alexisgreat wrote:
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.
I'm really puzzled by this too, as nothing I did (except sticking an accidental thumb or finger elsewhere on the screen at the same time) caused the touch focus mode icon to be unresponsive to being changed (Guy's picture shows it in the mode you're yearning to get to, of course, with a finger pointing at an AF frame!).
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?
I was having a flashback to much earlier Olympuses (and some other makes) when I inferred you had the choice of holding the AEL button down continuously to keep it active (always strikes me as quite awkward, that, but I suppose the one advantage is you don't forget that it's on) or as a toggle (press to AE lock, press to unlock) - in fact, the E-PL6 just uses the toggle method. You can also set AE lock onto the red movie record button if you wish, or on the function button of a lens that has one (some do, but usually the physically larger ones). I use the 4-way controller on the camera back in "Direct Function" mode, rather than wasting it (for my use) on directly positioning the AF frame, since I can do that with the touchscreen, and this gives you two more customisable buttons (the right and down ones) - strangely, these don't include AEL in the options (even after I removed it from my Fn button, as sometimes the menu will act intelligently to avoid duplication), but you could put ISO onto either one if you wanted to free up Fn for the AEL.
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.
Yes, you can set the AEL metering to be the same as your currently used metering mode, or to a preferred other metering type that it will always use instead when the AEL button is pressed, regardless of your normal ongoing metering mode. So you can have spot metering ONLY with the AEL lock - you can even opt for highlight or low biased spot metering on AEL if you like. It's on the second page of gear menu E (exposure etc.).
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.
Up to you about Live View Boost - as I said, having it on didn't help make my then-purposely-underexposed spot metered view of a bright area any more visible when I re-aimed the camera at a darker area, but there again sometimes having Live View Boost set to off also ceases showing the effects of exposure past a certain point, sacrificing it for visibility, so it's a question of experimenting with it to see what works best for you.
I guess the "zebra stripes" (which aren't striped on Olympus, but they're like the "blinkies" in playback except they don't blink either!), might help highlight the stars a bit - they are of course tuned to pick out over- and under-exposed areas. Things could get quite colourful on a night sky! A turbulent blue might be offputting though, as it tends to pick out noise from amplification of the signal if live boost is off and there's a very dark scene, particularly if you or Auto ISO have cranked up the ISO. If LV Boost is on, things are MUCH quieter in that circumstance, except when the camera is gaining focus lock as it cranks up the sensitivity in some manner at that moment, so the underexposure blue makes its noisy entrance at that point on a very dark subject - then goes away again when it is locked on (I'm speaking of S-AF in this, of course).
