OM1 fw 1.6 bug with loading saved presets? Please share your experience

[bill dennis]

Now that you are on 1.6, can you save and restore settings with the phone without the settings corruption, or does it happen every time?

No problem - OK, I have tested with v1.6 on my OM-1 and I can confirm that with OI Share on my Pixel Android 14 I am getting the same result - exposure settings are not saved / restored in the custom sets. It seems to happen every time for me - for small values of "every time"

Here's some detail of what I did if it helps, lots of screen images etc

1. Having set up my custom modes previously, I saved all settings to a file with OI Share - everything in one file.

The saved file looks like this in OI Share - you can see it records the firmware version v1.6 in the file

My C1-C4 custom set SCP screens before the save / restore show exposure settings like this - my intended exposure settings (and they restore OK on the camera when I turn the mode dial):

* Note: All my custom sets are in the "reset" mode (not hold), it may be a relevant difference to your setup. C4 SCP image looks different because I have the LCD live view enabled for astro settings and just pressed OK to show the SCP for the photo.

2. I do a reset of the camera on this menu screen, Initialise all settings

* Note: It does not clear everything, for example your copyright info is preserved and so is time zone. The manual tells you what settings are affected by this reset function.

3. After the reset I checked my custom modes

All my custom sets C1-C4 are now set to "P" mode like this

4. Now with OI.Share I restore my saved file for all settings

After the restore the camera restarted and I checked all my custom modes C1-C4 and I can see there are exposure differences for some of them. They get the defaults of 1/250s or 1/320s for shutter (depends on SH2 mode being set) and f5.6 for aperture. I have the 17mm f1.8 lens attached so the f5.6 is not due to the attached lens. You can see exposure settings in my C1, C3 and C4 custom modes got messed up with the restore. C2 used the default of 1/250s that I left from last time. For my C3 and C4 settings I always want the aperture to be wide open for the attached lens so this is an issue I have to correct in those slots.

Look at my C4 astrophotography settings - instead of 15 seconds at f1.8 it is now 1/250s at f5.6. To correct this I have to attach a f1.8 lens. I didn't have any exposure comp set in my custom settings before this so actually I don't know if it is preserved but from testing with the previous firmware it wasn't.

So apart from the OI.Share platform I'm wondering what the difference is for your own setup when you saw the exposure settings were restored OK. Did you do a reset or change any exposure settings in you custom modes before restoring?

It seems to me that the settings restore doesn't change the exposure settings in the custom slot to some random setting - it just doesn't over-write what is set on camera (it may be the defaults or something you saved due to the "hold" mode).

Also it is not clear if this is an issue between OI Share platform implementations or OM Workspace platforms etc without some thorough testing. OM Systems should be doing this and should really clarify the situation.

I can check this again on the iPad before I restore my exposure settings to see if it is the same on iPadOS.

Bill

 

[Will Rose]

Bill, the difference between my setup and yours is that I'm on 1.5, as I said, and you’re on 1.6. More to the point would be the couple of people who seem to have 1.6 without the problem. Hopefully they will chime in.

 

[Will Rose]

Camera Firmware 1.6

OI.Share

iPad Pro (IOS) v1.2.3

Results: all restored correctly

Required the camera to have near full charge battery before it would install. Piece of cake otherwise.

VIKING do your restores always work correctly on 1.6?

To test can you do something like save changes to a custom mode (shutter =1/1000), backup your settings to OI.Share, change that mode's SS to 1/4000, save the custom mode on the camera but not OI.Share, and then restore the saved settings from OI.Share?

Your shutter speed in that custom mode will then be 1/250, 1/1000, or 1/4000. It will be interesting to see which.

 

[bill dennis]

Yes, I’m not able to check this on v1.5 as I’ve updated it now to v1.6. But if you are on 1.5 have you tried it doing a reset like I did when you tested it? As you’ve seen Rob Trek and others have seen it on 1.5 and I’ve seen it on the OM-1 Mk2 both firmware versions and on the Em1Mk3. I’m just wondering why some see it and some don’t but testing for issues like this to reproduce them can be quite tricky and depend on initial starting conditions. There’s likely something subtle going on here!

For me, now I know about this I can work around it when it happens and not be caught out during a photo session.

Bill

 

[Will Rose]

Yes, I’m not able to check this on v1.5 as I’ve updated it now to v1.6. But if you are on 1.5 have you tried it doing a reset like I did when you tested it? As you’ve seen Rob Trek and others have seen it on 1.5 and I’ve seen it on the OM-1 Mk2 both firmware versions and on the Em1Mk3. I’m just wondering why some see it and some don’t but testing for issues like this to reproduce them can be quite tricky and depend on initial starting conditions. There’s likely something subtle going on here!

For me, now I know about this I can work around it when it happens and not be caught out during a photo session.

Bill

I just did that test, and now I do have a variation of the bug.

Prior to doing the reset, everything worked correctly, as I said.

Now, here is what I see:

- Reloading settings from a saved profile does NOT "reset" certain settings, like SS, to default. What it does do is FAIL TO OVERWRITE those settings from whatever they are at the moment you load the profile.

If you do a reset and the immediately load profiles, your shutter speed is 1/250 because the camera set it to that default as part of the reset.

So try this:

1. Save SS of 1/1000 to custom mode
2. Save settings to camera
3. Reset
4. Observe ss in custom mode is 1/250
5. Reload custom mode from saved profile.
6. Observe ss in custom mode is still 1/250, not 1/100 as it should be
7. Change ss in custom mode to 1/4000 and save it in the custom mode, but NOT to phone.
8. Reload custom mode from saved profile
9. Observe ss in custom mode is still 1/4000, not the 1/1000 that was saved to the phone nor the 1/250 default.

Can you replicate this result?

So some strange thing that happens to the camera when a reset is done? Not sure.

But yes it is annoying and OMDS does need to fix it.

I eventually did receive a message back from them. They acknowledged that the bug exists. Here's what they said: "In any case, we are aware of this issue's existence. Rest assured that we greatly value your opinion, it will be registered and taken in too [sic] account for future reference in order to improve our current and future product line/services. We will transmit this matter to the appropriate team with the hopes that it'll be rectified."

Since Rob Trek is resetting his camera all the time, it does not surprise me that he encountered this.

 

[bill dennis]

Yes this is the behaviour I get on all 3 cameras I tested with doing that sort of thing and variations repeatedly. The shutter speed saved in the camera custom mode always wins when you restore the custom settings with OI Share.

Restore the settings does not over-write a different shutter speed in the custom setting on the camera no matter what the shutter speed was saved as before with OI Share.

I hope they fix it in a future firmware update or an update to OI Share.

Without being able to understand the binary format of the saved ".set" files with settings saved from OI Share etc it is hard to know if the shutter speed etc settings are ever being saved to the file. So we don't actually know if this is an issue to be fixed in firmware or the OI Share app or OM Workspace.

I think they messed up here and didn't realise it until now or didn't think it was a big issue.

Why should saving your shutter settings and exposure in the custom modes be saved in the camera and restored when you turn the mode dial back and forth between P/A/S/M/B/C1/C2/C3/C4 etc but when you save these custom settings with OI Share or OM Workspace to a file and restore it back to the camera it does not restore the shutter speed and some other exposure settings as expected?

To me as a (now retired) software developer it seems a very odd and confusing design decision!

Bill

 

[Will Rose]

To me as a (now retired) software developer it seems a very odd and confusing design decision!

Bill

It’s a defect. Whether an accidental one or defective by design, who knows. A backup that can’t successfully backup and restore isn’t a proper backup. I for example have a custom mode setup for focus bracketing/stacking, and finding the aperture unexpectedly changed would be most unwelcome. Likewise 1/250 is not really a proper setting for someone’s BIF mode. There’s no excuse for them not doing a proper backup and restore.

As an aside: likewise, in a particular pet peeve of mine, despite the fact that it’s 2024, Apple still doesn’t know what a proper backup is either. When you “backup” your iPhone using apple’s process, it does not actually backup the apps: it just saves a list of apps to be reinstalled during a so-called “restore”. If you do a restore, and the app is no longer in the App Store to be reinstalled, then you lose the app, and with it, its data. That’s not a real backup. Since so many people, especially young ones, live on their phones now, this is especially egregious. In Apple's case it’s defective by design.

Since I was not seeing the behavior before (as I am not a camera-resetter) I wonder if this is somehow something that is triggered by doing a reset. There may also be something subtle going on here, as you said.

 

[Frontier Photo]

To me as a (now retired) software developer it seems a very odd and confusing design decision!

Bill

It’s a defect. Whether an accidental one or defective by design, who knows. A backup that can’t successfully backup and restore isn’t a proper backup.

No defect here. I did a full reset on FW 1.6 and loaded my custom profiles back to the camera. Shutter speed is 1/2500 for my BIF profile. Even my FlickerScan shutter speed for my workshop LED's of 1/160.2 is correctly restored.

Good to go!

 

[faunagraphy]

Finally made the update yesterday.

• What camera firmware

OM-1 FW 1.6, also updated the attached Olympus 300mm Pro to FW 1.6 (improves sleep recovery).

• What App (OI.Share or OMW)

OM Workspace

• App Platform and version (iOS or Android, Win or Mac, OI.Share app version number, etc)

OMW v. 2.3. Windows 10 Enterprise, Intel i7, 16 GB RAM (this is relevant - see below)

• Your results: shutter/aperture restored correctly or not

I had a bigger problem. First off, when I clicked 'Restore Settings', it brought me to the 'Load Settings' dialog. This might have been an error on my part, so I am willing to overlook this.

However, the second time I tried it, it gave me the BSOD (blue screen) and my entire system crashed. My camera was being read even as my PC restarted, so I did not remove it immediately.

Once the system restarted, I received alerts about errors to the SD cards. Windows repaired one SD card and failed to repair the other. I haven't checked yet if any RAW files have been corrupted (there are thousands of them on the card).

Attempt 3, it finally restored most of my settings correctly. I had manually backed up my settings, and that's the file that I used, rather than the one that OMW recommended.

I do not see anything amiss with the shutter speed etc. If there are more obscure issues, those will show up when I'm out shooting.

I did, however, have to program the date, time and timezone again manually. I've never had to do this for prior updates.

• Any other notes

I'm not upgrading my camera to 1.6 because of the possibility of this issue.

I was already happy with the performance of my camera for BIFs, so I'm not sure why I upgraded. I guess I hoped it would get even better with teleconverters. We'll see if it was worth it.

Hopefully if enough people post their experiences, we'll be able to identify the common factors and hopefully a definitive error-producing case or workaround.

 

[faunagraphy]

I do not see anything amiss with the shutter speed etc. If there are more obscure issues, those will show up when I'm out shooting.

Agh! The shutter speeds for all my custom modes had changed. I do not know how I missed it before I was out in the field shooting again.

I have my modes set up as:

C1: Birds in trees. SS = 1/800 s

C2: BIFs. SS = 1/4000 s

C3: Pet portraits. SS = 1/50 s

C4: Mammal action. SS = 1/1250 s

All my shutter speeds were set to 1/640 s for the higher ones and 1/250 s for the lower ones. So C1 and C3 were set to 1/250 s and C2 / C4 to 1/640 s.

My EVF viewing mode was also changed to the first default, which does not show the AF area, histogram, AF Limit on/off etc. I like seeing the histogram and other settings, so I had to change that for all Custom Modes by cycling through the Info button.

Oddly, none of the other settings were touched except for the SS and EVF data (and the date/time which I've covered already).

Was it worth it? I shot swallows splashing on the water (my gold standard for AF performance) with my 300mm Pro and with / without the MC-14.

Performance with the MC-14 was the same as before (missed the critical splashing action every time), and without the MC-14 was the same as well (flawless).

In hindsight, I gained nothing from the upgrade and shouldn't have bothered with it.

 

[Will Rose]

Thanks for posting faunagraphy. I think you’re the first person to mention EFV settings getting messed up. Are you sure you didn’t leave it on a different screen or make some other change after backup had been made?

 

[bill dennis]

I forgot to mention - my EVF settings also got changed. It's frustrating when you discover these things out on a photo session.

The main reason I did the update was for the Android 14 WiFi fix to get OI Share working again.

Bill

 

[Will Rose]

Thanks Bill. Maybe others just weren't noticing it or had theirs set to the default.

 

[Doxa750]

Mine got change too from Style 1 to 1. The thing is it happened on one of my OM1.1 while the one one was ok. The different between the two is that I had Panasonic lens on one body while the other body had Olympus lens on. I think there were a few other changes happened in the settings. But in general I wasn't bothered by the issues. Lastly, I only noticed these changes when updating from FW1.5 toFW1.6. The updates from previous FW up to 15. had been smooth regardless of lenses.

 

[faunagraphy]

Mine got change too from Style 1 to 1. The thing is it happened on one of my OM1.1 while the one one was ok. The different between the two is that I had Panasonic lens on one body while the other body had Olympus lens on. I think there were a few other changes happened in the settings. But in general I wasn't bothered by the issues. Lastly, I only noticed these changes when updating from FW1.5 toFW1.6. The updates from previous FW up to 15. had been smooth regardless of lenses.

That's interesting. I hadn't considered the factor of what brand of lens is attached, although one would think that the errors would arise if a Panasonic lens were attached and not an Olympus one (as mine was).

I'm glad (in a sense) to hear that others also experienced the EVF issue, along with the shutter speed and date/time changes. It could not have been user error because any changes to a custom mode need to be saved by going through a series of steps in the Menu. So even if I had accidentally changed the EVF style (dunno how I could've done that for all custom modes), it should have reset to saved defaults when the camera was restarted.

 

[Doxa750]

Mine got change too from Style 1 to 1. The thing is it happened on one of my OM1.1 while the one one was ok. The different between the two is that I had Panasonic lens on one body while the other body had Olympus lens on. I think there were a few other changes happened in the settings. But in general I wasn't bothered by the issues. Lastly, I only noticed these changes when updating from FW1.5 toFW1.6. The updates from previous FW up to 15. had been smooth regardless of lenses.

That's interesting. I hadn't considered the factor of what brand of lens is attached, although one would think that the errors would arise if a Panasonic lens were attached and not an Olympus one (as mine was).

I'm glad (in a sense) to hear that others also experienced the EVF issue, along with the shutter speed and date/time changes. It could not have been user error because any changes to a custom mode need to be saved by going through a series of steps in the Menu. So even if I had accidentally changed the EVF style (dunno how I could've done that for all custom modes), it should have reset to saved defaults when the camera was restarted.

Sorry for my typo, I meant to say changing EVF Style 3 to Style 1. I couldn't remember all of it but I know that with Pana Leica 200mm F2.8 lens on, there were other changes I had to make. When I did the update with the second OM-1 body with Olympus 300mm F4 lens, only need to change date/time and readjust SS and Aperture as said in earlier posts.

 

[KevinDe]

Updated 3 OM1 bodies to FW 1.6 from FW 1.5 over the weekend.

OM Workspace 2.3.2 for Mac

MacOS Sonoma 14.4.1

I loaded 9 unique presets across the three bodies (two bodies had some overlapping presets). No changes to shutter/aperture or EVF style.

I have not yet tested for AF-C improvements but will later this week.