Olympus camera (PM2/PL5/PL6) settings questions

CNY_AP wrote:

Cameras shoot way too fast for my purpose. I will be remotely shooting continuously (rubber bands holding down the shutter button - same as I do now with my Fuji F20/F30) on a R/C airplane and quadrotor " drone. I want to slow the camera down to around 0.5 or 1FPS so I don't have 1000+ images to look through (and I do not want to add complexity & weight with a servo or other "old school" triggering means).

GM1 would be the best for aerial photography, but that 1/50 shutter sync speed worries me.

So I'm considering buying the E-PM2 (used) or PL6. Their manuals do not give the min and max setting/value for the "L FPS" and "H FPS" settings.

1) I assume if I set "L FPS" to "1", it will shoot at 1FPS. Correct?

1b) Can I set "L FPS" to a value lower than 1? What are the valid ranges? 1 to 8 FPS I assume.

Ignore that and use burst mode set however you like, but set anti-shock to any of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 seconds and use a diamond shooting mode to get a frame rate from that selection.

2) If I have exposure bracketing selected to shoot 3 levels, and I have the shutter held down, what will happen? Will it shoot just 3 images, or will it shoot until the card is full?

3 images only.

(it would be great if I could create HDRs via post processing. Also useful to have multiple exposures to surely get some "keepers")

Shoot RAW and plenty can be HDRed out of that raw file.

3) What about other modes, such as HDR? Will it shoot HDRs until the card is full if I keep the shutter held down?

Usually those special modes will only shoot the set then stop.

For continuous shooting it can be jpeg, or raw or raw+jpeg, your choice.

4) What is the max number of shots that I can I set the self-timer to take? (if I can set this to a large number, perhaps it would work for slowing down the camera, similar to a time-lapse mode).

Not enough on those earlier models, and not much more on later ones. Some external programmable release would make most sense, like the Hahnel thing. http://www.hahnel.ie/index.cfm/action/productSearch/pid/80 radio link (possibly too short) or directly plugged into the camera.

5) Olympus' site states that the shutter delay for combating shutter shock can also be used for creating time-lapse delays. Has anyone tried this? Seems to me if I can set the delay to 1s, I should be able to slow the camera down to 1FPS. Or set to 2s delay for 0.5FPS.

Yes, as I mentioned above but selection range is in that 2x form from 1/8 to 30 secs.

6) Olympus is unclear what happens when the camera's buffer gets filled. If shooting "raw", and I hold the shutter down, will the camera totally stop at some point (after 10 to 20 shots), or will it keep shooting (slowly) after the camera's buffer is full? I hope so, hopefully at 1FPS or slower.

It slows down when buffer is full but keeps shooting. If a 1 or 2 second delay and shooting raw files only it may just keep going forever at the same rate, needs experiments to find out.

7) I'll be using the 14mm F2.5 lens (affordable, only 2oz, and seems plenty sharp enough "on paper"). I hope it works OK with the Oly cameras, or will chromatic aberrations and other issues not be removed via the camera?).

No CA correction on those earlier bodies in your subject line.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many settings Olympus has. If only they made the shutter mechanism "smoother/gentler" and/or made whatever holds the sensor to be "sturdier" (to avoid the dreaded shutter shock), these cameras would be nearly perfect.

Shutter shock is due to the focal plane shutter when in certain shutter speed ranges, most times not a bother at all. It won't go away until you use a fully electronic shutter operation or a global shutter which may arrive this century sometime.

The later addition of 0 second anti-shock on some later bodies uses electronic first curtain shutter and eliminates shock problems.

Frankly I'd be looking at (compact) cameras that use an in-lens shutter to avoid many shock and weight problems.

Regards... Guy

Thanks Guy...so the anti-shock delay could be used to slow the camera down, or since I'll shoot raw, it might shoot at my desired speed out of pure/dumb luck.

I'd like to get more dynamic range than a P&S camera offers, and decent P&S cameras (Sony rx100) weigh quite a bit (and for the Rx100, cost too much).

To get a decent images (because the plane bobbles up and down & left and right in the wind), I need the shutter speed to be at least 1/250s, preferably well over 1/500, so hopefully with fast shutter and using the anti-shutter shock settings, I'll be OK.  My current camera is ISO 100, versus I'll shoot ISO 200.  My current camera also often steps down to F4.0, whereas I'll force the new camera to F2.8 unless it is a very bright day.  My shutter speeds will hopefully be 1/1000s.

I turn the electric motor off and glide whenever the camera is aimed at my "subject", but the plane's movements due to the winds are pretty severe.  I haven't flown my quad-rotor yet, but it can't glide of course, so propeller vibrations will likely be a huge issue.  Hopefully shutter shock is due to the shutter's design, but the camera's sensor is not prone to vibrating - otherwise the propellers might cause huge vibrations.  I could turn the motors off for a second every so often I suppose.

The Oly PM2 sells for $100 used (body only) and the 14mm lens is $150...not a to to lose if it doesn't pan out.

You made me curious and my E-PL1 was handy, so I set anti-shock to 1 sec and continuous capture with JPEG+raw enabled.

The camera exposes every second with the shutter held down and does buffered writes to card as it goes. After about eight shots, it cannot empty the buffer fast enough so the time between shots is extended by 2x or more. Releasing the shutter at that point and the camera keeps writing to the card for half a minute.

Switching off raw capture and doing just max resolution/best quality JPEG, it can write the buffer fast enough that it will keep going until the card is full as long as the shutter is held down.

I hadn't thought of using anti-shock to create a limited intervalometer before... I'll have to drag out the E-M1 or E-PL7 and see how they do. They've got much more buffer than the E-PL1 (I think) and write faster.

Interesting opportunities for stop motion movies ...

Oh yeah: I was looking at the latest LR6 so I did a 1 second exposure timing sweep of my office, dumped all 20 exposures into LR, and said Merge to Panorama. Just minute later and I beautifully stitched panorama shot (of a totally boring subject)! Wow, what fun we can have...

G

Just now tried E-PL5 set to raw file only and 1 second and 2 second anti-shock and set burst and held the shutter down to see what happens.

Raw file only is definitely faster than raw+jpeg and even at 1 second I see the write indicator blink off safely before the next shot is taken, so it would never slow down, 2 seconds even safer of course. The card is a Class 10 that tests as a Class 15 for write if there were such a class.

But hey, videos are much nicer for aerials, just watched one on Topsham UK where we are staying in June and it was good to watch https://vimeo.com/103628179 Phantom 2 and GoPro 3+ it says in the end notes, whereas stills are just a bunch of stills.

Regards.... Guy

Godfrey wrote:

You made me curious and my E-PL1 was handy, so I set anti-shock to 1 sec and continuous capture with JPEG+raw enabled.

The camera exposes every second with the shutter held down and does buffered writes to card as it goes. After about eight shots, it cannot empty the buffer fast enough so the time between shots is extended by 2x or more. Releasing the shutter at that point and the camera keeps writing to the card for half a minute.

Switching off raw capture and doing just max resolution/best quality JPEG, it can write the buffer fast enough that it will keep going until the card is full as long as the shutter is held down.

I hadn't thought of using anti-shock to create a limited intervalometer before... I'll have to drag out the E-M1 or E-PL7 and see how they do. They've got much more buffer than the E-PL1 (I think) and write faster.

Interesting opportunities for stop motion movies ...

Oh yeah: I was looking at the latest LR6 so I did a 1 second exposure timing sweep of my office, dumped all 20 exposures into LR, and said Merge to Panorama. Just minute later and I beautifully stitched panorama shot (of a totally boring subject)! Wow, what fun we can have...

G

Thanks Guy! I didn't think to turn off JPEGs when I did the raw capture with the E-PL1... I'm sure the E-PL5 (and E-PL7) write faster too, anyway.

I could see doing aerial stills more if I have a control wired so I can tell the camera when to make the exposure and a remote view screen so I can see what the camera is doing. OIShare might have some application here for reasonable distances. Otherwise, I tend to agree that video from a drone is more interesting.

But others have other ideas. Nothing wrong with that!

G

Thanks for testing.  Can the delay be set to 1.5s or just integer values?  Just curious.

Adding the video downlink adds weight and complexity, and then I'd would always NEED a second person to watch my plane or the screen (it's against AMA and likely now FAA rules to fly by first person view - one person must use their plain old eyes to directly watch the airplane).

I need stills because create calendars mostly for myself, and give for xmas presents, and I sell a few at work to whoever asked about it during the prior year. Also, from my airplane, video is boring in that the plane bounces around quite a bit. Maybe once my quad is built, I'll find video more interesting.

Another arson I like to simply hold the shutter down is that many of my most interesting images are not of the lake or whatever I was primarily shooting. Often in the "other direction", there are interesting things that I likely never would have shot if I was carefully framing/choosing each shot.

Because I simply have the camera shooting every 2 seconds (my current/old/slow camera), I almost always get the shot I wanted just by "dumb luck" (I shoot 400+ images, but most of them are pointing way up, or at the ground, or are blurry, or were not pointed at the lake).

I have the camera shooting to the left and slightly forward so the wing is not is the images. When I fly towards my right, the camera is shooting generally in the direction I am facing. So I glide in that direction (no propeller vibration - this is the key mistake people make). I then power back up, turn, fly back to my left while gaining altitude, turn right, and glide to make another pass. Each time I fly at a slightly different angle in case I missed the lake (which I often do, but the "film" is free, so who cares).

With a quadrotor/drone, the "keeper ratio" should be higher since the quad rotor will be level. The open-source software my quad uses (the APM 2.5 board) even accepts programmable GPS locations/waypoints. Via waypoints, I could aim it towards my "subject", have it stop, and even have it slowly turn (so I can create a panoramic on the computer, which I haven't' seen anyone do yet, so don't spread this idea around, hahaha. Also have not seen anyone do an aerial HDR - that's why I hoped it would shoot non stop bracketed).

CNY_AP wrote:

Thanks for testing. Can the delay be set to 1.5s or just integer values? Just curious.

Fractional seconds up to 1s, then doublings (1, 2, 4, 8, etc).

G

CNY_AP wrote:

Thanks for testing. Can the delay be set to 1.5s or just integer values? Just curious.

Just that list I made above, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 seconds.

Adding the video downlink adds weight and complexity, and then I'd would always NEED a second person to watch my plane or the screen (it's against AMA and likely now FAA rules to fly by first person view - one person must use their plain old eyes to directly watch the airplane).

Yes, I see, the rules will definitely determine the future use of these gadgets.

I need stills because create calendars mostly for myself, and give for xmas presents, and I sell a few at work to whoever asked about it during the prior year. Also, from my airplane, video is boring in that the plane bounces around quite a bit. Maybe once my quad is built, I'll find video more interesting.

OK, understood. I do realise that according to the size of the airplane, things can get a bit bouncy. Only the self correcting 'copters would make things more stable.

Another arson I like to simply hold the shutter down is that many of my most interesting images are not of the lake or whatever I was primarily shooting. Often in the "other direction", there are interesting things that I likely never would have shot if I was carefully framing/choosing each shot.

Always true, luckily digital shots come cheap.

Because I simply have the camera shooting every 2 seconds (my current/old/slow camera), I almost always get the shot I wanted just by "dumb luck" (I shoot 400+ images, but most of them are pointing way up, or at the ground, or are blurry, or were not pointed at the lake).

I have the camera shooting to the left and slightly forward so the wing is not is the images. When I fly towards my right, the camera is shooting generally in the direction I am facing. So I glide in that direction (no propeller vibration - this is the key mistake people make). I then power back up, turn, fly back to my left while gaining altitude, turn right, and glide to make another pass. Each time I fly at a slightly different angle in case I missed the lake (which I often do, but the "film" is free, so who cares).

I can see value in some radio link to control when to shoot, but as you say, it's free, so why not collect the lot. You may get something surprising at times when not expected, bird strike maybe?

With a quadrotor/drone, the "keeper ratio" should be higher since the quad rotor will be level. The open-source software my quad uses (the APM 2.5 board) even accepts programmable GPS locations/waypoints. Via waypoints, I could aim it towards my "subject", have it stop, and even have it slowly turn (so I can create a panoramic on the computer, which I haven't' seen anyone do yet, so don't spread this idea around, hahaha. Also have not seen anyone do an aerial HDR - that's why I hoped it would shoot non stop bracketed).

With raw so much HDR content can be recovered that I don't see the need for an HDR bracket. In my case for that I would play with Silkypix which has an HDR labelled slider which works well, other software also has similar controls I guess, but just is mostly a matter of playing with Curves.

With all that GPS control etc the skill needed is lessened, but so are mistakes and accidents lessened so it is a good thing.

Regards.... Guy

I agree - HDRs almost never come out looking better than adjusting a decently exposed raw file.

I actually have a stabilizer on my plane (I can't see it clearly enough to keep it flat/level 100's of feet away and 100's of feet up).  My plane lacks ailerons, so it uses the rudder to keep it level, which doesn't work well.  W/o the stabilizer, the plane rocked so much that when I rotated them in PS, there was not enough image left.  Rotate an image more than around 3 degrees, and there is surprisingly not much left (my lens is not very wide and it's only 6MP).