alexisgreat wrote:
Helen wrote:
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!).
I have an idea, maybe my fingers are too big
I hope not! And it sounds like the other touchscreen things are working OK for you. Can't work this one out - it always works for me, whether face detection is on or off. Really strange. I take it there isn't any damage on that part of the screen, or anything that may be interfering with conductivity?
Oh I was reading a review and I had another question, how does one change the size of the autofocus points (I want to make it smaller), does this also make the size of the spot metering point smaller? Are these things that can be done through the menu as well as the touch screen? Thanks!
It doesn't make the size of the spot metering point any smaller, I'm afraid (since I guess you were hoping it would). You've got several choices for resizing AF points, though. If you ever get the touch-to-focus facility to work(!), then that bar that Guy showed will appear at the right of the screen and you can sweep your finger up or down it to alter the size of the semipermanently-positioned focus points (these are the ones with green frames, that are quite horizontally rectangular in shape). In fact, these targets are the same as the magnification frames, so in live view you can if you wish simply tap the magnifier key next to the Fn button and it will bring up a green frame, which you can then position with the cursor keys (even if you have them set to Direct Function). Whilst a second tap of magnify brings the contents of the green rectangle up to fill the frame, in both cases they are an AF point, so you don't need to blow them up to full screen for that function. To alter their size, press Info and then use the up/down keys to select a magnification ratio for the rectangle - 5x (largest), 7x, 10x or 14x (smallest) are the choices. A long press of OK recentres such a target, and a short press turns it off. If you have the multicontroller set to Direct Function, when nothing else is underway you can tap the left one to get to the interface for the permanent AF targets. A particular pattern (as previously set or used by you) will immediately turn up, and if you press Info, you will see two icons in the lower left - they indicate that the left/right buttons will now change the Face Detection status, whilst the up/down buttons cycle through the patterns and sizes. The really small squares are my personal favourite. Having chosen the size or pattern you want, you can press OK, or Info, and the cursor keys (and the touchscreen) can now be used to move the selected spot if you wish. Then accept it with a quick OK or half-press of the shutter button. Have a play, it's easiest to absorb if you explore it first hand. If you have a favourite size, position or pattern, you can tell the camera via the Home Position (HP) entry in the AF gear menu, and set Home Position to a customisable button. Then, a quick tap of that button will apply your favourite AF target type and position, whatever other pattern you'd been using.
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.
If I set the AEL/AFL button to the movie record button, does that mean I have to dive into the menu to be able to record movies? I was thinking about using the 4 way controller in a different function mode but isn't it also supposed to be used for shutter speed, aperture and EC? I am toggling between using shutter priority and full manual mode and take advantage of the camera's "zebra stripes" in live view plus AUTO ISO in 1/3 ev steps to finely control exposure along with spot metering and S-AF+MF for focusing.
Well, you could turn the mode dial to the movie setting to do movies, when the red movie button's default status is reinstated (only when in this mode if you have it set for something else). But why not consider something similar to what I do if you want to retain the red movie button for instant movie record in any mode? I have AEL on the Fn button and ISO on the right cursor (with them set to Direct Function). You can also choose for yourself what goes on the down arrow, and the left is for AF fiddling as described above. The Up direction, well, read on...
On second thought, Olympus makes it so you have to press the top arrow key to activate aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, so using the right and bottom arrow keys as function keys should be fine They could have done the same for the left arrow key too So I could leave the movie record button as is, set the Fn button to AEL/AFL and set one arrow key (probably the bottom one) to ISO and the other arrow key (probably the right one) to WB? Are all these button customizations on the same page in the menu? Thanks!
Oh, I should have read on before my last paragraph - you worked it out yourself! Excellent - you're feeling more at home with the menus, I think.
This is great! So I could set spot to just AE-L and use ESP with the shutter half press when AE-L isn't on (or even vice versa)! Do highlight and low biased spot take the rest of the frame into account when metering the exposure to bias the exposure? It would be great if I could change the size of the metering spot along with the focusing spot also.
Yes, you can do that first thing. I don't think the highlight and low spots look at the rest of the frame, or they wouldn't really be spot metering any more. They simply bias quite strongly away from what a neutral spot meter would do. Sadly, you can't change the size of the spot meter target, though (can you in any camera?).
hmmm sounds like live boost should be turned on if the zebra stripes are on. I think you've successfully explained an oddity I was having- in live view I saw large areas of underexposure (more like a blue sea haha) but when I went in playback mode after I took the shot, there was only a very small sliver of blue (more like a little pond lol.) I was trying to figure out which was more accurate- I'm guessing the small sliver of blue in playback is the more accurate one.
I believe so, but I can't take credit for that - I think somebody else caught that one, perhaps Guy!
