Pen F users - some quick questions...

MEDISN wrote:

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.

Yeah, there's nothing really out there that will do it for Olympus cameras. I wrote a small fortran code that uses exiftool and imagemagick to do the overlay. Haven't quite figured out how to process the images correctly to get the white balance to look correct, but it at least shows you where the focus points are. I can provide the source code if you're interested.

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.

Yeah, the usefulness is general limited, I wrote it because we were having a discussion over on mu-43 about how using the motorsport tracking for animals, turns out it works bizarrely well with my golden retriever, and wanted something that could show the focus point movement.

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?

I was testing it with the 55-200. I've never used the 50-140 so I can't really comment on how well that combo would work. Seemed to maintain focus very well racking in and out for both stills and video. Slow motion video with good C-AF during rack zoom is a wonderful thing.

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.

I've found it's certainly better than, say FW 1.0 E-M1ii where the image would go way out of focus as soon as you turned the zoom ring, but the number of actual sharp shots is very low. With the new FW3.0 for the E-M1ii and the E-M1X it never goes way out of focus, but you end up with a bunch that are almost useable but very few in sharp focus. I had posted an example here with a truck coming towards the camera at around 60mph. Without rack zoom the E-M1X would usually get something like 90% hitrate or higher but you can see as soon as I started zooming out most of the shots are almost but not  quite in focus and then they snap back into focus once I reach the wide end of the lens. Hopefully Olympus can keep making progress on this.

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 really liked it on the A9, I shot the 85 GM on an A7ii for a brief period back when the lens was released and wasn't really impressed by the AF performance of that combo; the A9 seemed much better.

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 bought mine with the intention of reselling it just to evaluate it and the ergonomics convinced me the keep the darn thing. I've shot with pretty much every 1D/D* series body since the 1D2/D3 and I think the E-M1X has the best ergonomics out of any of them for my hands, especially with winter gloves.

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.

I'm hoping they do some updates to the AI tracking modes when the E-M5iii is released and/or put out a roadmap of what subject categories they plan to add. When you're shooting a subject it works with it's fantastic, but I find myself using it for unintended subjects (like using motorsports for downhill mountain biking as well as running dogs) and it can work quite well but also tends to be a bit unreliable when using it off label.

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.

I've actually found I get better hit rates with the 75 1.8 than the 40-150. I have no idea why as the AF motors in the 40-150 should be far superior but the 75 1.8 has been one of the best focusing lenses for me on the E-M1ii/X bodies.

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.

I'm really curious to see what the E-M5iii looks like. I have to admit, if they were to put the currently rumored E-M5.3 electronics in that showpiece OM-D "Brass Edition" they had showed off a few months ago I'd have a hard time not buying one.