ISO settings, and other ramblings

So far in my pilgrim's progress to master the Olympus Micro Four Thirds, I've learned my lessons from my friends on the internet, especially Guy Parsons, and from reading the book that Olympus has made available for free, in many languages, on the internet, if you've lost the one that came in the box.

Some setting that might be naught to Guy Parsons, to a rambling amatuer, might a pitfall be, or so the saying goes.

The owner's manual for the E-PM2 has a combination to enter the four Mysets that are contained in the first menu. I assume Guy Parsons uses the same four presets on his trusty P5's except he says to put the first ISO limit to 1600, the next up a stop, and the next up a stop, and then a hail mary full of grace to the wall extension limit on the last preset.

I've found, by experimentation, that the very best pictures are made in RAW, at full resolution, that produce one 15 MB file, that can only really be made useful by taking the camera to a laptop computer to download and edit the pictures. If you care about your pictures, or somebody else might later on, then why even produce a JPEG at all?

The RAW photo is the best. It produces one 15 MB file on the raw file inside the bowels of the hard drive on the computer, in a file that can later be transferred to an external hard drive. And while the 16MP second gen sensor on all Olympus cameras, even the least of them, the PM2, is usable to 5000 ISO according to the legend that Olympus puts on their ISO selections, both Guy Parsons and my own experimentation have found that 1600 has much better dynamic range than 5000.

So I've chosen to set the First MySet on the little PM2 to Program, Auto ISO 200-1600, RAW only noise reduction off.

Coupled with the little 17mm Oly 2.8 lens that lives on it, that should make righteous pictures, or none at all. The little camera didn't come with a flash, and it fits in a pants pocket. It only has the first gen shutter, subject to shutter shock even on 1/8 delay, makes a noise when it works, and while the two way axis stabilization works, it's nothing compared to my five way axis OMD M5 II with it's electronic shutter.

But, for general purposes, for say shooting a couple of Mennonites in their yard or at a Farmer's Market, then it might be best to have RAW, plus an upper limit of ISO 3200, with noise reduction to low, and let's throw in a JPEG too, in Large Fine Quality. That is now my Second MySet on the little PM2, which is the least expensive 16mp sensor camera Oly ever made.

A quick check on the Oly updater reveals that the little Mini PM2 is not capable of having the MySets stored to the cloud. But I wonder, if my OMD M5 II might have that capability?

Well, when a feller is just starting to try and learn all the lessons and figure out all the combinations on these Olympus MFT cameras, he needs to take one, step, at a time.

Thanks to the kindly Mr. Parsons I have that little PM2 with two MySets that I can punch right in and hand the camera to the wife and she can snap pictures with it, to her heart's content.

Then, I can edit the pictures and send them to other folks that might appreciate them, or I can even use that little camera myself.

And it's a good learning experience for my own OMD M5 II, because Olympus just adds features to their cameras the more money the charge for them.  They've been doing that ever since my first PL1.

I tried the Keystone Compensation on a shot my wife took of a yard and a house, and I must say I'm getting a little better at it. That pole was all slanted and the fence was not square with the world, when I started, and now it looks a whole lot better.

Maybe that Faststone program Parsons talks about is better, but the Oly 3 Viewer does work.

Keystone Correction

But thanks to all my friends on the internet, and especially Guy Parsons, I'm better able to handle RAW by the numbers.

Number One MySet is RAW only.

Number Two MySet is RAW plus JPEG Large Fine

And I have two more MySets, to decide what to do with them.