fully electronic shutter on my EM10Mk2.....

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

Silent shutter setting is marked with a "heart" sign in your quick-menu.

I saw that and it was right under the antishock setting and both are turned ON, so that means the electronic shutter is fully active?

If you look on the EVF or LCD whilst in shooting mode in the PASM modes, note the little overlaid status symbols in white. On the right hand side, just slightly above halfway down, sits the drive mode icon, which is a slightly round-cornered horizontal rectangle in outline. In full mechanical shutter, that's all it is, and for single-shot full mechanical, it doesn't bother showing, except for a few seconds after power-on or changing the drive mode. For Anti-Shock, it shows all the time, with a little diamond immediately on its left (make sure for Anti-Shock that you have initially set the Anti-Shock delay to 0 seconds in shooting menu 2 (the tab with a camera icon with a 2 ) - this is what turns it into electronic first/front curtain shutter operation - all the other values are simple delays between pressing the shutter release and the actual exposure. For silent shutter, it's the drive rectangle with a heart to its left, and again it'll stay visible permanently. It's always an either/or setting - you select one of the three shutter modes and that'll be the one used until you change it for another. Electronic shutter is easy to tell when set, as it's silent! (On this model, it also disables the electronic flash, the AF illuminator and the beeper too, because Olympus assume that if you want to be silent, you don't want to be disturbing the peace in any other manner either!).

Edit: Looking at your posts that went up whilst I was composing my epic above (!), I guess you might be only looking in the camera icon 2 tab menu at the moment - this is for initially setting up how the anti-shock and silent modes work, not for actually selecting them.  I find the easiest way is either to access them via the Super Control Panel (SCP) - either the live one (which is superimposed semi-transparently in the EVF or the LCD over live view) or the straight SCP (where it is permanently displayed on the LCD on a plain dark grey background, a bit like on a DSLR).  The SCP has a box containing the drive mode and you can change it by interacting by touch, buttons, dials or a combination of them as you prefer.  You bring up the SCP by pressing the OK button - tap on the INFO button if it brings up another style of menu.  If it doesn't turn up you may need to visit the menus once to enable it (I'll tell you how if you need to do it).

The other way is to have the 4-way direction keys around the OK button set to "direct function" rather than defaulting to always moving the AF point around.  That way you can have shortcuts on the arrows, and I always have the drive mode on the down button.

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

Silent shutter setting is marked with a "heart" sign in your quick-menu.

I saw that and it was right under the antishock setting and both are turned ON, so that means the electronic shutter is fully active?

Believe me there is a *big* difference in a shutter sound

oh no well I still hear a shutter sound even with silent mode turned on

There may still be a sound from the aperture closing down.

To check, set the aperture to the maximum aperture of your lens in A mode and take a shot.  It should be completely silent

Tom Axford wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

Silent shutter setting is marked with a "heart" sign in your quick-menu.

I saw that and it was right under the antishock setting and both are turned ON, so that means the electronic shutter is fully active?

Believe me there is a *big* difference in a shutter sound

oh no well I still hear a shutter sound even with silent mode turned on

There may still be a sound from the aperture closing down.

To check, set the aperture to the maximum aperture of your lens in A mode and take a shot. It should be completely silent

Agree with the above. To the OP: aperture stopdown is a lot quieter than the sound of the mechanical shutter, so if you're hearing a sound that is still the same from the shutter, then you haven't yet selected silent (fully electronic) shutter operation. Anti-Shock sounds the same as the mechanical shutter (unless you've selected one of the timed delays rather than 0 sec - in the case of 1/8, it makes the shutter seem a bit unresponsive, whilst the longer delays are clearly that - a delay between pressing the shutter release fully and anything responding).

Henry Falkner wrote:

epozar wrote:

Silent shutter setting is marked with a "heart" sign in your quick-menu.

Press the OK button and the Quick Menu shows -

Sorry in advance that this is long.  You may wish to jump to the numbered steps at the bottom to save time!

To the OP: Henry's shot below shows a typical presentation of the Super Control Panel (SCP), which appears continuously, on this plain dark background, on the LCD monitor only - rather reminiscent of a DSLR's info screen. This operates when you have the EVF eye sensor set to auto (if you have the eye sensor turned off, for manual switching via the "TV screen icon" button on the side of the eyepiece, you never see THIS version of the SCP) -  it remains on-screen permanently, instead of live view, without the need to press the OK button, though pressing that makes it ready to receive commands.  When you put your eye to the viewfinder, the LCD turns off temporarily and you are looking at live view in the EVF. Remove your eye from there and the SCP reappears on the monitor.  You can also bring up the SCP with your eye at the viewfinder by pressing the OK button - there it appears as the "Live SCP" - the same layout, but semi-transparent and superimposed over live view, so you can still see what's going on.  It will respond to the physical controls to change settings, and can be cleared by half-pressing the shutter release - or it automatically times out after 8 seconds if you do nothing with it.

When the EVF eye sensor is on auto, a quick tap of the "TV screen" button whilst not looking through the EVF changes things regarding the display of the SCP (incidentally, a LONG press of that button quickly jumps you to the menu entry for turning the EVF eye sensor from auto to off - saving you a trip through the menus to get to it. When the eye sensor is on manual, a quick tap of the "TV screen" button becomes the means to swap between EVF and monitor of course).  With only a quick tap in auto eye sensor operation, the eye sensor remains active, but the display of the SCP on the monitor is changed to the Live SCP, same as it appears in the viewfinder - so live view is now the normal display on the monitor and the SCP becomes semi-transparent, overlaid on live view.  In this mode it isn't permanently displayed, but behaves as it does in the EVF, being called up by the OK button and clearing when you exit it, or after 8 seconds if you don't do anything to interact with it.

2nd column, 3rd row, shows I have the anti-shake shutter set (diamond beside the frame).

To the OP again: The box immediately below the yellow highlighted one in this shot is the drive mode, here showing anti-shock shutter mode, single-shot drive. If the last thing you'd changed via the SCP was the drive mode, the correct box would already be highlighted for you, incidentally.

Select that with the 4-way toggle Down, press OK. and in the next screen showing, in the row of icons at the bottom, you see the 'heart beside the frame' on the right of the 'diamond and the frame'. Select it with the 4-way toggle Right, press OK to fix it.

There are other ways to interact with it too.  Whichever version (live SCP or plain SCP), in the EVF you will always set it via the buttons and dials; you can do it this way on the monitor too, but both live SCP and straight SCP are actually touch-enabled also for the monitor only (as long as you haven't totally turned off the touchscreen features of course).  For the plain-background SCP, two taps on the relevant box will activate it, jumping the highlight to the box you are tapping if it wasn't already there.  On the live SCP version, once called up with a press of OK, just one tap does the same - highlights the box ready to be used.  This makes it very easy to jump to the box you want.  That's really the extent of the touchscreen ability for this, but it's still handy.  Otherwise, I find the four directional buttons the second quickest method of choosing a box to highlight.

What might be useful to know is that there is also a quicker way to use the physical controls when using the SCP or live SCP in both the LCD monitor and the EVF (you can still use the touchscreen box selection method described above on the monitor too).  Depending on how you've set up your camera regarding which dial does what in the menus, it could be the front or back dial that does these, so I won't specify and simply say that one dial will roll through which box on the SCP is highlighted - similar to using the directional keys or touchscreen to move around it (which still work and the keys are faster, since the dial proceeds along each row, only going up or down a row at the ends).  The other dial - and this is the most useful aspect, I find - scrolls through the settings/choices WITHIN the highlighted box.  What's super-handy is that you don't have to press OK to go into the screen showing what those choices are (you can if you want though) - just roll the dial with the box you want highlighted on the SCP, and they'll change right there in the box - just stop on the choice you want.  You can then either press OK to select it, as Henry mentions (it will then typically bring up the sub-menu he mentions) or faster, you can just half-press the shutter release and your choice is accepted without going into the individual menu and the SCP is cleared off the display (if it's the semi-transparent live version) or returned to normal operation (if it's the non-live dark background one) in that one quick step.

So let's say you want to change the shutter/drive mode, that you have the camera set to Live SCP (superimposed on live view on the monitor, as in the EVF) and are looking at the monitor.

1. Press OK (to bring up the Live SCP)

2. Tap once on the box with the drive mode icon in it (to highlight it/activate it - doesn't matter if it was the one highlighted or not, already, this one tap does both jobs in one go).

3. With whichever dial you have configured to do this action (front or back - it'll be one or the other, not both), roll.  Watch the box for the drive/shutter mode symbol you want. When it appears, stop rolling.

4. Half press the shutter release.  Done!

If your monitor was set to the plain background type of SCP, the difference would be that Step 1 can be replaced with step 2, substituting a double-tap. Then carry on as before from step 3.

Really, you can mix and match the navigation methods to your preference. The upshot is that the SCP can be used in more and quicker ways than perhaps many people realise.

Sorry I am so verbose (as ever) - brevity is a skill I sadly lack. 

Oh, and if the OP can't find the SCP, you just need to visit the menus once to give the camera permission to use it (I don't know why they didn't enable it as standard - they do now).

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Helen wrote:

Tom Axford wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

epozar wrote:

Silent shutter setting is marked with a "heart" sign in your quick-menu.

I saw that and it was right under the antishock setting and both are turned ON, so that means the electronic shutter is fully active?

Believe me there is a *big* difference in a shutter sound

oh no well I still hear a shutter sound even with silent mode turned on

There may still be a sound from the aperture closing down.

To check, set the aperture to the maximum aperture of your lens in A mode and take a shot. It should be completely silent

Agree with the above. To the OP: aperture stopdown is a lot quieter than the sound of the mechanical shutter, so if you're hearing a sound that is still the same from the shutter, then you haven't yet selected silent (fully electronic) shutter operation. Anti-Shock sounds the same as the mechanical shutter (unless you've selected one of the timed delays rather than 0 sec - in the case of 1/8, it makes the shutter seem a bit unresponsive, whilst the longer delays are clearly that - a delay between pressing the shutter release fully and anything responding).

I found another way to test it, I went to manual mode and tried changing the shutter speed to the minimum, and I couldn't get lower than 1/4,000. I went back into the second menu and didn't change antishock and only changed the silent shutter setting (I didn't change it since it was already set to ON, I just selected ON and 0 sec again lol.) This time it worked and I was able to go down to 1/16,000 sec. But now I have another issue- image blur (visible at 1:1). 1/13 sec shouldn't be too slow for handholding at 75mm, should it? I posted the best images (best out of 2 taken with e-shutter on and 2 with it off, so a small sample size.) The two I posted were the best out of the 4, so could that be handholding blur I'm seeing? IS is set to ON though. The image noise is also a bit high for my taste but at least the shutter noise is now completely gone I have set NR to - anyway and the ISO was 2500. All the settings were the same besides the e-shutter in both sets.

I'd say that 1/13 sec at 75mm is quite a big ask for a completely unblurred shot consistently - don't forget, if we go back to the old "rule of thumb" for safe to handhold speeds (I'm old enough to remember it!) which was 1/focal length giving you the shutter speed, that it's not 1/75 as the safest typical speed, but due to the crop factor for this sensor size (2x) it's 1/150.  And of course we all vary.  You had IBIS on; we could say it's "only" giving you about 3.5 stops of correction here, but its job gets harder with longer focal lengths, and movement in the resulting image is easier to spot in a close up subject too I find.

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

JimH123 wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Also, a related question.....I also saw this when I was using my EPL6 for long periods of time (long shooting sessions or even spending a lot of time in the Oly menus).....is it normal for these cameras to develop bright red or pink stuck pixels on the LCD when it's turned on for a long time? When I turn the camera off and let it cool down for awhile and turn it back on the stuck pixel cluster is gone. Is this something that would eventually show up in my photos and do I need to use pixel mapping to fix it or is it just an LCD thing and should I just ignore it? Thanks!

Are referring to long exposures, or just having the camera turned on? I have noticed that with long exposures, such a several minutes, that I get a lot of hot pixels in the image, and this is normal. There can be red ones, blue ones or green ones. It is possible to turn on long exposure noise reduction and the exposure time is then doubled with the extra time doing an exposure with the shutter closed so that it can map all the hot pixels and remove them in the final image. This works well.

Some editing SW can detect and fix hot pixels. I have found that if two hot pixels touch each other, that the SW does not fix them.

And it is possible with some software to take an image with the lens cap on and to use this to fix the hot pixels.

There is a setting to have the camera do a slightly long exposure and to map the hot pixels, but this doesn't fix the several minute exposures. I've tried.

FYI: This is one area that my Sony cameras really out do my Olympus cameras. They don't generate nearly as many hot pixels on a long exposure.

Thanks, I am going to need that for my astrophotography! I thought dark frame subtraction was turned on by default? Would you happen to know which menu letter it's under? I may have skipped it (although I think I went through all the menu options.) Does this fix all hot pixel issues in images taken with long exposures? I hope it also works with Live Composite mode!

I'll chip in here if I may.  You know the menu with the tab containing a camera icon and the number 2 that has attracted your attention a lot?  That's where there is an entry governing the use of dark frame subtraction for silent shutter use specifically (separately from the standard setting elsewhere).  The reason it's here and independent is simply because you might be using silent shutter (electronic shutter) specifically for its silence. The dark frame subtraction process has to be done using the full mechanical shutter, so by default for silent shutter, it's off.  But here you can enable it - and the manual warns that you will be getting sound from the shutter after your exposure because of this.

The thing to remember about this whole section of the camera 2 menu tab, which has the anti shock and silent shutter settings in it, is that it's not for CHOOSING the shutter mode you're about to use - it's about configuring them and setting them up to work the way you want WHEN you use them.  Selecting them is always done from the control interfaces such as the SCP in its two varieties, or the alternative Live Control interface (that's the Canon-style one where the settings and choices are displayed on the live view image in borders - one across the bottom, one down the side and so on).  Very occasionally, that control interface becomes useful to me though my main preference is for the Live SCP.  As long as you've enabled them both to be available for use, you switch between the Live SCP and the Live Control interfaces by pressing the Info button whilst one of them is on view, having been called up by pressing OK.  Info acts as a toggle (you probably know this all already) and it'll remember your preference until you change it.

But no, I was actually referring to the LCD developing a bright pink/red pixel- it wasn't in the final image. I saw this with my EPL6 and now also on my EM10Mk2. I was just spending a lot of time in the menus and when I was done and wanted to take some images, it was there in the LCD. I didn't show up in the final image, only the preview. Also, weirdly, it wasn't there when I was in the menu system either, only in the LCD image preview. When I took some quick images today there were no hot pixels anywhere (the LCD or in the images) and I didn't use pixel mapping yet. Do you think I should? Do I need to use SW or does pixel mapping fix all stuck pixel issues in the image? Thanks!

I've noticed this occasionally and it's easy to answer - as you know the sensor is furiously active providing live view, so it gets hotter.  Therefore some pixels will become hot.  Because it's displaying images at a rate of 60 frames per second or faster, it doesn't have time to do pixel mapping - that happens to the shots you've taken.  Hence, if your pixel map is up to date, the hot pixel won't appear in the image you take, even though you saw it in live view.  From time to time, sensors develop new hot pixels, and when one turns up that wasn't in existence when the last pixel mapping was done on the sensor, it'll show in the results too.  At that point you just run pixel mapping and it'll disappear from the taken images, as before.