Try This Focus Trick On Your OM-1

KevinDe wrote:

On FW 1.3. If I am following you correctly, I set my OM-1 to C-AF + Tr and enable face and eye detect. The camera finds the largest face in the frame and starts tracking. When the player turns his back it loses him and starts jumping around hunting.

If I set my OM-1 to C-AF with medium box and enable face and eye detect it will find the largest face in the frame and start tracking, just like C-AF + Tr. BUT, when the player turns away it will continue to focus on the back of his head if the medium focus zone is kept over the player (easy enough). This gives 95% in focus shots.

What am I doing wrong?

I typically turn face detect off when shooting sports as it never knows which player I want to photograph.

What you're doing makes some sense. My tests revealed a bit different reaction. When the TR is ON along with C-AF AND I have the Face/Eye detection for humans ON, I find it acts like you mentioned without it. It stays on the persons head or area of the head if they turn away and immediately locks focus on an eye as soon as they begin to turn back towards the camera.

But there's no question your application of the Medium box and relying on your ability to keep a given subject IN it is just fine and I can sure see why that would work. It does give you more control over WHAT and WHO you are focusing on. At times you might even have to customize that Medium box a tad smaller to make sure you are staying with one particular person and not confusing the system. But in general, YES I agree your application would likely be by far the MOST reliable overall. The C-AF in a focused box on the OM-1 does a fine job indeed.

AURA PA wrote:

Same issue with the Z9. No way to switch between players fast enough in a match. I default to zone AF-C like Nikon recommends. On the OM-1 I found it will focus on anything in the AF zone reliably. Easy enough. Just pick the zone size you are comfortable with for your AOV and fire away.

Yup the Z9 has issues like you mentioned if one is NOT in the chosen Zone. The new Sony A7R5 with it's wonder AI (yeah right) wasn't 100% on the money either. It has the ability to set a button on a lens if you have one, to turn OFF the tracking quickly so you can recompose another subject seamlessly. But the OM-1 allows you to do exactly the same without the gyrations by simply taking your finger OFF the shutter and recompose on another subject and it will lock on. I've tried this and it works fine.

AURA PA wrote:

That's excellent - I would not expect much better from current mirrorless. My Z9 will give a few soft frames in every burst. Similar to the OM-1 in that regard. Although when the camera completely loses focus, the OM-1 recovers quicker than the Z9. That may be lens dependent though. Cute kid - looks like she is having a ball!

Indeed this is true. The Z9 and even the venerable A1 are a tad less quick to re lock focus as the OM-1. There are a few Youtubes out there by Brits in particular, that tried those other cameras settling on an OM-1 for just that reason. I do find the OM-1 to be rather blazing quick to re lock focus if you take your finger off the trigger and try once more. On mine it's literally immediate. Especially with a bird or fast moving wildlife.

Thanks & yes I have 1.3.

Will test this weekend.

JRobins wrote:

• ProDude wrote:

A friend of mine who also has a OM-1 and shoots hard to track sports made a discovery the other day. He'd been struggling with hits of focus that were accurate using 15fps in burst shooting of his son who is very active in sports. He had him, from about 50 feet away run towards him and while doing so gyrated twisted and turned and had his head both towards and away from him in the process. Previously and with prior firmware (prior to the new 1.3) he noted he'd miss more than a few shots. Out of desperation he turned both the Eye/Face Human detection on but ADDED the C-AF-TR mode which worked in tandem (I didn't know nor think about this before). The TR mode has been blasted prior for being useless. Well what happened was he now got over 90% of his attempted shots like this in this setting perfectly IN focus. He was astounded and repeated it and it was identical in both instances. I saw a Youtube by a British guy who reported he'd also noted the C-AF with TR mode in place also was MUCH better then it was ever before.

So I figured it was time I gave it a try. I played with the TR mode before and indeed found it near worthless as it lost the subject very easily when moved about. I place it in the C-AF AND TR mode adding the Human Eye/Face detection and tried it with my wife in a poorly lit which before when I tried to track and shoot, all the shots were out of focus/blurry. This was in Aperture Priority mode by the way and I didn't up the shutter speeds. Well wouldn't ya know it, I took 4 shots in a row with these conditions and noted that the TR portion allowed for my blinking little green boxes (I have my setting to show these) to remain tracking right on her upper body and mostly the back of her head when she turned away from me. As soon as she began turning back to face me barely on the side of her face it nailed her eye with a small white box completing the larger box on her face. This is near exactly as a test I did while trying out a Sony A7R5 with their new AI. (I sent the Sony back by the way). I tried this 4 times and each time it never lost her head and then nailed focus on her eyes and face. No accident to be sure. Without the TR in effect, it was NOT as effective by a considerable margin as NONE of the shots were in focus. WITH the TR in effect along with the C-AF and EYE-FACE detection it was nailing it 100% and this was in rather poor light. So I encourage you folks to give this a try and see if it doesn't turbocharge your focus abilities as well. I can't wait to try this on birds soon.

When you try it on birds, please let us know the results! Sounds hopeful!

I thought I was clear. It is exclusively a feature that works for HUMAN Eye/Face detection. Do NOT use CF-A-TR in Subject Recognition mode you will be very unhappy.

EZGritz wrote:

The guy who posted he thinks he needs to trade his OM-1 for a Canon R6 needs to see this and so do a lot of reviewers including DPR staff.

Ping Richard Butler who says the Canon R6 is better for sports. I don't think it is. I think most people who try the OM-1 haven't discovered the right AF settings as you have.

Heck YES thats a fact. I used to think my former R5 was superior. Till I finally got it regarding tweaks for the OM-1's focus system. Now I"m absolutely thrilled. And it's sticky as heck. Too bad the Pdf manual didn't reveal such revelations. Till they release the R1 I won't even be looking towards Canon. If Sony had released a A7R5 but with the electronic shutter of the A1 I may have kept it. But they have a way to go.

EZGritz wrote:

My friends with Z9s think they did better with their Nikon DSLRs. They are not satisfied wiht the Z9

I have a friend who is a sports shooter and he tried a Z9 and A1 sending them back. He is thrilled with the ergo's and setup and performance of the OM-1. He said he get's very close to the 100% keeper rate which the others didn't come close to. I've noted several posts and Youtube's floating around of others that used an A1 or Z9 and found the OM-1 superior in ALL regards. But it's like some well kept (more like buried) secret that doesn't sit well with the fanatical FF crowd. Oh well. it's their money. I sent one back for a refund as it brought NOTHING to the table my OM-1 wasn't doing.

I spent some time last week re doing my Custom Settings,  My Grand Daughter's fifth birthday party was on Saturday.

My Custom setting, C3 for people, which typically means grand kids, is now Manual mode, Shutter speed set to 200 and Aperature set to F4.  ISO starting point is 800 for indoor shooting. I'll probably start lower for out door.

After turning on the camera and checking things out, I flip the function lever to setting 2 where the front dial controls ISO and I fine tune exposure from there.  Ill take a few shots to see what the base settings are doing and maybe flip back the lever, make some adjustments and flip it back to setting 2 and continue.

This thread was an active thread while I was setting up my Custom Settings, so I added CAF+TR with Face and Eye  to C3 and I couldn't wait till Saturday.

I had never been happy with face and eye on any of my previous olympus cameras and bought up to the OM1 specifically for Face/Eye and Birds/Animals.

Saturday came, 27 kids in a gymboree setting climbing, jumping, runnning around, riding tricycles, etc.  It was wild.  Pizza and cake later in another room.

The face and eye was crazy good.  Stickier than honey on your arm hair.  I can recall starting a few exposures with my Grandson's back to me, waiting for him to turn around.  The green box was on the back of his head and moved with him.  As soon as there was a hint of the side of his eye as he turned the Face and Eye white box came on.  So many more keepers than I had ever gotten on my Em1.2 or my Em5.

I had never used CAF+TR on any of my cameras, and cant say that I tried it on the OM1 before reading this thread.  I can also say that Face and Eye was definitely improved over the EM1.2, but I wasn't sure it was worth the jump until now.  I have the OM1 since late March of last year.

I definitely saw an immediate improvement in my bird photography after FW1.3.  I'm guessing it played a role here, or maybe CAF+TR+Face was a gem just waiting to be found.

Give it a try.

Good Luck!

Dan

ProDude wrote:

EZGritz wrote:

My friends with Z9s think they did better with their Nikon DSLRs. They are not satisfied wiht the Z9

I have a friend who is a sports shooter and he tried a Z9 and A1 sending them back. He is thrilled with the ergo's and setup and performance of the OM-1. He said he get's very close to the 100% keeper rate which the others didn't come close to. I've noted several posts and Youtube's floating around of others that used an A1 or Z9 and found the OM-1 superior in ALL regards. But it's like some well kept (more like buried) secret that doesn't sit well with the fanatical FF crowd. Oh well. it's their money. I sent one back for a refund as it brought NOTHING to the table my OM-1 wasn't doing.

So how come you reordered a Sony A7RV only a couple of days after writing that and now have it in your possession?