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Back Side: Electronic View Finder

Lesson 7 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

Back Side: Electronic View Finder

Lesson 7 from: Olympus PEN-F Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

7. Back Side: Electronic View Finder

Lesson Info

Back Side: Electronic View Finder

All right, let's get to the back side of the camera. So obviously dominated by the big screen on the back of the camera, This is our one million dot LCD monitor on the back, the camera we have our E V f, which has mawr dots. So if you want greater resolution, look through the viewfinder in comparison with looking at the back of the camera now, right next to the E V F is the eye sensor, and this will automatically switch him back, back and forth between the LCD and the E V F. Now, if you want to, you can set this to manually be on one or the other. But normally the auto sensor works pretty well and you hold it up to your eye. It switches over to the E V F. Next to the eye sensor is the Diop ter, and this is thief focusing adjustment for the IV E f. And so, as you look through the viewfinder, if it's not totally sharp, adjust the Diop ter so that you do have a sharp view, because you do want that to be as clear as possible. Next up is the IV E F L C D button, which will change the displa...

ys that you see on the back of the camera. This is also the function two buttons, so it's a button that you can re be reprogrammed to do something else as well. Now, when you look through the viewfinder, the electronic viewfinder, there are different modes and styles that you can choose to be looking through. And so we have style 123 and four. And so the benefit to style three is that it's the largest picture size possible. But the thing that I don't like is that you have numbers and graphics over the image itself, which you might kind of forget that there's image down there, and you kind of become a little bit loosey goosey when it comes to the composition. So my preferences style one or two. But because I don't like to have colors in there, which might affect the way that I look at other colors in the photograph, my preferences for style, too. But this is a personal preference. Feel free to choose your own. If you want to get in and adjust this, you will need to do that in the custom menu where it says built in E V F in the different styles in there. So in the electronic viewfinder, if you hit the info button on the back of the camera, there is a variety of different options that you can see, and you'll just hit the info button repeatedly to cycle through the different options. The 1st 1 will show you the image, along with basic exposure information like your exposure mode, shutter speeds, aperture and your light meter. After that, you'll have three different custom modes, and you can pick and choose. Excuse me two different custom modes. You'll get to pick and choose what you see in each of these custom modes. You can either choose hissed, a gram highlight and shadow, or the level gauge So the hissed a gram is a more intelligent light meter, if you ask me. And so that's a nice one. Have in their highlights, and shadows will show you areas and either orange or blue that are overexposed or under exposed. And so if you want to know how to adjust your exposure, these could be helpful tools in doing that. If you want to make sure that your have your camera tilted correctly and level. You can put up the level gauge and so you can have a combination of either 12 or all three of these visible in either one of the custom one or two settings and will be able to do this once you get into the custom menu and the built in E V F. Info settings to adjust now in the viewfinder itself, there's gonna be a whole line of information along the bottom. Let's just quickly go through some of the more important things down here, so a little check on your battery if you do have a flash hooked up is powered, is ready to flash. There is a depth of field preview button on the front of the camera that you compress. We'll talk more about that in a little bit, but that lets you know that you have your finger on that button. There is a green dot for a F confirmation. One of the things that this camera has is a little beeping audio confirmation that you have correctly focused, and that's something that I would like to turn off. I don't want to disturb others with my camera beeping. And so I will just simply look to see if that green dot has illuminated to know that I have focused. After that, we have our shooting mode. And then if we were in one of the custom modes, and if we have pressed the auto exposure lock button, well, then have our basic exposure information like shutter speeds, apertures and exposure compensation, along with our flash and light meter. And so we have a scale, and we have indicators above and below it. The ones above it indicate flash exposure, compensation and the ones below. It is kind of standard exposure compensation or the light meter itself. And then we have the ability to change highlights mid tones and shadows, which will be talking about here in a little bit and then white balance ISO and then the remaining amount of memory on our card, either in video time, remaining or in number of still images available to be taken. So all of that's available in the E V f looking through the viewfinder. All right, next up is this lever. It's the highlight shadow in mid tone lever, and I want to do a little class demo and show what this does on the camera. So I'm gonna have my camera. I'm gonna make it very simple. I'm just gonna put it in the program mode and let's see how we're looking here. So I'm gonna be just using the old Rubik's Cube here in the foreground. And so what I will do is I will just simply slide this lever to the side, and it will bring up my highlights and shadows. And what I can do now is Aiken, turn the front dial to either increase or decrease the shadows. And so if I go plus I am increasing the highlight area and for the shadows, I can raise the shadows, or I can lower the shadows. And so the traditional s curve is gonna give us more contrast in our images. If I was to do the reverse on this hard to do both at the same time, you can see it becomes a very flat image, which doesn't have as much contrast, and so normally you're gonna leave this as a straight line in the middle. But if you wanted to raise the shadows, you could simply raise the shadows. Now another. A little quick tip here is if you'll see down on the left, it says Midtown in phone. So if you hit the info button, you'll adjust the Midtown's. And this is a way to make the image a little bit lighter or darker, but keeping the black points and the white points exactly as they are. And so, if you want, you can adjust all of these points and create a very unique look to the tones of your image. And so I'm gonna want to get this reset to it. Zero setting for most of its for most shooting so I can hit info to get back to the mid towns, and then we're back there. And so this is, Ah, something that you can play with. I don't recommend it in most situations, however, I have been shooting a bit more black and white recently because black and whites really easy when you can see black and white right in the viewfinder. And if you want a little more contrast, this is a great way to simply dial it in as needed on a per shot basis. All right, next up, we have our magnify button, and then we can adjust the power with the dials on the camera. So let's do a little demo on that as well. So let's go ahead and use our cameras off there on the prop table. And so what we're going to do over here get this suggested, is that we can just hit the magnify button and we can magnify again, and I can adjust where I am focusing in the frame. You can see the little thumbnail down here on the right hand side. And so if I was manually focusing, I'm going to switch over to manually focusing. Right now, I can zoom in on my subject. Let's get up here in the top and say, I think I have the touch screen turned off right now, and I can adjust focusing until it looks good in the frame. Now I can also zoom back, and I can zoom in very, very close if I want to see the focus. And so I'm in manual focusing right now, and then I can hit the magnified to come back. Now I'm gonna go ahead and flip the scammer back in the auto focus so it is auto focusing, but I can zoom in as well and make sure that my camera is focusing on that subject. And so you can see how it is reconfirming focusing right there. And so if you want to have absolute confirmation that your photo is in sharp focus from a tripod, you can magnify in. Now you can do it hand held, but because of hand holding the camera leaves a lot of movements toe happen. It's a little bit more tricky to do that magnify movement, but you can do it on the back or in the viewfinder itself. So it's a great way to confirm that you have actually got as good a focus as you have always wanted.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Olympus PEN-F Recommended Settings
Olympus PEN-F Keynote

Ratings and Reviews

Jay Linsenbigler
 

Awesome course and thorough description of the PEN-F capabilities and functions. HOWEVER, John's "big boy camera" bias comes through when he describes some of the creative functions as "just fun". I highly disagree- because like other tools and features- it depends on HOW the photographer uses the tool or feature. Like HDR, the creative features can be used tastefully or look "overcooked". Film photographers who use a variety of different films in film cameras- is this "just fun", or do they offer creative options? I encourage John and any listeners to look up the Olympus Visionaries and many other professionals using Olympus cameras in their daily work to see the amazing results they create with them. Instead of the same old Nikon and Canon "muscle-flexing" biases- lets look at what the pros produce with the camera tools. All modern cameras are superb and capable of great results. And this PEN-F camera offers groundbreaking control over the image making IN CAMERA at the time of exposure- which can be used to adjust an accompanying RAW file if needed. Not everyone wants to sit in front of a computer for hours doing post processing.

Jay Linsenbigler
 

Awesome course and thorough description of the PEN-F capabilities and functions. HOWEVER, John's "big boy camera" bias comes through when he describes some of the creative functions as "just fun". I highly disagree- because like other tools and features- it depends on HOW the photographer uses the tool or feature. Like HDR, the creative features can be used tastefully or look "overcooked". Film photographers who use a variety of different films in film cameras- is this "just fun", or do they offer creative options? I encourage John and any listeners to look up the Olympus Visionaries and many other professionals using Olympus cameras in their daily work to see the amazing results they create with them. Instead of the same old Nikon and Canon "muscle-flexing" biases- lets look at what the pros produce with the camera tools. All modern cameras are superb and capable of great results. And this PEN-F camera offers groundbreaking control over the image making IN CAMERA at the time of exposure- which can be used to adjust an accompanying RAW file if needed. Not everyone wants to sit in front of a computer for hours doing post processing.

Kate Mooney
 

The Pen 5 is an amazing camera - however it is capable of so much that getting to know it can be somewhat overwhelming at first. John systematically and logically works through every part of the camera in really clear and easy to understand steps, quickly converting my initial apprehension into confidence and excitement for the endless possibilities of this camera.

Student Work

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