StevenAdler
Senior Member
Probably we all have to wait a few weeks for the well known firmware upgrade placebo effect to wear off.
-
Welcome to the new forums! Please read this first. For known issues we are working to resolve, click here.
OM-1 Mk 1 Firmware 1.7 Released
- Thread starter Will Rose
- Start date
jrsforums
Senior Member
‘languish’?? Panasonic was praised for the number of significant firmware updates to the G9. The one thing lacking was PDAF…which had to be implemented in hardware!
jrsforums
Senior Member
Second praising post from a member with very low number of posts. Where are the high-number posters reviews?
Skeeterbytes
Forum Pro
Folks bagging on OMS for replacing the OM-1 too quickly have an ironic counterpart in G9 owners who waited six years for an upgrade. The second seems worse and one can infer as much about Panny's m4/3 intentions as they can about OMS's m4/3 plans when comparing the two.
jrsforums
Senior Member
I agree that it was about a year longer for upgrade than one would like. However, I do not think you will hear any (at least not many) G9 owners complain that they did not get their worth out of their G9, nor that Panasonic lacked in adding many new features during first 4.5 years…and squeezed just as much function as they could out of that platform.
You are attempting to excuse OMDS’s effective dropping of any new feature onthe OM-1, to sell OM-1M2, by comparing it to the G9 is a pretty poor action….and no comparison, at all!
Ranlee
Senior Member
"Bagging" on either brand isn't a good thing.
Michael Meissner
Forum Pro
Well it won't be at precisely the same time, but you can do a test on one camera:
- Go out with 2 SD cards prepared, one with the 1.6 firmware and the other with the 1.7 firmware
- Save your settings via the OIShare app
- Flash to 1.6 firmware
- Restore your settings via OIShare
- Maybe take a picture of piece of paper saying 1.6 firmware
- Shoot various stuff
- Turn off the camera and flash to 1.7 firmware
- Restore your settings via OIShare
- Maybe take a picture of a piece of paper saying 1.7 firmware
- Shoot various stuff
- Back at your computer, compare the photos side by side
Last edited:
I did the update this morning and spent an hour or so in the middle of the day shooting in my back yard. Just House Sparrows and such in awful conditions. Either bright sun or deep shadows. I owned an OM-1ii for a couple of weeks but returned it to B&H because I felt that the C-AF consistently missed in one easily repeatable situation, that came up several times, that I felt my OM-1 would have gotten. It was better with all points though and since this update seems to address that I only shot in C-AF with subject detection/birds in SH2 at 50fps with the 300mm F4 wide open. I was just looking for what I have found in the past to be challenging AF situations for the AF.
My super way too early conclusion is that it is noticeably better at picking small birds out with all points selected. It’s not magic but I think most of these examples would have been difficult for v1.6. These were not edited at all just raw files downloaded to my iPad Pro and exported as jpegs.
BIF seems about the same to me but I didn’t do too much of that. Hopefully some Hummingbirds will show up later. I think that will be an interesting test for all points AF. One thing that I noticed with the Mk2 is that in all points it could often lock up birds behind our 3 year old “temporary” wire fence to keep the dogs from eating the plants. My OM-1 would never do it in all points. Not a big deal as I don’t really need/want pics of birds behind the fence. Now the OM-1 will do it. They still have to be within a foot or tow of the wire but it works to a degree. I felt like the MK2 was a bit slower to grab focus than my OM-1 in some situations. I have not noticed that with my OM-1 and v1.7. Seems just as fast. I typically shoot with sensitivity at -1 and I didn’t change it for this “test”. I was not unhappy with the AF of my OM-1 but this does seem to be an improvement to me. I suspect that I will shoot with all points more frequently going forward.
Sparrow was barely visible and framed with stuff. I don’t believe v1.6 would have seen this bird in all points.
this bird was deep in a tree and it consistently stayed on her in all points.
Picked up this one quickly and didn’t stray.
Picked up this one nicely
But started losing focus when the second bird showed up. Didn’t focus on either one.
My super way too early conclusion is that it is noticeably better at picking small birds out with all points selected. It’s not magic but I think most of these examples would have been difficult for v1.6. These were not edited at all just raw files downloaded to my iPad Pro and exported as jpegs.
BIF seems about the same to me but I didn’t do too much of that. Hopefully some Hummingbirds will show up later. I think that will be an interesting test for all points AF. One thing that I noticed with the Mk2 is that in all points it could often lock up birds behind our 3 year old “temporary” wire fence to keep the dogs from eating the plants. My OM-1 would never do it in all points. Not a big deal as I don’t really need/want pics of birds behind the fence. Now the OM-1 will do it. They still have to be within a foot or tow of the wire but it works to a degree. I felt like the MK2 was a bit slower to grab focus than my OM-1 in some situations. I have not noticed that with my OM-1 and v1.7. Seems just as fast. I typically shoot with sensitivity at -1 and I didn’t change it for this “test”. I was not unhappy with the AF of my OM-1 but this does seem to be an improvement to me. I suspect that I will shoot with all points more frequently going forward.
Sparrow was barely visible and framed with stuff. I don’t believe v1.6 would have seen this bird in all points.
this bird was deep in a tree and it consistently stayed on her in all points.
Picked up this one quickly and didn’t stray.
Picked up this one nicely
But started losing focus when the second bird showed up. Didn’t focus on either one.
Regor250
Veteran Member
Using a different AF sensitivity may resolve such issue no?
Thanks, but I know how develop testing methodologies. The sort of testing you describe leads to capturing different subjects at different times under different conditions, which is suboptimal, and leads to people saying that bird was obscured differently than the other bird and so on. If that’s the sort of test you think is valuable, be my guest.
tomhongkong
Veteran Member
It’s a pity that a discussion about this upgrade has descended in to the usual hate speech, with the usual players.l
Let's look at what happened.
OMSystems (maybe as part of an Olympus hang over) wanted to introduce some new features which needed a hardware update hence the OM1ii.. Did this represent a betrayal of the OM1 users? The OM1 could not handle the processing requirements of the upgrade. Are those people (person) suggesting it was a betrayal also suggesting that those improvements should not have been delivered? Come off it! It’s a different camera, get used to it.
OM system have now delivered what may be a significant improvement to the original OM1 focus at the earliest date promised (yes it would have been better if it was available when the OMIi was announced) as well as the menu button change, which in my opinion was a waste of development effort
On the other hand Panasonic G9 (an otherwise excellent camera) has been held back for years by the absence of PDAF. They did not introduce a new model when I am sure they had the capability to do so, even if it meant eating a bit of humble pie. They did release significant software upgrades. So they ‘kept faith with their users by failing to walk with the times?’
Obviously some people are upset by OMSystems decision to upgrade the camera with hardware after 2 years. Some are upset by Panasonics failure to upgrade for 6 years
It’s not a question of unfairly ‘bagging’ one make or another but simply stating facts. let’s leave the complaining behind.
Now can we move on to get more user experience on the focus upgrade…could it be that the SD for birds has been revised but aeroplanes have been left behind?
Tom
Michael Meissner
Forum Pro
Sure I realize that, and the only real testing is to have 2 identical cameras at exactly the same time. But given you don't have 2 cameras, it might give an indication of if 1.7 has advantages over the 1.6 firmware.
whumber
Senior Member
Seriously?
Hubertus Bigend
Well-known member
- Messages
- 145
- Reaction score
- 173
A lot of things seem to have changed under the hood, much more than the official description lets on, and I'm far from having a full picture yet, but low-contrast AF unfortunately is not one of them.
Except, compared to the 1.6 firmware which had slowed things down a lot there (at least for some cameras including mine), at version 1.7 the AF now fails much quicker if it can't acquire focus on low contrast subjects.
I now fear we can't avoid the conclusion any longer that the bad AF performance on low-contrast subjects must be due to the OM-1 sensor's specific PDAF design.
tomhongkong
Veteran Member
Regrettably
jrsforums
Senior Member
Ranlee
Senior Member
I don't know for sure who you are talking about but since you specifically mentioned "bagging" which was a part of the short conversation between myself and Skeeterbytes, a conversation that - in my estimation - did not warrant the label of "hate speech" by either of our inputs. If this conversation was the motivation behind your charge of "hate speech" I suggest you learn what "hate speech" really is before you comment further. I find your charge reprehensible and I take it personally!
The focusing /tracking on the G9 II really is terrible even with PDAF. And, AFAIK panasonic has still not come up with a major FW update. Mine is gathering dust as I went back to the OM-1.
Similar threads
Keyboard shortcuts
- f
- Forum