AA batteries with the E-PL6

Guy Parsons wrote:

alexisgreat wrote:

But what if you dont have burst mode turned on and merely keep the shutter half pressed and just take the next shot as soon as the prior one is saved?

No need to wait for saving, the buffer allows them to pile up a bit.

Is there a benefit to doing that in terms of less shutter wear?

No benefit at all. The shutter is still working. Just try listening to the camera, each exposure cycles that shutter. Only cameras with fully electronic shutters avoid clattering that horrible focal plane shutter.

That noise is rather annoying, at first I thought the racket came from the IS doing its thing because the noise is different when doing a 4 sec exposure, when I assume no IS is being used, even when IS is turned on (as per the specs on the camera, which state that IS is not active at exposures longer than 2 sec.)  These shutters are good for about 50,000 actuations?  That's rather impressive considering all that noise!  Although I dont think any Olympus mirrorless camera's shutter is actually rated for number of actuations- all their shutters are probably about the same in terms of durability.

If you could estimate, what would you say is an average number of pictures you take per day with the E-PL5 or E-P5?

Varies dramatically from 0 today to maybe 400 or so on a very busy holiday at an interesting location. Burst or bracketing is basically never used by me.

Sounds like an average of 100-200 a day, although I'd lean towards the 100 considering that I wager the busy holidays at interesting locations are not nearly as common as the more mundane days!

My issue is that with 1/3 stop ISO and changing lighting conditions, I never quite know which ISO to use and found the best results by underexposing somewhere between 1 and 2.3 stops.

I try to stay with ISO 200, but if the light gets a bit lower then I move to the other MySets that use auto ISO with various limits. Forever fiddling with ISO just wastes time, trust the auto ISO but set sensible limits.

Do you find that certain situations require  you to use negative exposure compensation a lot?

Also, I was just starting to get into the other modes- one that I found interesting was the Art mode and Art bracketing- does the camera just take one image in this mode and generate 13 images with different filters from that one image?

In the scene modes, I also found sunrise/set mode interesting because it makes the reds really pop, and movie special effects- although I dont know how to activate the special effects. Olympus movie modes are rather pedestrian anyway- the only things I like about them is that they zoom on the LCD and they dont take up much space on the card even at full resolution.

I also read somewhere that weatherproof is another dead end because camera makers do not honor water damaged cameras regardless!

Maybe so, but any camera needs some proper care by the user. Seals should be replaced every year I guess. I've never used weather proof cameras, have been out in the rain and never had problems. Just a matter of being careful and drying the camera off afterwards.

I remember you said that you've used your E-PL5 even during the rain and you just had to wait for it to dry and it was fine.  Do nonwaterproof cameras like it have seals too?

[battery life]

I think I may have gotten it to work, reviewing only a small subset of the total number of pictures the camera took- got the camera to last on one battery for a week and a half!

Works best if you take a picture and turn off, do not do needless reviews or deletes in camera. Sort out the mess later at home.

Yes, I am trying to limit it to 10 min or less of total review time per day, just enough to know I dont need to reshoot and then it's off time.

Regards......... Guy