E-M5 and 60mm Macro: How to manally focus?

Turn off auto-magnification (I believe it is called focus aid or something like that in the menus).

If you have it "on", magnification kicks in as soon as you turn the focus ring.

You can map the magnify function to a button.  That way, you can choose not to have the auto-magnify in every case, but still have quick access to magnification if you want it.

Three things with this camera and this lens for macro photography:

1) This is a pretty-much unbeatable combination, though other mft bodies with this lens will of course work well.

2) The usefulness of tap-to-focus-and-expose on the rear LCD can't be overstated for macro work. It's the best thing ever.

3) A good setup if you want to focus manually with the ring is to de-couple the focusing and the shutter button. I have fn2 as the focus button, not the shutter button. That way you can use the ring but not press fn2, or focus with fn2 and then the shutter button doesn't refocus.

sinkas wrote:

You can change the magnification from 14x to 10x to 7x to 5x by rotating the front dial while manually focussing. You can turn off MF assist in Menu, Cogs, AF/MF, Mf Assist Off.

For macro photography at 1:1 turn off AF and you should move the camera not try and focus.

This is extremely helpful. In the hope that my own experience might be helpful to someone, I will briefly state it here.

I am about to undertake the digitization of thousands of slides, and I have discovered 3 ways of doing it rapidly in large numbers, using a camera. (A scanner takes 4 minutes a slide; commercial digitization costs $.69 per slide or only $.22 if I am willing to send my precioius slides to Bhutan).

My tests so far show that the Oly 60mm macro is superb for this purpose as well as being a fine portrait lens. This is consistent with the reviews of SLRGear, Ming Thein, and others, who find this lens superb. I am using an Oly EM-10.

Formerly I tried slide digitization with a Nex 5n and the Sony 30mm macro. The Oly 60mm is far superior; I returned the 30mm.

I have been using ShotCopy so far, to hold the slide and move the camera on the ShotCopy base. A very good system.

Recently I acquired from Dodd's Camera in Ohio, a Kiwi macro sliding rail for about $80, a small fraction of the price of similar units, and it turns out to be a precision instrument, calibrated, very well made.

I wish to work on a desktop rather than a tripod, so I will mount the Kiwi unit on the ShotCopy base and I will be able to move the camera a fraction of a millimeter in each of 4 directions: forward and back, or side to side. The ShotCopy slide holder can be moved up and down, or rotated on a vertical axis.

It is very helpful to know that for macro, the idea is to move the camera, not use autofocus or manual focus. I didn't know that.

The OM-10 has focus peaking, so that should be a major help as well.

The Kiwi unit will be helpful in the other two methods I have in mind, which are even faster and easier than ShotCopy (which can copy 12 slides in 2 minutes).

I also acquired for about $49 a very good light box, 10" x 12," with two internal lights, by PortaTrace, from Amazon, for use in a second even faster method of digitization. It looks to be of very high quality.

I hope this information will be helpful to other forum members.

(I have no connection with any of the firms mentioned here.)

Krugman

JeanPierre Martel wrote:

Oli4D wrote:

How do I use the ring to manual focus, especially when the lens is set to 1:1?

To do (strictly speaking) macrophotography, the steps are:
— put the camera in manual mode (4th item, at left, in the menu/AM-MF/AF mode/Still Picture/MF)
— Set the priority to Aperture Mode ("A" on the dial)
— Select the aperture needed (for the Depth of Field that you want)
— (_Don't_ turn the Focus ring): set focus by moving the camera toward the subject or vice-versa

The focus ring is used in manual close-up photography, not macrophotography.

For detailed instructions, use Google to load that text (in French) in order to get a rough English translation:
http://jpmartel.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/m-zuiko-60mm-macro/

Thank you, very clear and helpful, I am saving it.

Krugman

As a correction, I don't own  Kodak PixPro 1 and I don't know how it got on my gear list.

Krugman