Pen F users - some quick questions...

acfo wrote:

Raist3d wrote:

MEDISN wrote:

But contradicts what this user is actually showing frame-by-frame. Why are you so concerned with what some reviewer said? Does the reviewer shoot with your hands or do you?

Oh, I am only bringing reviewers as an objective "not someone over the net" source.

I do BIFs with the Pen-F in C-AF mode (examples here https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62619969 ) .

I would have to see how the birds were moving in those samples. I notice you can track mainly when the objects are moving more or less in the same focal plane like panning.

After I realized that I need to set the camera to focus priority and that C-AF only works in sequential burst L mode (on all Olympus cameras), C-AF simply works. If I have an out of focus shot it's because I did not point the camera in the right direction.

I definitively have set my PenF in focus priority and have tried both speeds.

In fact C-AF is working so well that I was puzzled why the Pen-Fs C-AF is said to be sub par. There is no technical reason why the Pen F should be noticeably better or worse than any other Olympus body with the same generation imaging engine and cdaf sensor. Comparing the Pen-Fs C-AF with my daughters EM10 Mark II, I see no difference.

There is. The 20 MP sensor has more data to parse through than an EM5 Mii for example. This difference can affect the performance. If you check out imaging resource low light AF for the GX9 which uses pretty much the same sensor, you see its ability to focus in lower light is less than the 16 MP sensor. The straightforward conclusion is that it has more noise in the dark because of the sensor density (and the fact it's not a BSI to counter that).

Here is the CameraStoreTV review which started the "Pen-F CAF sucks" rumor:

Pre-production Pen-F with a Oly 300mm f4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqmMrp-pVp4

Follow up with a production Pen-F where they say the Pen-F did a good job in "zone focussing" C-AF mode and the "lock on" C-AF mode with tracking gave the most reliable hit rate. They had problems with the pen-f in C-AF mode with single button presses hunting on a subject which was not or only slowly moving (quite obviously with Rls Priority S set ON, meaning taking an out of focus shot was possible):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdPhwpmo5O8

I saw their review a while back including follow up. What they said and concluded is that even with the upgrade the camera still had trouble. To be fair though- they were testing with a telephoto lens which is harsher on all cameras, though in the YouTube comments they mention that they noticed this with other lenses.

So as far as I can tell, the reviewers did not set up the camera properly and there's nothing wrong with the Pen-Fs C-AF. Olympus may need to think about improving their manual though.

It seems rather strange that reviewers all of a sudden lost their ability to use Olympus cameras having not much problems with other models except to note that the UI is overcomplicated.

I can say the Fuji X-E3 I had clearly out classes the PenF, so did the XT20, the EM5 MKII at this game. The EPL9 does outclass the PenF in general speed, focusing in lower light, and doing all much faster, but still has issues with C-AF.

I'll give a quick try tomorrow to the L setting just to examine further if I notice a difference between that and the H, but I believe I had already tried this. But you got me a notch curious.

Thanks for writing your point of view without restoring to attempts to personal attacks and reading, much appreciated.