AA batteries with the E-PL6

alexisgreat wrote:

That noise is rather annoying

It will all go away when global shutters arrive sometime this century (or next).

. 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.)

The shutter sounds like a train crash, the 2 axis IBIS sounds like a coffee grinder.

These shutters are good for about 50,000 actuations?

Maybe.

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.

Consumer shutters seem to be 30,000 to 50,000 rating, but in reality the life does vary from that by a factor of plus/minus 100%.

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!

There's no such things as an average for me as every day is different and when on holidays the daily totals vary dramatically. Last holiday was driving in Ireland and UK and when driving there's less shots taken. Prior to that was using trains in Japan and lots more taken because I'm not holding the steering wheel. One day I may plot the usage per day for each holiday and see if some Bell curve develops or not.

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

Not often, but sometimes minus 0.3 to possibly as far as minus 1.0 occasionally to get some highlights sorted.

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?

Art bracket - yes, if you have then all selected then take one shot and the camera sits there looking at you while it grinds away creating a mess of variously weird looking jpegs.

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 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?

No seals. The E-PL5/6 are holey bodies, plenty of places to leak in. I kept wiping the rain off and when I got home later then sat the camera with lens on in front of a mildly warm air-con outlet for an hour or so before putting it away again. Always make sure lens barrels ar ewiped dry before un-zooming or collapsing the lenses.

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.

I use the 2 second auto review as good enough most of the time to see that all is OK, occasionally if in doubt I may review and peer a bit more magnified, but that's rare. I usually shoot and scoot and sort out the mess on the computer later. The E-P5 has been my most reliable camera when it comes to shock and shake and AF etc so usually I just shoot and turn off and never look at the review until back on the computer.

Regards........ Guy