From time to time an image of our cats simply must be acceptable 🙂
Oh yes, silver! Reminds me of my new PEN-F. I write this Sunday evening on an overly crowded train to Vienna. The weekend was rainy, and when it didn’t rain, I was working at my father’s house. Insted of retiring, he began building it at 60 years. He never finished it, my mother never wanted to change places so late in their life, and therefore it has been standing empty for years. We’re currently trying to find a tenant, but there are still a lot of things lying around all over the place. You wouldn’t believe how many creative ways there are to stow away tools 🙂
Therefore, instead of taking lots of photos with my new toy, I spent the time sorting other people’s stuff, and when I didn’t, I looked out of a window into the rain.
Still, I have some first impressions. Remember that I recently complained about having to tag images taken with a lens without electronic contacts? Remember the manually maintainable “list of lenses” that I wished for? Well, that’s exactly what the PEN-F has 🙂
The other big difference to any Olympus camera so far is the dedicated exposure compensation wheel. It’s a big change, and here’s why:
Normally I use aperture priority mode and have the front wheel set for aperture. The back wheel is set to exposure compensation. In manual mode, the only other mode that I regularly use, the back wheel is set to shutter speed. In aperture priority I use auto-ISO, in manual base ISO. If light is too low, I manually increase ISO, for instance via Olympus’ “Super Control Panel”.
Now, with a dedicated wheel for exposure compensation, I have the back wheel set to ISO. This is awkward (because I am not used to it) and relaxing as well. It’s relaxing, because as soon as I use the back wheel, the manually set ISO overrides the automatic, and basically what was aperture priority, becomes kind of a manual mode, where I can easily dial ISO for an acceptable shutter speed.
On my E-M1 (and all other Olympus cameras) I can’t do that. The best thing I can do is to switch a mode lever and then the two wheels change to ISO / White Balance. That’s not the same though. I always tend to forget the state of the lever, and while theoretically I could be faster, I end up being slower than when I take the camera off my eye and do the adjustment via Super Control Panel.
So, that’s a fine thing, but I am not sure how much I want to rely on it. After all, the E-M1-MkII may not have that extra wheel, and then switching between cameras will be awkward, and besides, the E-M1-MkII is a few months away anyway.