Which Camera Suits You. Me. and the Woman in The Street ???

  I have just taken a tour into the never-never land of Leica on a well known internet forum and came away with a decidedly underwhelmed feeling. Worse when I went onto the NIkon 1 MILC forum, where the standard of photography on average did not warrant more than a mobile phone, while a particularly well captured composition of dancers had awful soft, out of focus or  camera shake from what looked like a pause in proceedings.

All these people have one thing in common, they have spent far more than they needed to in buying a camera for what they actually 'need'.

I think that people really miss the point if they have not grown up with the principles of photographic techniques and basically an eye for sealing a moment in eternity from somthing which they feel they can grasp. In other words, some people have a natural talent for both seeing the moment as it arises, the photo-opportunity,  and then having the skills to capture it. Or seeing the composition as it presents itself , such as a sunrise or shadows cast across a railway terminals marble concurs. Any camera will take you there if you don't know where you are going....

Now what type of photos are you likely to take, which do you like most, why do you want to take photos in the first place?  Over time in the west most people who have been interested in taking better quality photographs have been talked into buying the cheaper entry level digital single lens reflex cameras, and until just a few years ago these indeed were the route to better images than the small pocket sized point-and-shoot cameras.

Why DSLRs and  Multi Lens System Cameras are a Waste of Money For Most People

DSLRs of the entry level type are also bought by the consumer masses at inflation adjusted prices two to three times the price of mid nineteen eighties 35mm Film SLRs , when a then funky PASM body would set you back between 200 and 300 pounds for a 35mm camera....oh did I say that most all people buying a DSLR by numbers, buy a smaller than that of course in the APS/C . It is ironic that this originally film format was heralded as the next big thing when in fact it took so much away from photographic quality, while now in fact it is both the bread and butter of over spend on a students or a  family's camera and also a serious contender for proffessional quality output.

The thing is that DSLRs are obtrusive by their size, their shutter noise and actually the message they give out...this is a serious image that is being taken. People can be guarded in their response to candid shots. Your face is hidden from interaction by in large, you may well be better served by ducking your head under the black cloth of a large plate format camera of old because at least then you are hiden as a person.

Also they are cumbersome, and feel a little vulnerable with their snouty lenses. You would probably not take a DSLR down the rough side of town alone, you maybe avoid taking it hiking or boating due to its weight and value, and you most of all would not get allowed into a rock concert with one slung over your shoulder without a press pass.

Compact Cameras A Great Choice, And A Great Future

This is why compacts took off with proffessional photographers. They found them far less obtrusive. The cameras were a lot less threatening, almost as if JFK or Che Guevera thought they were having family snaps taken and not iconic images which will last through history. The tool of choice was the Leica M, or some photographers used the film Olympus PEN cameras. It took the invention and implementation of the pentaprism view finder in 35mm, to change the game and in fact all these SLR cameras owe as much to the 35mm compacts of the 1940s-60s as they do to the twin less reflex cameras they largely came to replace.

If you watch many pro's at work in the studio or working sub telefoto, they often spend a lot of time away from the view finder. The back screen on digi cameras helps them. Some do not have this approach, tending to be glued to the view finder, but most you will find I think are there looking at the scene or model and waiting for either the right second or the right inspiration to then execute the shot technically.

Things have come full circle with Leica going digital, but remaining out of reach for most pockets, while Olympus played the price payoff game with mFT along with the new kid on the block Panasonic, who swalled Leica behind the scenes in order to get a head in the consumer photography market. Both have ended up creating real rival cameras to the great Nikon and Canon 35mm digital SLRs and also Panasonic rival proffessional video cameras in their GH range. Yes there are some draw backs, but in essence you get images which can be to a jobbing media professional, indistinguisable from full frame. It takes a technician to tell the difference between these mFT cameras and their 'professional benchmark' cameras such as the D3 when the best lenses are engaged.

Why The Through The Lens Optical System is Obsolete

In essence the pentaprism, or mirror box as it is on many cheaper SLR cameras, is an uneccesary feature on any digital camera, and adds bulk and also requires the mirror geometry which takes up space in the distance from the film to the lens mount flange. Pentax have basically just chopped it off  in their mirrorless APS-C cameras.  The optical view finder  in all cameras has been made further obsolete by firstly LED based back screens and by the latest generation of electronic viewfinders. The arguments about the virtues of the OVF, the optical real deal have all but evaporated from the chat forums of the photographic web community.

There are benefits in low light, with light intensifying, in giving extra overlayed information and in reducing the size of cameras when going for the EVF, whille many consumers have grown up taking images on their mobile phones, and have no relationship to the viefinder. They have actually broken a couple of the barriers I talk about above. Firstly your camera becomes part of the scene, obvious but a social device in taking shots. There is nothing special about having it with you, and nothign special about group selfies. WHYSIWHYG - what you see is what you get, the frame of the camera is just a part of the scene, or the scene is looking at the frame and seeing themselves before it is taken. There is a continuum with only a narrow picture frame between the screen image and the wider reality around it when you hold the camera out to take a photo. You are taking your head out of the camera, usually letting the programmers who made the camera take care of the technical exposure and focus, and just picking your moment..... most of all as I say just above, it is the camera you have with you MOST.

Limitations of Your Mobile Device Camera

Unfortunetly there are many draw backs with mobile camera images, but do not let that influence you if you decide that you are maybe going to get  a shirt pocket camera versus a better mobile. Go for the mobile with the best in built camera from the range, and then of course you save yourself maybe half the buying price by not having spent your cash on a compact which will do little more at the sub 200 euro end of the market.

I dare say that there are paid ie professional photographers now who have only taken images on mobile phones, and probably work either for the mobile manufacturers or the networks in producing inspiring images which then of course eat up mobile network megabyte allowances!

The draw backs of mobile phone in built cameras are:

1) No good quality telefoto /zoom photography
2) No real control over blur ie always a deep depth of field
3) Often poor low light images with motion blur, speckled image noise and incorrect colours
4) Often poor controllability over shutter speed
5) Highlights and shadows are 'clipped' ie lack nuances
6) Sharpness for print quality is lacking
7) Usually dependent on the cameras own way of compressing images into jpegs and that can create banding and aliasing ie blocky images.

All of these are being addressed as I write. Panasonic have launched a "large sensor mobile phone- this promises to have less low light noise and better control over DOF,.There are intelligent blur filters and after effects which are getting very very good in faking it. The best mobiles now feature Shutter Priority ie shutter speed selectability and exposure control with live view. You can take black and white images or alter them instantly in any android or apple phone now.

However it has to be said that the drawbacks are only being clawed in partially and basically you cannot get a ferrari v12 in the body of a Mini. I would say as a photographer myself, that if you are upgrading mobile phone right now then look for the one with the best camera and most controllability now for your price and choose a mobile operatiing system around that. If though you are really keen to learn photography then do not waste your money on the best mobile camera, look for a compact camera which suits your ambitions and pocket.

Getting Your Head out of the Camera

What using a mobile though. as I say you get a very immediate interface to the world around  you and less of a barrier to people or the crop of the scene you are going to take. You can train your eye to take shots of what you see as being good, ie there is a subject or wholistic impression to be captured, and you frame that in a way which is clean and pleasing. You execute it without camera shake, and you adjust exposure or effects to make something which looks pleasing immediately. In fact you experiment with art filters on images and post processing with effects on the fly, taking maybe dozens of shots for fun. Not worrying about focus and shutter is actually a bonus.

The vast majority of DSLR owners have an entry level Canon or Nikon, and they set it to P, programme mode because that  is easy and they remember forgetting to turn it off F16 or a half second exposure when they did venture round the PASM wheel. So as a mobile phone photo artist you are in good company.

Often quoted is of course the percieved need of expandability, but in fact the vast majority of first time DSLR buyers stay with the kit zoom lens they bought the camera with until the whole camera becomes dated and loses its resale value by more than half, by which time they buy a new. Expandability means essentially buying more lenses and eventually upgrading a new body which is still  compatible with the system. The problem is that really the cost of the system is prohibitive for most buyers, they just have better things to spend their money on because buying an f1.8 lens for twice the price of their original camera kit just does not seem like good value.  If the cost of bodies have perhaps doubled in 20 years, the cost of system lenses, filters, flash units, tripods and so on have gone up more than three times. In my opinion, you get actually very much more for your money but wages have just not kept up for the majority of people in the last 20 years. A middle road APS-C system with four lenses, a good flash, filters and carry bag is probably around about three thousand pounds. That is more than twice a comparable system such as the OM or early AF EOS systems costed 27 years ago.

How Many Millimeters Do you Need?

Lenses though are a very good place to start in defining your needs in a camera.  The most obvious feature is the focal length which provides both the magnification and the field of view, and always referred to in "mm" and for historical reasons that is  then when talked about, converted to old momney ie 35mm camera equivalents. mFT has tghe kindest equivalency being half the lengths for which ever format of sensor chip you buy,  you willl find a 35mm equivalent either referred to in the instructions or you can search for it on the internet.

. In 'old money then the ranges are>

11mm and below: Fish Eye type images and highly distorted images.
22-24mm  Considered a strong wide angle, gives interesting perspectives and deep DOF, useful for landscapes and street photography or many creative approaches. These lenses function much better in digital photography than film, because the natural distortions of this very wide are corrected by in camera computing such that the edges do not appear unduly curved.
30-40 mm The 35mm lens is the classic compact lens of old, as it is compact while being wide enough for street photography and landscapes, while having natural depth of field which can lend itself to closer portraits or journalistic photos of people than telefoto lenses
50-55mm The classic nifty-fifty , this lens range has fallen out of favour, see my note below, but were often the very good standard, basic lenses fitted to cameras for first purchase. Slightly less magnification than eyesight, they cover a field of view quite similar to the human central field of attention, and that is perhaps why they were so popular, making it easy to frame images and capture desired detail.
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75, 90, 120mm These are the classic lengths of portrait telefoto lenses, and my prefered working magnification for working with people and certain sports like sailing. They were affordable and had wide apertures which meant they could take very short depth of field shots, making for nice soft backgrounds and even a side of the face out of focus. The modern fast 'prime' lenses ie fixed length, for all the smaller formats are correspondingly much smaller than the full frame 135/35mm film which is a benefit. The usual kit zoom lenses usually cover this range from the wide, or from about 50mm eq, but lack the very fine depth of field in the full sized versions.
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They create a noticeable magnification over eyesight and make it easier to work further away from the subject.  As mentioned they used to be very good value for money, being about 100 to 250 pounds for a film SLR. Now they arre partly obsolete due to zooms and have become expensive items often at professional prices. One way of getting a cheap upgrade to a current APS-C or in particular an mFT lens is to buy a convertor ring and buy a cheap second hand 50mm nifty fifty lens from an old film SLR. The drawback here is you will need to manually focus.

Zoom lenses which cover this range while also offering the very wide apertures of f2.8 and lower, are for most people prohibitively expensive being very often more than twice the price of the initial camera and lens. However you can work around this a little by using the longer end of an equivalent of 150mm to 250 mm and then backing off from the subject a few meters. You can then achieve a nice blurred background, but be aware that camera shake becomes worse the longer the focal length chosen. My zoom lens on FT which covers 80mm to 300mm does not need to be backed off very much, just a meter at 100mm eq to make for a nice subtle blur, while also it has to be said, keeping the whole of the face in focus.

Telefoto Lenses

150 - 600mm and beyond.  A typical useable length for nature photography is considered 400mm, and there is a trade off here between having to use a very stable tripod for the longer lengths and maybe being able to take some careful handheld shots at higher shutter speeds.

In the days of135/ 35mm film and at the longer ranges today, zooms were bulky and had quite restricted aperture values of f5.6 upwards as a start point,   so it made it hard to get a fast shutter speed to stop the amplified camera shake movement.

Working Out Your MM Needs

A very useful feature of modern jpeg images is that they usually contain embedded information, date and time of course, but also shutter speed and focal length. So if you have a cheap compact or your mobile you can get an idea of what lenght you use, and then you can start to look at some of your favourite photos or some photos you found frustrating.  Too far away, not close enough, not enough of the scenery and so on.

A very commonly sold modern camera type is the Superzoom which are chunky cameras with a telescopic zoom lens, offering at least as high as a 400mm equivalent often from 28mm wide. So you can take images from wide landscapes to wildlife. Unfortunetly the compromise is that they use small sensors to make the system less cumbersome and to keep the price down. If however you are happy with mobile phone image qaulity, and depth of field control is not important to you while being able to take birds-in-trees shots is, then the latest cameras are not bad, although you may find the picture qaulity is not even as good as the iPhone 6 or Galaxy s4, all be those with much more limited magnification.

Be honest with yourself. A long focal length is just a nice to have, it probably does not reflect the vast majority of pictures you take, while the bulk and limitations such as camera shake and need for a tripod, mean that lenses for an interchangeable camera are rarely used, while a super zoom aka bridge camera is used seldom on the long end, and you carry the bulk and reduction in image quality for no real reason.

However at the other end of the scale  a nice wide angle of 24 or 28mm you will get lovely landscapes, city scapes and so on without having to take panoramas and force people to click or scroll to get the impression. 

Good family portraits begin at around 45mm, head and shoulder shots, and as I say 80-120mm for heads and faces only. This is very well catered for in many smaller compact cameras. On MILC cameras and DSLRs often the kit lenses are just a little short, being around 85 mm max zoom and then you need to swap just to do head shot close ups. However you get a better control of shallow depth of field and background blur, and for APS-C and mFT you get good enough quality to be able to then crop in on shots and make really nice face portraits for example.

There are now though a very few compact cameras which offer this useful range of 24mm to 80/100mm in a zoom and have both a wide aperture of below f2.8 and a larger sensor. They are actually dearer than entry level DSLRs with their single kit lens, but in fact take as good photos while also being able to fit in a jacket pocket. Sony, Panasonic, Olympus and Canon all have enthusiast cameras some of which have the 1" sensor or larger like the mFT sensor and 1.5" sensor.

Lenses for Nice Blurry Backgrounds ?

Depth of field means how much of the image is in focus. For a wide angled landscape of the Scottish Highlands with a lake shore and an obligatory stunted tree, you want a deep sharpness ie extensive depth of field. For a blurred background in a portrait, you want to have a shallow sharpeness, a limited depth of field. The first deep type is actually very well achieved by the latest mobile phone cameras, and you can take very good scanning panoramas the camera stitches together. These are okay for use on facebook, and great if that happened to be an opportunity you didnt have another camera with you.

As I mention above you can cheat with longer focal lengths in achieving the same thing but it is far better to have  control over depth of field by essentially having a wide aperture in the main range of your defined needs, which I suggest are those of the enthusiast compacts I mention, or an interchangeable lens system camera with a more expensive zoom lens in the 24-90mm range. A very interesting alternative is to buy a kit camera and then a high quality 35mm semi wide which can be used for everything from close up portraits, body length shots, group shots, street architecture and landscapes.  You then queu your gadget legs to achieve zoom ie framing what you want. This also renders the camera very compact.
As you get better at photography you will decide that 'fast' lenses ie those with apertures of f2.8 and lower, are highly desirable because you not only get better control of shallow depth of field, but you can use faster shutter speeds to freeze action and avoid camera shake.

Lenses are really the key to photography and literally the window on the world for all cameras and image capture.

Reflecting on Your Needs Now

Now start adding layers of what you want to achieve. Action shots? Long smooth exposures in low light? Silky blurred out backgrounds? Telefoto nature photography? Super wide landscapes? Professional looking portaits and posibly setting up your own stuidio?  Flash free night time street shots ? Video with fidelity for your HDMI tv at home...

Now look at images you have taken and would like to have taken better. Then find images you love. Now go to a shop with some enthusiasts as staff, or if you dare, venture onto a photo chat room on the internet and start discussing those images and what you want to do before you start discussing camera models.

What Next for DF , a Df ? what system next

You know I very nearly jumped ship from Olympus as soon as the Nikon D90 was on the market, and only the recession continuing to bite kept me away from that camera and a three lens set up.

However despite being bitter at Oly' for never making an E6 or as it may be an E8 and E700 now with the sony 16mpx chip, I do not regret holding onto my E450 and three lens line up. It has forced me to live within limitations of the camera while exploring my own new territories. For an entry level camera it has SO many features you do not get with CanNikon, and it is really neat in size. It gets mistaken for an OMD these days.

Although I dare say I could spend more time on late curtain flash  and some other little used stuff on the E450 it is now high time I moved on. I no longer see the challenges of getting some shots, rather the frustrations of ISO image noise, no IBIS and fairly slow glass even at f2.8.

I still love my E450 and have no intention of selling it, but what next?

Freds Needs

1) I need something like the LX100 or if there is a 1" sony chipped XZ3 . THis is not a replacement to a DSLR, it is a supplement to my general enjyment of image capture, and would be pulled out when my mobile currently is.

2) I need then another slightly more serious camera system

3) I want weather proofing for sailing and skiing

4) I want good ISO 3200

5) I want affordable glass which does the following

a) FF eq 24mm -400mm in two lenses, ie the same as buying the Zuiko 12-60/50-200

b) a compact prime either at eq 32/35mm somewhere or at 80 - 120 mm

c) A very compact pancake

d) some retro lens conversion

e) a market for second hand glass, with some people dumping it off!! LOL

6) IBIS then over the need for all lenses to be OIS

7) Video is becoming a must after this years blue grass festival and a sailing event. Why carry a camcorder and a DSLR like i did at the festival? Why not have the kids playing ball in HDMI? 8 mpx frame selection for stills would be cool in camera too, but can be done in post anyway.

8) Wifi is nice to have now c'mon it is a must these days

9) the consumerist in me wants to explore something new! Sad but true.

10) doesnt need wafer thin DOF, and does not correspondingly need to break the bank

Not far down the list and in combination with not spending the earth, then the WR points one way and that is the not exactly foible free, Pentax

But wait, the K50 is a stunner of a camera, ok not the latest video but Nikon APSc standard AF and ISO performance, and "kit" lenses which are WR and pretty much pro lenses of years gone by from Canon without a metal flange.   The rubbery look is actually starting to look retro, like some kind of 1992 EOS competitor that never was.

You could say though that I could do all I want with a WR version of the FZ1000, or I could go find some other MLILC system to suit, but you know, I often feel my oly is small in my hands !

Pentax has its limitations but really the "kit" glass is pretty specialist, sharp and the thing is it is NOT slower than the supposedly royal performance of the FT olympus lenses in f2 and f2.8. That equates to f 4 in APS-C, so hold up! Bokeh is fine, and then you have higher ISO to go beyond the exposure.  I dont subscribe to the concept punted of " total light", it is a linear relationship.

It is a big jump in size though, so I will need to go get touchy feely. The other big deal is that Pentax cameras depreciate like hell when a new model comes out, as the stores sell off the k30 right now for example. They are a bit quirky, like olympus in FT days, so some just fall away because their CaNikon flocking mates take better shots than they can, or just slag them off. Others get pretentions for full frame of course. and then you dump the whole system on the market to raise the deposit and first three payments on an FF with two lenses.

First purchase is not a DSLR no matter what, enthusiast compact zoom cameras have come so far that now you really have choice at 300 euros to 1000 Euros. The most exciting is the LX100 but the best value is the XZ2, presumably an XZ3 is on the way. Then you have CaniSony erm, yeah those two, and Leica for some more cash and then the p9000 from NikoNikon ahem, yeah.

Sad as I am I still get excited about the E450, but also fall back into stopping myself and thinking, will there be camera shake? will there be any Bokeh or enough so POST can auto select the subject for laying on blur? Basically the E450 will not blow-away enthusiast compacts any more, used mediocrily a canon G series could eat it three years ago. Still it makes great images and will be in the family for years to come what ever I get next.

Olympus Blues ....Are the Greens and the Shakes

After a bit of a break from taking photography seriously - a bit unfocused if not diffuse - I have been using the E450 for more or less snapshots and I have been with the family all the time this summer so the "better " more thought out shots have been actually compromised into being ever so slighty better but often lacking.

So this summer for the first in four years of E450 joy, I produced no signature portaits of the kids and no perfect landscapes.  In fact: Quite a lot of mediocre results due to various factors, mainy of course concentration, but also some limitations of the camera: My main bug bears are then:

1) camera shake / movement blur
2) using too wide an angle
3) composition needing cropped which could have been in camera zoom or "shanks pony" zoom/ shifting my backside
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3)b) titled images needing rotating and cropping out good composition
4) Olympus Greens

On the latter, the green,  green grass of home is ever so slightly too green. I guess this is because olympus have chosen to optimise their system into producing stunning sky and sea blues and flattering skin tones (in contrast to panasonics crappy jpeg engine). I shoot only jpeg Large Fine now because without a full photoshop investment and a lot of time on my hands, olympus have hard coded the best jpeg conversion chip in the business and i cannot do better.......except for those garish lawns and hillsides.

I was a bit taken a-back by olympus having a vivid setting as factory default but more disappointed that "natural" still produced garish greens and rather flattering skin tones are more apparent. Reds and blues become more realistic thought.

The fix for images with a lot of green, such as lawns or grassy summer mountains is to set the camera to "muted" which suddenly makes the greens very natural and even adds depth and texture to grass details.

Just remember muted will give rather dowdy blues, yellows and reds while also losing some flattery in skin tone.

On the green issue i coud advise someone who is clued up and who has lightroom, corel 64bit or photoshop to then shoot raw and adjust per "keeper" shot first, then running a batch conversion on the series from the shoot. I would rather be behind the camera on location than in Post personally.

On being behind the camera, this brings me to point 3.

The main draw back with the earlier olympuw E series cameras through to the latter day last of the 10mpx my dear old 450 , pre E3 /30 ,was the small view finder. The OVF gives less than full view of the actual chip frame size and is small and difficult to use with glasses. I often find I am trying to catch my kids in full flight and at the right moment, head out of camera ,and i more or less end up shooting with a "blind" eye to the actual composition TTL.

This leads to most often shots which are too wide, shots which are tilted badly off plumb or zoom shots which are cropping off limbs.

For kids-in-action shots there is just going to have to be more praqctice in setting up and knowing what focal length will work best. CAF focusing in ljive view is too slow, but can be useful for candid shots of people at ease. Also a better eyecup is probably available for spectacle wearing clots like me. This then covers two.

I think i need to go back to looking at some posed, stock library family shots etc and get a feel for composition and then fire off lots of frames when i feel the golden moment is in there.

So no quick fix there, only a back to the basics, experiment and experience. At least i stand inspired as i have hardly lifted my olympus to eye this year!

Finallly the real bug bear for E450/420 and I suspect many other non image-stabilised E series cameras: low shutter speed .

Programme/ Auto mode in Olympus favouritises aperture wide for faster shutter for the same exposure. This is okay if you own the faster, over price f2.8 glass wear, but for the vast majority of we "hundred" series owners we dont own, and we cannot just go over to standard shutter priority and dial in because we have poor non base ISO. We shoot ISO200. Or can we?

Well we have had the sun here and i have bet on 1/320th on S mode as often as i remember to set the camera up. I then shoot even -0.3 a lot of the time to get nice saturation and further more I have been using a polarising filter all summer, whipping it twixt the two kit zooms it fits. The thing with the E series is that you can pull detail and colour out of the three quarter tones into the shadows, but the quarter tones are often poor and the highlights clip in.

So here I have dozens of S images and a good few high light range images which can be lifted, but you know what? ? I like underexposed landscapes and people shots and town or boat shots because it kills off blocky highlights and adds depth with heavy shadows which have good gradation into them.

My investment then for the end of the summer with no work contract for August yet, was a half price monopod which is a full 1669 mm extended ,almost eye height, which i will experiment with to see how much this improves my camera shake issue to free me up for A priority and low light shots.

I am inspired to do a blog based on the very theme post shooting. Watch this space.

Over Coming Percieved Weakness: Olympus E450 (420) Indoor, Low Light

I  feel that I am kind of at a level of diminishing returns in terms of learning curve for the Olympus E450, which has basically been my dream camera in terms of replacing a stolen Om4Ti with a camera with relatively endless, free film and processing!

One area which annoyed me for a long time was the fairly useless indoor focusing capabilities with the E450. Quite a few entry level DSLR cameras from a few years ago were poor in this respect, so the Oly is not alone, but there must have been many prospective buyers put off in shops while trying to get a sharp shot in low light!

As in many areas of life I see a weakness as something to be worked upon and really an opportunity of improvement, improvisation and a feeling of both frustration with the approach and satisfaction in the journey and end result.  A little perseverance and trial and error and hey presto, much more satisfactory results as below.

November 2012   Olympus E450 SiO800, Manual Focus, Handheld, 40-150  125th/60th sec f5.6


Summary of Approaches and Post Processsing:

There are a couple of fixes to low light and night phot'ing which involve focusing set ups, white balance and exposure test shots and then a mixture of either tripod or higher ISO settings. Focusing is about pre-indexing and could be equally applied to sports photography in bright light at high shutter speeds.

1) Resetting the AEL/AFL button to focus lock. I haven't done this for a while , but if you are at a concert as above and have a FT/mFT 1st generation camera with an f stop above 4 useable then the better depth of field for exposure value on the FT crop / sensor means that you can find a focus when the stage is bright, lock it on a central pointm and then leave alone until you move position yourself out of the seat!

With a faster lens, or a closer view point in the stalls, you probably want to repeat this but may be as well reverting to holding focus on half depressed shutter and releasing the shutter button: faster SWD lenses may work better anyway in this type of situation.

2) Manual focus. The e450 is a bit of a pain to get in and out of the mode above and because you are likely to touch the AEL button inadvertently or want to maybe use it for exposure locking rather than focusing, then you may just as well use manual focus. This applies to night outdoors too. You use the liveview zoom function to get a point on the mid of the stage in focus while having the camera very stable pre-show using the back of the seat in front or a bag or the like on your lap. A technique I learned while working as a surveryors assistant one summer in 1986, was to rock the focus by turning the ring both ways around the initial best focus roughly, until you get the best "peak" of sharpness in the decreasing oscillations ( I later used this as a scientist down microscopes, standard technique!) 

If there is a little more light, then you can use PDAF ( still on in MF but just metering BTW) and through the lens with first your eye as a rough guide then trying to see if the in-focus indicator circle lights up as you search for light or high contrast spots on the stage or subject.

Lenses like the prime 25(50eq.)mm and the 14-35 (28-70 eq)mm have much better manual focus but practice in the two above will allow you to at least "index" ie lock to the night's action zone before the subjects come on stage or whatever!

3) Now onto technique, compositions and in camera settings:

a) At normal ISO you will struggle to get bright images, but remember you can rescue a lot from olypmpus' images in the shadows and with less noise at ISO200 you may get in fact a better end result.

b) IS0 400 is fine ,but the noise to speed pay off is better at 800

c) 1600 is getting noisy, so what, switch to black and white and enjoy the free grain!

d) Decide based on the above what your constraints of shutter speed will be for the shoot. If it is going to be 60th of a second then you have the following choices:

    i) still as possible subject
   ii) Panning with the action and taking multiple shots with that chosen in the shutter setting

e) for ISO800 you may be able to shoot at up to 250th of a second and push the shadows

f) 125th of a second is enough to freeze some slow movement while flailing arms for example become an interesting feature of your image.

g) as above, will the image be better in monochrome anyway? WIth more action, switch over to ISO1600 and blast away some frames of action.

h) Remember, remember that camera shake is an issue: use your arms on thighs and press the camera to your face while sitting heavily and comfortably in order to make a tripod effect, or use the back of the seat infront. If you need to stand at say the ovation, pump up to higher ISO. Squeeze the trigger soldier, don't pull it!!

i) Take a lot of photos, and take a good few test photos.


j) use spot metering often for unusually lit subjects. You will see that the photos above are just on center balanced and may have benefited from a spot meter and AEL lock on the best subject.

k) use an alternative to J, auto bracketing if you cannot see results are quite perfect on the cameras programme. Alternatively to save memory and time, just flip the exposure up and down on the wheel a step to catch the odd attempt. Remember under exposed is revoerably, over-exposed will have blocky highlights on older FT cameras and there will likely be more polychromatic noise.

4) Post Processing.

a) lifitng the shadows: This is actually a bit like being the in the dark room at the photo club in 1983 for me: as if by magic, the olympus has recorded detail you cannot see in the original and you can "wash" it out in curve work at the lower end. Lifting detail without destroying absolute shadow, reducing contrast and introducing chromatic error is a bit of a black art, and worthy of its own section. In GIMP and photoshop you can just try to lift the curve about 5% up just a little way in from the last shadow area in the bottom left hand corner, and if your version auto adjust the rest of the curve, then you need to set several points or just play about until you lift detail out of darker areas without the unwanted side effects.

You may want to use masks to selectively lift an area for detail, while actually in the scenes above, you may want to drop the background or "cheat Full Frame Aperture" by blurring the background. Masking basics are covered in an earlier blog and any good manual or HELP for better image processing packages.

b) Looking for Crops with nice Compositions. Another thing to do, self explanatory, but you can often get something better from cropping out "blah blah" or selecting a small part of the image which is fun.

c) Noise filtering manually. The Noise Doctor: This is once again an area worth an entire bloggopedia, but basically for low light and night photos taken at ISO800 at least,  the shadows will be the predominant source of irritating noise. You will be able to see though if you zoom to the level individual pixels show up, that there is often a predominant colour of noise: blue in the ones above. I have more often had olympus "red speckled hen" which is actually predominant at ISO1600. In either case you can choose the blue or red channel in "curves"  and the easiest thing to do is to actually crop the histogram in on the dark end, or you can manipulate the curve more subtely. The majority of the blue or red specks of noise then fade into black and as if by magic you have a 2007 camera sensor which pushes results like the best prior to Sony's latest 16-32 megapixel wonder sensors.

With Polychromatic noise in lighter areas, still do this for the dark areas and then run a de-noising programme or feature (oly' viewer is pretty dire, GIMP has some okay plug ins, while PS and LR seem to have a lot of smoothing in their out-of-box amateur versions according to users)
Then you need to:

d) Sharpen. Decide how the image is to be used: if you are cropping or enlarging for a print to be used in a book or as a large screen image, then an otherwise moderate amount of sharpening can look plasticy when seen larger. However some printers respond well to sharpening and produce better results. You know your use. For a small image, or in black and white, you can push sharpening to quite excessive legnths and improve "Image Impact" on screen or for news print. Sharpening can get you back to 250th of a second from 125th if you are lucky and have just a little bit of blur from shake or subject movement.

Also it can enhance the subject "free of charge" by sharpening: you can achieve this best sometimes by choosing a higher threshold in unsharp mask ( over 12 pixels to say 20 pixels) which favours higher contrast and more prominent detail that was there already rather than any old line or artefact.

e) Try Monochrome in Post. I see on the photo-forums that a lot of people think they can get published by shooting at a concert, for at least the local press or a web site, or they may whangle a press-pass. My pal Ken Dobie was actually one of the FEW amateurs who dared do this with an EOS and fast monofilm in the 80s. His results are more to my taste than the usual kind of high ISO, low contrast, purpely crap expoused for "my first shoot at the fuddy waters concert".

Some images which capture a mood or expression or something in a scene or still life in low light can be thoroughly transformed from wishy washy, strange coloure balance fails into stunning monochromes. Dont hold back on high contrast and blocky highlights and shadows! Enjoy pulling the curves and pushing the sliders and even try a grain effect ( blogged on earlier)