Poll - MySets and Custom Modes, Oly & Pana

Danielvr wrote:

Just use M mode and all problems fixed...

Are you just trolling or did you really not understand what I wrote?

Seems you didn't understand what I wrote, and you don't understand cameras.

And as you don't even understand what word "Trolling" means, it shows you lack a lot...

"Auto-ISO to within certain ranges, and define which one to prioritize (for instance, aim for 'shortest exposure time' or 'lowest ISO')." That way, we could much better control the shooting envelope in automatic/program modes, even to the point where we don't have to keep an eye on them anymore and can fully concentrate on the subject, composition, et cetera.

Just learn to use ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

Because in M mode, you are not concentrating to camera at all, you just shoot and you fully concentrate for the subject, composition etc.

You are not baby sitting the camera, as it is doing exactly as what you tell it to do. When you see the light, see the moment, see the situation, see the scenery etc, you don't need to play at all with the automatic exposure modes as it is far slower way to use camera than in manual mode.

I only use one myset - a monochrome setting.  It's assigned to the Auto location on the mode dial on my E-M10 and to one of the front buttons on my E-M1.

Results so far indicate that more people make use of MySets/Custom Modes than ignore them, so to my mind Olympus has made a serious mistake in dropping MySets from the E-M10 Mk3 and the E-PL9. At least for me I would never touch them for that reason, and a few other reasons.

Thanks to all who have responded, makes interesting reading on the various ways they are used.

In my case the 4 are used for various light conditions and the 4th is occasionally changed when I need to do flash work, then restored later (if I remember). A better plan would be for me to compress my 4 light conditions to 3 and leave the 4th as the permanently changeable one.

Regards.... Guy

Just a shameless bump to keep this on page 1 for another few hours.

Results and comments are interesting so a day or two more will see it finished.

Regards..... Guy

Guy Parsons wrote:

Thank you for the explanation. It may help some others decide if MySets/Custom Modes are worth getting involved with. I know that I now can't live without them.

My brother never used them. He was a landscape photographer primarily, and sold his prints. He didn't make many changes to his settings. Those that he did were easily accessible by the Fn buttons and control wheel. He never used flash, nor photographed indoors, so didn't have those different lighting conditions to worry about.

So, not everyone is attracted to presets. After all, many people existed for years in film days without such gadgetry!

- Richard

On Ricoh GXR cameras I always used their version of Mysets.  The reason being is that they could be labelled and your personal name for any set would be shown on the screen whenever it was invoked. Furthermore the text editor Rioch provided was set on a much higher technical plane than the “early mobile phone basic” multiple press system as offered by Panasonic which does not stretch to labelling mysets anyway as it surely could with just a little bit of effort.

Panasonic could give us a more sophisticated text editor and the ability to label Mysets quite easily.

Alternatively perhaps just a little more effort on my part would have me setting up some rigorous set up combinations for specific purposes and I would only have to memorise what custom mode each set would relate to.  I have tried but my efforts have been on an ad-hoc basis for a particular purpose and what that purpose was was forgotten within a couple of days.

By the way the cameras also provide an array of “Mysets” called custom and artistic modes and “hey” these are labelled.  But perhpas these are regarded as too twee and “mobile phone” for “really serious” camera users to mess with

Danielvr wrote:

It would be so much better if we could simply save custom configurations (along with a descriptive name) to a menu in the camera. Access the list through a button or through the SCP, then pick your desired custom settings from the list.

The E-M1 II has a built-in focus distance limiter. In custom sets, we should have the same ability to limit aperture, exposure time and Auto-ISO to within certain ranges, and define which one to prioritize (for instance, aim for 'shortest exposure time' or 'lowest ISO'). That way, we could much better control the shooting envelope in automatic/program modes, even to the point where we don't have to keep an eye on them anymore and can fully concentrate on the subject, composition, et cetera.

Ageed, the idea is good but the implementation is still very basic.