OMD so far: what i know and what i dont know

rbelyell · Expire: 2014-01-31

been shooting a couple of days now, and wanted to share some knowledge/get some knowledge.

what i know:
1) the manual, which is only available in pdf, is perhaps the worst ever! this is a complex little fella, with loads of options, none of which are adequately explained. its all trial and error man,so get ready to spend a good long time ruminatin' as they say down south.
2) that great feature of 'touch screen focus and shoot' not only works for m4/3 lenses, but also works with manual focus legacy glass! of course the camera cant 'focus' legacy lenses like it will native m4/3, but if you pre or scale focus, you can shoot ANY lens unobtrusively by simply touching the articulating screen! see example pix below.
3) this is NOT your PEN series sensor! so your settings probably will not translate note for note. i like to shoot 'vivid' for outdoors. on ep2 i ratcheted up saturation, contrast and sharpness, set EV comp for -.7- -1.0 and got what i wanted. with OMD these settings my highlights were a little blown--i felt like i was shooting a sony sensor!):
so to get the most from bright light pictures, set 'Gradation' to 'Low Key', set EV comp to +.3, and meter (center weighted) for shadows. no more blown highlights.
4) general shooting settings: in color, +2 for either sharpness or contrast seems to add a 'jaggedness' upon 100% crop inspection. it seem +1 is better for both. in good light SHUT OFF ANY NOISE REDUCTION, it seems to interfere with sharpness even though its not supposed to do so at low iso. in bad light you need set it no higher than LOW (default is 'Normal' which is too high). also importantly, default jpeg compression is set at 'Fine'--change it to 'Super Fine' for sharpest result.
5) the 'My Set' function is the OMDs custom-setting-save-system. it saves EVERYTHING for 4 different set ups. this is GREAT because the main menu system is seriously the worst ive ever seen and takes way to much time to navigate through. i NEVER complain about ANY menu system ive ever had in almost a dozen digi cams. this is the first time so it must totally suck and it does. so use the My Set function and set yourself free!

WHAT I DONT KNOW:
1) how in the world can i turn off those DAMNED dialog boxes that come up constantly in the main menu??!! who thought that up, the japanese marquis de sade? i thought they are a peaceful people...
2) how can i lower the sound of the shutter?
3) why no matter what i do am i not able to call up the Super Control Panel? and yes, i enabled SCP in the main menu!

well, thats all for now.
tony

oh yeah, some street shots taken via touchscreen with schneider kruezach retina dkl mount 28/4.0, scale focused. no one had any idea i was taking a picture!