention, which isn't actually necessary, given that it's a capacitive rather than resistive screen. What it doesn't like is non-conductive fingers, such as when wearing ordinary gloves, of course.

Thanks, Helen- I'm still trying to figure out why it's so easy for me to tap the screen to focus and fire a shot but pressing down on that icon does nothing lol- it must be some setting I've altered somewhere.

With regard to your more recent question, I'm pretty sure you could achieve a bit of separate off-centre spot metering and AF locking with judicious use of the "focus hold and recompose" technique. (Pause - just tried it, on an E-PL6, no less!). Yes, I had AEL set to the Fn button, in toggle mode (rather than requiring to be held constantly) and also had spot metering set as the AEL meter mode (the rest of my metering was on ESP - i.e. multipattern). So I tapped Fn whilst metering a bright object, then aimed the camera at a shady area and focused (using the touchscreen, but it also worked via half pressure of the shutter release) and took the shot - metering for one area, focus on another, both off-centre in different places. The only tricky thing was because I chose areas with a massive differential of illumination for clarity of checking the function, the focussed area was pretty dark to see - but the camera lightened it momentarily so it could see to focus. Even live view boost on kept the metered exposure looking true (i.e. too dark to see properly!) on the live view.

Question, I set the Fn button to ISO, can I set AEL to some other button in toggle mode? Also I didn't fully understand this part here "and also had spot metering set as the AEL meter mode (the rest of my metering was on ESP - i.e. multipattern)."- does this mean when you set up the AEL button it can be a different form of metering than the camera's default metering mode? I think you can change that in the same page on the menu.

Excellent test! Should I keep live view boost on? I wasn't sure because the literature says "will not show accurate exposure in live view." Perhaps live view boost will be good to see stars in live view? I assume turning the zebra stripes on in live view will also help to clarify the bright and dark areas even more.