Workaround for em-1 rear dial issue

[markymark101]

I'm sure others have discovered this - it ain't rocket science, and I wonder why it took me so long to figure it out.

On my em-1 mk1, I have the rear dial issues so many others have reported. It's slowly getting worse and worse. After a year of just dealing with it, I realized something - that danged em1 has a lot of function buttons - Duh! You figure I would have noticed that before.

So I have the front dial set to controlling the aperture, and I set the F1 button to exposure comp. Now I press and hold the F1 button, and front dial sets the exposure comp; release the F1 button, and I'm back to aperture.

I'm sure I'm not the first - heck, maybe I'm the last - to figure this out, but on the off hand it might help someone with similar slowness of mind, I figured I'd post it.

 

[Guy Parsons]

I'm sure others have discovered this - it ain't rocket science, and I wonder why it took me so long to figure it out.

On my em-1 mk1, I have the rear dial issues so many others have reported. It's slowly getting worse and worse. After a year of just dealing with it, I realized something - that danged em1 has a lot of function buttons - Duh! You figure I would have noticed that before.

So I have the front dial set to controlling the aperture, and I set the F1 button to exposure comp. Now I press and hold the F1 button, and front dial sets the exposure comp; release the F1 button, and I'm back to aperture.

I'm sure I'm not the first - heck, maybe I'm the last - to figure this out, but on the off hand it might help someone with similar slowness of mind, I figured I'd post it.

From Olympus support I received the fact that the E-M1 dials are optical and the E-P5 dials are mechanical contacts.

The E-P5 ones fade and die if unlucky (one of E-P5 did, the other didn't).

The E-M1 reportedly often responds to the 50 times dial twirl treatment where I guess some gunk/dust gets dislodged from the optical mechanism.

In my case the E-P5 slowly progressed from glitchy to unusable dials (both front and rear) while on a holiday. All I did was revert to E-PL1 button pushing operation where the rear 4 way pad takes over. Press Up to "activate" then the 4 way controls the aperture and exposure compensation in A mode, so I was happy until I could get home to get the top plate replaced under warranty.

The mode dial assigned MySets were used to set the camera for varying light conditions so there was usually not much button pressing to do anyway.

Regards...... Guy

 

[markymark101]

The E-M1 reportedly often responds to the 50 times dial twirl treatment where I guess some gunk/dust gets dislodged from the optical mechanism.

I've tried the 50 times dial twirl and hasn't seemed to make much difference, or if it does make a difference it's not very long lasting. Seems recently the rear dial has gone from just annoying to downright useless. Anyway, just assigning the exposure comp to F1 has made the camera much less frustrating to use, and will hopefully last me for a while yet - at least until the front dial decides to fail!

 

[Tommi K1]

I buy camera to be used with two dials. If one gets broken by the design then I demand the repair even outside of the warranty and in Finland that happens as I can show it is not just one unit but a common thing!