Pen F autofocus vs. OM-D E-M1 (either version)

daddyo wrote:

James,

I can't speak to the Pen F, since I don't own one. However, I can say that I think your main problem is shooting at f2.8. My experience is that the DOF is often just too shallow (yes, to the dismay of all shallow DOF lovers).

If you are using face/eye detection with multiple subjects, they are rarely in the same focus plane, and at f/2.8 some are going to be OOF. I have much better success shooting at f/3.5-f/4, and find I have very few that are not in focus. Of course with larger groups I stop down even more to f/5.6-f/8.

I find that face/eye detection on my E-M1 is very accurate when shooting close up portraits (e.g. Head and Shoulders) -- the further you get away from subjects the more difficult it is to get perfect focus -- however, it is still generally very close.

Your percentage of OOF shots sounds very high to me, and I really think shooting at f/4 and ISO 3200 would have given you a much higher in-focus percentage.

Thanks, Greg. Your comments and Jim's are on the mark. The common thought seems to be shoot at ~f/5.6 and boost the ISO if necessary. I don't do this type of photography very much, so it's a learning experience. After 45 years of photography, I like to think I am in command of all aspects of my camera and lenses. This event tempered my hubris and will have me testing before the next event.

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods

I'm more leery of the shutter speed than focus accuracy, but confess without distance to subject and focal length it's hard to parse what's occurring here. Definitely agree with floating the ISO and IMHO not opening the lens but raising shutter speed.

If there's a better m4/3 for focus response and accuracy than the M1ii I should like to try it. Still learning mine and am happily surprised regularly by what it can accomplish.

Cheers,

Rick

daddyo wrote:

James,

I can't speak to the Pen F, since I don't own one. However, I can say that I think your main problem is shooting at f2.8. My experience is that the DOF is often just too shallow (yes, to the dismay of all shallow DOF lovers).

If you are using face/eye detection with multiple subjects, they are rarely in the same focus plane, and at f/2.8 some are going to be OOF. I have much better success shooting at f/3.5-f/4, and find I have very few that are not in focus. Of course with larger groups I stop down even more to f/5.6-f/8.

I find that face/eye detection on my E-M1 is very accurate when shooting close up portraits (e.g. Head and Shoulders) -- the further you get away from subjects the more difficult it is to get perfect focus -- however, it is still generally very close.

Your percentage of OOF shots sounds very high to me, and I really think shooting at f/4 and ISO 3200 would have given you a much higher in-focus percentage.

+1

Eye detect gets you close but if more than one person or if subject too far away there are problems. Up closer it is pretty good.

Problem with CDAF is that it has no information is the contrast blur or not. That is where DFD comes to play, check focus from blur.

A high contrast blur is high contrast and can be mistaken for focus being correct.

Some people doesn't know where they stick their nose.....

ABitGrainy wrote:

As a recent upgrader from an older E-PL model to the PEN, I thought it might be worth registering and bringing up my recent focussing woes here, in case others are having the same problem.

90% of my shots are done in A mode with centre point focussing (reframing as needed). I’m an amateur, a left eye shooter, and I mainly use the viewfinder.

I tried to set up the PEN's A mode as for my earlier cameras. Hideous focus mayhem ensued. Sometimes good, usually bad. Thing was, that danged focus rectangle kept moving. The camera would wake up with it in the wrong place too. So I had to keep diving in and reset to centre point focus. In the middle of picture-taking.

Now I may be a little slow on the uptake, but after a few weeks I realised that my nose was pressing onto the live touchscreen and resetting the focus position! Don’t ask me to describe the nose motions needed to confirm this.

So, I hunted deep into the menus to turn off focal positioning by touch. Oh joy! Photos could now be taken as expected with centre point focussing.

Except that, from time to time, focussing mayhem would recur, with the focal point wandering about and I had to again dive in the menus and reset to centre point.

More weeks passed. And then I eventually realised that there was a live touchscreen icon to lower left that can switch touchy focus point adjustment on and off. Could this be the culprit? It was! Don’t ask me to describe the nose motions needed to confirm this.

I am now the proud owner of a PEN-F that is taking the sort of pictures that I hoped it was capable of. I have, though, paid for a sophisticated touch screen that is permanently turned off and therefore utterly useless.

Why not practice using the touch screen as it was intended to be used? With your eye to the vf you can move the focus point with your thumb, no need to focus in the centre and then recompose. That fraction of a second might save a shot for you.

The E-M1 has a central and more rearly-protruding eyepiece and, therefore, depending on the enormity - and the subtended angle - of one’s nose, most E-M1 shooters are less likely but perhaps not immune from having the same nasal focussing action that I unwittingly experienced. Ditto E-M10. If any readers are having weird focussing issues, maybe check what your proboscis is getting up to when you are not paying attention?

I own both of these cameras (E-M1 mark I, Pen F + E-M5 II).

CAF on Pen F is close to useless. Contrast detection in a lower light is the slowest on Pen F but the difference is not huge.

Anyways if you need far superior AF in bad light rather get a Panasonic camera. GX8 AF speed and accuracy is amazing. By the way I'm waiting for GX9. This camera will become my main camera (and yes mainly for its superior AF accuracy compared to Olympus cameras but also for other features like their great implementation of touch AF).

Cheers

Dunsun wrote:

I own both of these cameras (E-M1 mark I, Pen F + E-M5 II).

CAF on Pen F is close to useless. Contrast detection in a lower light is the slowest on Pen F but the difference is not huge.

Anyways if you need far superior AF in bad light rather get a Panasonic camera. GX8 AF speed and accuracy is amazing. By the way I'm waiting for GX9. This camera will become my main camera (and yes mainly for its superior AF accuracy compared to Olympus cameras but also for other features like their great implementation of touch AF).

Hello Dunsun,

All of the noise about Panasonic AF seems to be this DFD stuff. Is that in play when an Olympus lens is on, say, a G9?

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods

pdk42 wrote:

I'd be surprised if DOF is an issue if you were shooting from the rear of an auditorium. If it were me, I'd do some controlled testing with the pressure off to get to the bottom of it.

Hello Paul,

Yes, off-line testing is on my agenda.

I was generally trying to get the face of one person at a time, so differing distances from the camera by multiple people was not a problem and would not bother me. Like you, I believe DOF should not be an issue from 45 feet when all I want is the eyes/face in focus. A couple of folks in this thread have suggested shutter speed my be the issue. I was shooting from a tripod between 1/60 and 1/125 most of the time and timing my shots for a pause in the action. And I can tell the difference between missed focus and blur due to subject movement. I did not count subject movement failures (only a few) in my percentage of missed AF shots.

So, yes, I need to get into the sanctuary and shoot some events where the outcome is not important to anyone.

And to be sure, I got some great photos with my Pen F and M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro. It's not like the day was a failure. I would have liked a higher hit rate is all.

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods

We left-eye shooters do have a non-trivial issue with our noses on the rear LCD. The situation is most pronounced on cameras like the Pen F where the viewfinder is on the left side of the camera.

I also turned off all touch capability on my Pen F. Additionally, I generally have the LCD turned inward becasue I use the EVF almost exclusively unless my Pen F is on a tripod. I'm not prone to chimping, so having the LCD turned inward is not an inconvenience for me.

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods

Albert Valentino wrote:

Just a suggestion. For these type of shots is it possible to go old school and bring in a tripod, use low ISO, smaller aperture. Then try to position people so they are all in the same lateral plane so focus, manual might be preferred, is all or nothing. Of course if a tripod is verboten then ignore the above 😃

Understood. If I were in control of the situation, that is almost exactly what I would do, including setting up some lighting if at all possible. In this case, I was little more than a fly on the wall who happens to own Olympus gear and Gitzo tripods.

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods