OM-5 HHHR for night shooting

Last evening my wife and I went to a shopping area to photograph some of the holiday light displays. I was curious how my OM-5 might do using the HandHeld High Rez., particularly compared to the HandHeld Starlight Scene mode that I have used in the past.

At first it was a bust.... Camera set to Aperture Mode, HHHR , 25mpx JPEG + Raw. My ISO was too low and the image stabilization could not overcome the slow shutter speed/hand shake from my 78 year old mitts. I kept getting a process error. So.... I just took a stab and bumped the ISO up to 3200 and things started to work. I didn't change any setting for the rest of the night, shutter speeds were between 1/30 second and 1/160 second and the HHHR image alignment for the 16 images stacked for each shot did a really good job. Aperture on my 12-45 f/4 was constant at f/4.5 and since the ISO was fixed at 3200 I need to adjust the exposure comp, usually at minus .7 and some as low as minus 1.7.

I am really pleased with the first time results with a kind of brute force go at the settings, particularly the 25mpx JPEGS that have almost zero noise and great detail.... even better results than the 50mpx raw files.

Here's Handheld Starlight scene image and than the 25mpx HHHR JPEG taken when I zoomed in on the top 4 light globes. The Starlight has s crop and some highlight reduction. But......... the HHHR closeup is the full JPEG image SOOC, no adjustment made. There is some motion blur in a couple of the globes (breezy night), but the center top globe is pretty good, IMO.

HandHeld Starlight Scene mode Mode

Handheld Hi Rez