Pen F users - some quick questions...

whumber wrote:

MEDISN wrote:

whumber wrote:

Raist3d wrote:

You win. That’s what matters

Important to note than in MEDISN's example the subject is moving at approximately 2mph. That said, it's still a very good example for the Pen-F, I never saw results that good. I don't know if he's able to get results like that consistently or not but given that there's not much to configure on the Pen-F maybe he's just better than pressing the shutter button than everyone else, =). That or maybe Olympus made some stealth FW updates.

Sounds about right. 2mph = 3ft/sec, so roughly 7 inches per frame in the burst. The DOF at the beginning of the sequence was ~ 10 inches and narrowed to ~3 inches by the end. You would think the two OOF shots would be more likely to occur at the end where DOF is much shallower but they occurred at shot 16 and 26 so probably just random misses.

16 I can see being a little out because the AF point grabbed onto the hair on the left but then I would have expected 13 to be out as well. In 26 the AF point is right on the face so it could be a miss, or if Olympus is doing some kind of temporal smoothing it could be the af point miss at 23 finally catching up. Pure conjecture though as I don't know what they're actually doing behind the scenes. In any case, none of them are really far out, at worst they're slightly soft. Even at the speed the subject is moving this is a solid performance for a CDAF system. View the image at 100% to get the animated GIF to play.

Someday you're going to have to show me how you get the focus box to show like that outside of the camera playback. Olympus Viewer I thought used to do this but Workspace doesn't seem to offer it.

And yes, all compounded by the fact that the little green square allegedly indicating the focus point is in the right place doesn't always mean the focus is in the right place. I use it as more of a "I wonder what the camera was trying for". But even with the A9, a lenses ability to accommodate isn't always up to the task.

Notice I wasn't rack zooming either as hit rate drops with all of my mirrorless including the A9 and EM1X. Not so bad when the subject is coming toward the camera but everything starts to struggle when the subject is moving away from the camera. Or may just be my technique.

The only mirrorless camera I've had good success with while racking zoom was the X-T3.

Interesting, I'll have to check it out. Still haven't used one or seen one in the wild. I assume you're pairing it with the 50-140?

If Olympus could fix that issue in the E-M1X I think I'd be pretty much set.

To be honest I haven't put any effort into it on the EM1X because I've been using the 300 a lot with the 40-150 on the EM1mkII. Shooting surf at sunrise Wednesday, if I remember, I'll give it a try.

That's kind of disappointing to hear that the A9 suffers the same issue, the only experience I have with the A9 was with the 85 GM so never got a chance to test that in person.

Well that's a stellar combination and one of my favorites for portraiture. With the 100-400 the hit rate drops to ~50% in my hands. Still usable but I still try to avoid. The last time I really used it though was firmware 5.

I do find it kind of hilarious that nobody other than Michael the Maven on youtube seems to think that this is an AF behavior worth testing. BTW, how are you liking the E-M1X? I think last time we discussed C-AF behavior you were still shooting the E-M1ii.

FW 3.0 really nixed my interest in the EM1X...until someone was using one on set a few months ago. She was shooting tethered via 802.11ac with JPG's showing 1:1 on twin 65" OLED's. I was shocked it was tethering this well given my A9 + CamRanger 2 frustrations. None of the reliability/signal issues I was used to. She was kind enough to let me shoot for a bit while the talent was on break. I had GH5's with me and no long zooms but several PRO primes to play with. Had a great conversation and piqued my interest. I pulled the trigger during the first price drop ~ $2500 or so as I recall.

I don't know if you shoot any winter sports or other activities, but if you haven't tried it with winter gloves on yet I think you're in for a really pleasant surprise.

I sincerely hope the ergonomics trickle down to the EM1mkIII - it is one of the most ergonomic bodies I have ever used. AI motorsports mode is ridiculous. Even my D500 wasn't that good and certainly not at that burst rate. It's getting close to glove season - a few more months. I'm looking forward to it. My only problem seems to be hitting the video record button when I'm reaching for ISO. I don't know why my finger insists on confusing these - must be muscle memory from one of my other cameras.

If you really want to make a camera hurt, try the swingset torture test. Get in close and shoot wide open with a fast prime, eye-AF enabled. Hold the shutter down until it starts buffering. When you sort through in post you might get 15-20% sharp on the subjects face even with the A9 and EM1mkII

Yeah, that's a seriously brutal test, I had recommended that test to the DPReview guys a year or so ago in one of the review comments and they seemed to think it was a great idea but I guess not enough to start implementing in their testing. When I've run these kinds of tests with DFD cameras like the GH5 and now G9 they seem to just give up and the only in focus shots are when the subject happens to pass through the current focus plane, kind of a broken clock thing, =).

Trap focus and get one sharp shot coming and one sharp shot going - that's how I still do it with film

The 34 shot PEN-F sequence was firmware 3.0 but I don't recall experiencing any dramatic change in AF going back to 2016 when the camera was released.

My experience with the Pen-F was never quite as bad as what TCSTV posted when they shot with the 300 PRO, but it was very inconsistent and I don't remember ever getting more than half or so in focus, even with relatively simple motion.

I've never even tried the 300 on it. I suppose I could for academic purposes but it's like hooking up a trailer to the 911. Even if it could tow, there are options more purpose built for that.

Certainly nothing like what you posted above with any form of reliability, but then again I never invested too much effort into the Pen-F C-AF based on my initial experiences coupled with the reviews.

Yeah, it's not my first choice for sports/action for a number of reasons. But I think CDAF gets a bad rap in general with C-AF. The G9 does quite well at motorsports without PDAF.

As others have posted here it may well be lens dependent. My assumption would be that many PEN-F's are paired with compact budget primes most of the time which may yield disappointing results. Then factor in the other variables like settings, target contrast, light levels, and user ability and it's easy to see how results can vary.

This is a good point, I tend not to save sequence with lot of OOF shots so I can't really dig in but most of the time I was using either the 17 1.8 or 75 1.8 with the Pen-F. I did do some testing with the 40-150 and don't remember it being noticeably better but maybe there was a camera or lens firmware update that made some difference.

I suspect in side-by-side testing you'll see a noticeable difference in acquisition and accuracy between the 75/1.8 and 40-150/2.8. I love the 75 for many reasons but I have never found it to behave like the PRO lenses in CAF. I would kill for a weather-sealed PRO version at that focal length.

The types of motion I shoot CAF with the PEN-F tend to be street/lifestyle/travel candid's and portraits plus kids at play as in the sequence above. For that type of shooting the PEN-F doesn't disappoint. I've never tried motorsports or surfing with it as it isn't weather sealed and the big lenses tend to balance better on the larger bodies.

I really liked it as a travel camera, I only got rid of mine because I wanted to shoot with the PRO prime lenses more and it really didn't balance well in my hand with those.

I mostly pair it with compact primes for travel and family outings. I fly ~100k miles per year domestic and foreign. The PEN-F is always in my messenger bag.