Hummingbirds from Panama, OM1 autofocus works well

I have seen a number of threads recently questioning the autofocus of the OM1. I can say that my OM1 has worked well in all the conditions I have used it. Focus is very fast and acurate.

I am sharing a few images of hummingbirds from a recent trip to Panama. Hummingbirds are small and fast so always a challenge. I never use flash so all these rely on natural light. All were in gardens and not at feeders.

1st image is a perched bird an easy shot. Camera finds the eye and focuses on it.




Stipped-tail mountain gem female.

The next 2 images are of a Coquette, a very small humingbird that we were not able to get close to. I am showing what the orihinal image is like and what the cropped image of 3mp looks like. The 300 F4 captures an amazing amount of detail even at distance. The bird detection grabbed the bird even this small in the frame.


original


cropped

Next are humingbirds in flight. Bird detection was used in every case. makes life much easier as you can concentrate on composition. I have many more images like this but don't want to post too many.


lessor purple violeteer


Scintallint Female, very small


Scintallint male, again very small


Talamanca, endemic to Panama and Costa Rica highlands

I only use electronic shutter at 25fps as it really does help to get "the shot" but I have been asked about rolling shutter. This last picture is a terrible image but I have included this to answer the question of rolling shutter. As the hummingbirds back away from a feeder they acelerate. I went through hundreds of images to find this as Humingbirds is the only time I have ever seen rolling shutter and even then only under specific conditions. It will not stop me from using electronic shutter.



So again I will say the autofocus on the OM1 works very well. I think that if I miss a shot it is my issue not the cameras. I think the vast majority of OM1 owners will agree

Gorgeous, very well done.

It also appears you understand:

1. Hummingbirds
2. Your gear

Those are the key to the "well done" part above. Thank you.

Nice series! And good to know your OM-1 works well, some of those threads (or posts) you are referring to suggest that the AF has all but stopped working ;-)

Beautiful work. The OM1 AF is excellent I have found.

Some gorgeous birds, you found! Really enjoyed your series and writeup.

I haven't yet seen rolling shutter when using it for sports; your elongated bird wing shows it can still occur but isn't really the limitation it once was. I just wish we could attenuate the frame rate below 25--I often collect too many shots!

Cheers,

Rick

Neilatolds said:

I have seen a number of threads recently questioning the autofocus of the OM1. I can say that my OM1 has worked well in all the conditions I have used it. Focus is very fast and acurate.

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Of course AF didn't work because they were shooting blank walls! Under low light conditions!

You pictures are wonderful to look at. Great results!

You mention "Rolling Shutter" can I ask what was the shutter speed used for the capture? Could some of that be a slow shutter speed when the hummer accelerates showing more wing blur?

Thanks, Patrick

Why is there no EXIF data?

Tedolph

These are all raw files edited in lightroom. I export from lightroom for web which by default removes everything but my name, I have not changed default. I have recompressed the scintallant female without adjustments or cropping and with data and attached it. I can assure all were taken with the OM1 with the 300F4 this one with the 1.4 TC.

Shutter speed was 1/2500 which is very marginal for hummingbirds and does account for the blur in this image. However, this does not account for the wierd "waves" in the wings, this is rolling shutter. Again I have only seen this in maybe 2-3% of hummingbird shots as they have an an extremely fast wingbeat when accelerating. I have never seen rolling shutter in any of my other images, it is not an issue.

Thanks for the positive comment. I have been an olympus user for 15+years and I have had my OM1 for a year on March 5. In that time it has done 3 weeks in Kenya and a month in Panama. I do not use mechanical shutter and I go through and delete unwanted images daily in the field so cannot definitively say how many images I have taken but am sure it is upwards of 75,000. I have custom settings and buttons all programed to the way I want them for me. The OM1 is a very complex camera and if you want to get the most out of it you do have know the camera and be able to adjust quickly to the situation. There is no one setting that always works.

Don't know how well I know hummingbirds, just take lots of shots. I do know that if you can get them approaching the flower they are slowing down so best chance to get a good image.

Neilatolds said:

I have seen a number of threads recently questioning the autofocus of the OM1. I can say that my OM1 has worked well in all the conditions I have used it. Focus is very fast and acurate.

I am sharing a few images of hummingbirds from a recent trip to Panama. Hummingbirds are small and fast so always a challenge. I never use flash so all these rely on natural light. All were in gardens and not at feeders.

1st image is a perched bird an easy shot. Camera finds the eye and focuses on it.


Stipped-tail mountain gem female.

The next 2 images are of a Coquette, a very small humingbird that we were not able to get close to. I am showing what the orihinal image is like and what the cropped image of 3mp looks like. The 300 F4 captures an amazing amount of detail even at distance. The bird detection grabbed the bird even this small in the frame.


original


cropped

Next are humingbirds in flight. Bird detection was used in every case. makes life much easier as you can concentrate on composition. I have many more images like this but don't want to post too many.


lessor purple violeteer


Scintallint Female, very small


Scintallint male, again very small


Talamanca, endemic to Panama and Costa Rica highlands

I only use electronic shutter at 25fps as it really does help to get "the shot" but I have been asked about rolling shutter. This last picture is a terrible image but I have included this to answer the question of rolling shutter. As the hummingbirds back away from a feeder they acelerate. I went through hundreds of images to find this as Humingbirds is the only time I have ever seen rolling shutter and even then only under specific conditions. It will not stop me from using electronic shutter.



So again I will say the autofocus on the OM1 works very well. I think that if I miss a shot it is my issue not the cameras. I think the vast majority of OM1 owners will agree

Click to expand...

Very beautiful images! Thanks for sharing, I have never tried shooting hummingbirds, and if the darn winter ever ends, I would like to attempt some this year. Thanks for the motivation!

About the AF. I think there's a bit of confusion on both sides.

Firstly, those pointing out room for S-AF improvement on the OM-1, may want to think about who the camera was designed for, and if S-AF is something they use very much.

To me, the camera was specifically designed for people who use continuous AF, photographing fast moving subjects, and take 30-100 shots at a time and keep 1 or 2 images of the 100, and throw the rest away. It isn't made for taking out for snap-shots.

In contrast, people who are offended by people showing there may be room for improvement in the S-AF area, are coming to the AF defense by showing how well the C-AF works. Maybe forgetting that other folks might have bought the camera for a different use case then the spray and pray style of bird photography. They wouldn't mind a firmware update to address the s-af issue, which wouldn't hurt the spray and pray people in the slightest. They could ignore the update when it would be released.

I don't own an OM-1, nor plan to. As I have dug through information on this forum, I notice that Olympus(now OM) have always had these huge defenders, who always seem to come to the rescue of this brand, when anybody has any type of wanted improvement. It has been going on so long, you wonder if the last camera was so perfect, why did they release a new one? Defenders come saying "nah uh, it is perfect, no improvements needed." Then when the next model comes out, we finally hear how this or that is better than my last cam, because of xyz..... This will end up being the case for the next model as well, and we will end up in the same boot loop.

So basically, yeah everything can always improve, but your blank wall proves nothing. Neither does proving the S-AF is spot on, by showing us how well the spray and pray c-af functions.

Don't know about other people, but I "spray and pray" mostly for the compositions and not necessary for the AF because it's good enough.

Birds fly and flap their wings from point A to point B, and I have very little control over what they will do. With high frame rate, I get to have many different compositions (bird & background) to choose from in a sequence instead of just a few, and believe me, I still missed more than a few shots. Camera is a tool, and why should I limit myself if there are features I can utilize to get the image I want?

number_5 said:

Don't know about other people, but I "spray and pray" mostly for the compositions and not necessary for the AF because it's good enough.

Birds fly and flap their wings from point A to point B, and I have very little control over what they will do. With high frame rate, I get to have many different compositions (bird & background) to choose from in a sequence instead of just a few, and believe me, I still missed more than a few shots. Camera is a tool, and why should I limit myself if there are features I can utilize to get the image I want?

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I was not not stating anybody shouldn't use the camera as such, in fact I was endorsing that type of use.

That type of use is what the OM-1 was designed for. That was basically my whole point. The OM-1 is basically specifically designed for fast moving subjects, which fantastic C-AF can be very useful for, so that's what they made the camera really really good at. Maybe so much so, it almost forces you to use it to have the best experience.

People will always complain, that's why they even started to make C-AF better and better, people complained it wasn't good enough. Now they left out the S-AF people, so they are firing back.

The best thing (IMO) we can do is not defend the brand (especially if you do it by showcasing a different use case, than in question)(in this case showing us how good the C-AF works, to "prove" the S-AF complainers wrong).

If people keep shut, the brands respond by addressing the issue. Look at Panasonic, they don't have brand defenders (like "ehh hum"). All the folks who love and use Panasonic could always still admit the AF could use PDAF system. Guess what we got it.

I don't honestly see the point in firing back (not necessarily only this thread, but in general on the forum) about the S-AF issue, especially when most of the firing back is by folks who likely have their cameras locked to various C-AF modes, because they benefit their photography so much more.

What would it honestly hurt if OMDS tried to fix the S-AF a bit? That's the actual part of the logic of firing back I don't get. If they fix it and you own one, your camera benefits too, and if you don't want the update (because the camera was already perfect), than don't update it.

Jappie52 said:

Nice series! And good to know your OM-1 works well, some of those threads (or posts) you are referring to suggest that the AF has all but stopped working ;-)

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I have suspects that not all cameras respond equally to autofocusing. Mine seems to get proper detection squares but autofocus is often nuts.

I would actually agree the OM1 is focussed on fast action. I used an EM1 Mk2 for 4 years before my OM1 and was very satified with the auto focus for everything but fast action. In fact for people that to not shoot fast action should probably get a used mk2 for a great price and it would meet your needs just fine. If you want to shoot fast action there is no comparison.

As for people defending the brand I will say I get tired of people that always attack the brand, especially when they have never even had the camera in their hands or truly taken the time to learn it. It is a complex camera and takes time to learn and get the best from as is true of any camera of this type. My wife has had a Nikon D500 and a Sony A7R4 and both had a learning curve. Watching lots of videos from other users, taking their setting and adjusting them for your own use.

Neilatolds said:

I would actually agree the OM1 is focussed on fast action. I used an EM1 Mk2 for 4 years before my OM1 and was very satified with the auto focus for everything but fast action. In fact for people that to not shoot fast action should probably get a used mk2 for a great price and it would meet your needs just fine. If you want to shoot fast action there is no comparison.

As for people defending the brand I will say I get tired of people that always attack the brand, especially when they have never even had the camera in their hands or truly taken the time to learn it. It is a complex camera and takes time to learn and get the best from as is true of any camera of this type. My wife has had a Nikon D500 and a Sony A7R4 and both had a learning curve. Watching lots of videos from other users, taking their setting and adjusting them for your own use.

Click to expand...

I think both the Nikon and Sony cameras mentioned had firmware updates. The updates were to not fix things, correct?

I am pretty sure the A7R4 firmware update had some AF fixes. I wonder if they fixed complaints, or fixed things people were complementing. Which one do you think they fixed, compliments or complaints?

With "ehh hum" and it's military, folks are sick (offended) by any complaints. I bet the same offended folks download the firmware update when it comes out, you know the updates that fix all those things folks compliment and are asking to keep exactly the same, yet get changed through said update.

I think Robin Wong (who brought this current concern about "ehh hum" camera to surface) had showed the issue he had, with the actual camera in hand. Seems as if folks are still offended, even though he had the device.

To say, who would buy a sports camera for S-AF, who cares of S-AF performance, is one thing. It's a whole other thing to say he is wrong, then try to prove it wrong, by showcasing a different use case, that doesn't even test his complaint.

It seems like trying to prove him wrong, by not even addressing his concern, is another example of "not truly taking the time" to even prove it wrong, instead prove it's good at something else.

I guess you didn't get the point the of my last post so I will write it differently. I did not say Robin was "wrong" although he has not had the camera very long. What I will say again hopefully more clearly is that OM Systems through branding/advertising is very clearly identifying their target as action, adventure, travel and now macro. This is a smart move as is that is the systems strength and the vast majority people that use it for this are more than satisfied. Om Systems does not have the resources of Sony or Canon and if they release updates it will probably be to their strength.

Robins genre is not the systems strength so why they probably didn't renew their relationship with him. No camera system is right for everyone. To suggest OM Systems should adapt make changes to satisfy him is wrong. Get the right tool for the job.

You should also refrain from comments like "I am pretty sure" as we owned a Nikon D500 and still own a A7R4 I can tell you they did not release any useful firmware ungrades for either camera. These are both good cameras but you got what you bought.

P.S. Sony actually released a A7R4a, if you wanted the upgrade you had to buy a whle new camera.