OM-D EM-5 Beginner Questions

[lavonne_rivera]

<p>I am a 65 year old retired lady hoping to enjoy a photography hobby. I purchased the EM-5 after much research but am now reconsidering. This is my first SLR and I am finding it very difficult to use. There are soooo many menus and uses for buttons and dials. As a beginner, did I purchase the wrong camera? Is there a camera that would have been more suited for me? I used this camera to take pictures at my sister's first grandchild's dedication. Everyone in the family is anxiously awaiting copies of these photos. Since I was not proficient with the camera I used the IAuto setting. The pictures were taken indoors under tungsten lighting without a flash. Everyone has yellow to orange skin tones. I now know that I should have set the white balance. Apparently IAuto did not select the right setting. Is there any way I can easily fix these photos? Lastly, some of the photos have windows in the background. The light from the window was too much back lighting. Is there any way for me to easily fix these also? I sincerely hope you don't mind helping a beginner and would appreciate any advice. Thank You</p>

[Sanford]

<p>Think about joining a camera club, or taking some classes in photography and/or photo editing. It takes time learn to use a digital camera, but no matter how proficient you become, a ten percent success rate is considered good. Just never let any one see the bad ones. </p>

[phule]

<p>Learning photography, especially digital photography, without prior experience, can be a very daunting task indeed. But, thankfully, there are many, many resources available to help. There are on-line courses from services like Lydia.com, or free videos on YouTube. However, as Sanford points out, there are local resources too. I would second his recommendation of finding local camera classes (a local community college would be a great start).</p>

<p>That, of course, doesn't help you with the photos you've already taken. The difficulty here is, if you don't have a lot of photography experience, trying to edit photos with unfamiliar digital editing tools may be equally daunting.</p>

<p>First recommendation is that, whatever you do, <strong>do not </strong>work with the original files from the camera. Make a copy of every file you want to work on and use them for your editing. If something happens during the editing and you make a mistake, you can always go back to the unedited originals.</p>

<p>Secondly, are the families expecting digital files or are they expecting prints? If they are expecting prints, you can upload them to a printing service that will auto-correct your images for you. This auto correction may not be perfect, but it may be quicker than trying to edit the photos yourself.</p>

<p>As an alternative, you may consider installing Picasa from Google: http://picasa.google.com/<br /> This software is a non-destructive editor (meaning it keeps track of your changes but does not touch the original files.) The editing tools contained within are user friendly. The key to applying those changes is by way of the "Export" option. After you make color corrections, you would need to Export a new file, which is the edited version of the original, and use that to either email or to print. </p>

[johnfarrar]

<p>First - the very fact that you are diagnosing the problems means you've taken the vital first step towards solving them. Second - as Rob says, keep the original files and as you learn to edit, work on copies; the joy of digital is, that way you can play and learn without any risk of losing the pictures. You'll get there, it just takes a bit of time. Things like the colour of faces can be at least partially corrected when editing, and high contrast from windows behind the subject may be correctable too - certainly you may be able to pull up more detail from the dark parts than you would imagine. I'm sure the family will wait, or can be told that some time down the line they'll get better images. Did you buy the right camera? I think you did, because the files the EM5 gives you will be so much better than many other cameras that it'll be easier to learn from and easier to rescue something from pictures you're not happy with. If I were you I'd stick to auto for now, and change settings only as you learn what you want to do.</p>

[lavonne_rivera]

<p>Wow, thank you both for the helpful replies. After posting the message I was sure someone would ding me for calling the EM-5 an SLR. I do know it is a mirrorless camera. I should have said the EM-5 is the first non point and shoot camera I have used. I did take an intro to digital photography course at my local college - online course. They did not even mention the mirrorless cameras. I am currently reading David Busch's guide to the EM-5. Even his book is hard to follow in places. I am also reading the user manual and taking a DVD based course offered by The Great Courses people. You are right, this will take me a long time. Years ago I tried to teach myself how to use Photoshop. I didn't get far. Thank you so much for the Picasa recommendation. I am going to try that. My family is waiting for prints. Stupid me promised them before Christmas. After the holidays I plan to take more courses. I have been considering the New York Institute of Photography's course. Does anyone have an opinion or advice regarding their offerings? Thank you again for your help. Hopefully someday I will be able to post pictures here that you will like.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Join a local camera club. You'll learn a lot just by hanging out with some of the members on local "shoots". You'll be with a lot of people with all levels of experience which will get you up to speed pretty quickly.</p>

[phule]

<p>[[My family is waiting for prints.]]</p>

<p>If your family is waiting for prints, then you might consider a printing service that will attempt to auto-correct your prints for you. There is time to have them ship you a couple test prints to see if there's value in printing the rest. I have used mpix.com in the past. </p>

<p>[[Years ago I tried to teach myself how to use Photoshop.]]</p>

<p>Photoshop is wonderful, but, IMHO, the general color corrections/exposure corrections/cropping/etc that one needs with digital photography are better served by a program like Picasa or, for down-the-road, Adobe Lightroom where 1) the changes are non-destructive 2) the changes can be copied/replicated easily from one to many photos. </p>

[johnfarrar]

<p>I'm going to make 2 assumptions. First that you have copies of the files so you can work on one copy without harming the other. Second that because you have an EM5 you have Olympus Viewer 2. Now this is not an ideal or comprehensive editing package, but it may help you see what is in your files. (Am also assuming you have jpeg not RAW files). Find 'edit palette' (on my version it's second line from the top, a row of three thin boxes on top of each other). Click on it, and down the rhs of your screen you should have a pile of ways to edit. Play with any of them, just to see what they can do, but I'd recommend 2 for the problems you mention. First, Tone Curve, where by changing the shape of the curve you can brighten shadows and generally alter dark/light balance. Second, Colour Balance, which is not exactly subtle but by moving the sliders you can (with luck!) change those skin colours. Try just reducing red, and perhaps dropping saturation in Hue and Saturation. As long as you are working on a copy of your files, just play - you've nothing to lose. Trial and error, with a lot of error, may at least help you see what can be recovered from a file. Good luck, and come back with specific questions if you need to.</p>

[lavonne_rivera]

<p>What a wonderful place this is! So much great advice. I hope you don't mind my questions. If I am becoming a pest, please let me know. I did use Olympus Viewer 2 to move my photos from the camera to the pc. I tried editing the photos and every time I made a change a message displayed that the change would "not" be applied when printing. So I made the assumption that the changes were only for digital viewing. What did I do wrong? Is there a way to use the viewer and have the changes applied when printing?<br>

I did try Picasa today. I have both JPEG and RAW files for each of my photos. I worked with the JPEG and PICASA made another copy for me when I did a save as. I sure wish I knew how to read the histogram to know if I made a good correction. I guess I won't know until I try printing again. It seems very strange to me that when I view the photos on the LCD monitor or the TV they don't look that bad. But when I printed at the local CVS they were awful! Thanks again!</p>

[GerrySiegel]

Let's do the logic trip LaVonne.

 

Problem 1. Saving the images with photo editing. I am sure you can find someone here in PN or in your vicinity whom you can e mail files to, perhaps even our Tim Lookingbill. Let him work with a JPEG or two via e mail and then see what he can e mail back to you that is printable. I think he does that as his job, not sure but check him out. Goal is to get back a file or two that is printable by CVS etc to your satisfaction.

 

Problem 2. Learning the camera. You started off with one of the more advanced machines but it is a good one. I am not as happy with the menu structure of Olympus as I am with Panasonic, because Olympus makes it tougher in my opinion. Still, it is a popular camera and you can grow with it, so do not despair. You will find that as you read digital photo books it all comes together, and auto white balance sometimes works and sometimes does not. As you preview review of a shot, fiddle with the WB settings to taste next time...it is a matter of taste in the end... I have been using bare bones Program mode a lot and I find it works well on these digital cameras. I have Olympus EM-1 which is a real stretch to learn inside out and I am not a novice but I can usually get decent results and play it safe with bracketing and stuff like that. Example: Choose your exposure setting for backlight shots to taste, ( liikely one of the scene modes , it is a setting of general use but try it out and see), use exposure compensation and exposure point and AE lock, - something that gives control in fancy cameras- use auto white balance but experiment with the OTHER balances with the lighting icons and see how they look to you on the LCD.

Thought: There may even be other ways to make an in camera copy and even correct shades in your camera- Not sure but it is a wild but not in easible thought w these fancy cams......and lastly, you are surely on the right track to learning the basics. Exposure is a tough one that always takes practice. Best of luck and I wish you well, GS

[Peter_in_PA]

<p>ONE thing you need to know about the EM-5. There is a "warmer colors" function that you should immediately turn OFF.</p>

<p>For me, once I did that, I found that auto-white balance nearly never lets me down.</p>

[lavonne_rivera]

<p>Wow, thanks again for all your great advice. I have learned so much already. Peter, It took me awhile but I finally found the warmer colors setting. You were right, it was turned on. I now have it turned off and will try using the auto white balance function again. I had stopped using it when my pictures turned out so badly. I do so wish the menus were easier to navigate!</p>

[revolver]

<p>Hi LeVonne,<br /><br />I have a Pen E PL3 and am also exasperated by the many many un user friendly menus and settings in the Olympus camera. I thought I was making a lateral/downsizing move from a DLSR to a powerful mini 4/3rds that would give me the same control as the DSLR and am not finding it to be good for me.<br /><br />one would think that "auto" would help when fiddling with the manual,scene and P settings didnt quite work as intended because of lack of experience with these settings.<br /><br />it has been very frustrating for me as well. <br /><br />this place has always been helpful to me in the DSLR sections, I wish you luck in your venture<br /><br /><br /></p>