Photography

Memory Cards Myths

This applies to all digital cameras including: Olympus/OM Systems, Panasonic/Lumix, Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, Sony…

Myth #1: Do not erase images with your camera

Deleting images while reviewing is supposed to corrupt the memory card. Why don’t you try it yourself?

Delete or Format The Flash Card?

You are done! After you’ve copied all of your photos from the memory card to the computer, should you:

  1. Delete all the photos from your memory card?
  2. Format the memory card on the computer?
  3. Format the memory card in the camera?

My preference, and that’s what I’ve been using for a while, is none of these three alternatives.

Will They Have The Same Image?

Will They Have The Same Image?

Will these 3 photographers have the same images?

Two of these photographers are taking images at 400mm. The Nikon guy uses a 70-200mm and the TC2x and his tripod is not fully spread out to have a little bit more height. The Canon guy uses a 100-400mm. The only guy that is slightly different is the guy at the back with a 500mm and the Better Beamer on his flash.

They all have the same position, they all have the same height and they all have very similar lenses. I’m always interested in the periphery. What are the other photographers not seeing or not doing? If I can find it then my photos will be very different.

Puzzled by an Old Camera

Puzzled by an Old Camera

This guy is using a very old Fuji FinePix S3 camera and he seems puzzled. He looked through the viewfinder, he looked around, looked at the camera and the viewfinder.

He seemed puzzled… He went back and forth at least a dozen times.

OM-1 MkII: The Diopter Adjustments

The viewfinder contains a lot of “stuff.” It’s at the top of the camera and houses the flash, the hot shoe for the external flash and inside, it contains the display, which according to OM Systems, gives a vertical/horizontal coverage of approximately 100% (page 2 of the official OM Systems spec sheet). It also includes the electronic viewfinder with it’s 5.7 million dots.

OM-1 MkII: BCX-1 Battery Charger

When bought brand new, the OM-1 MKII comes with a single battery, the BLX-1. It also comes with the F-7AC USB-AC adapter and a USB-C (USB 3.2) power cable, the CB-USB13.

The OM-1 MKII does NOT come with a battery charger like in the good old days of 2020 or 2021.

Micro 4/3rd Print Sizes

People always say the micro four-thirds cameras do not have enough resolution to print photos at “reasonable” sizes. In the good old days, the standard size was 8x10, and a large print was 11x14, while the 11x17 was considered very large.

OM-1 MKII: Third Party Batteries

Most Lithium ion batteries for cameras are made of 2 cells (the round stuff that looks like a AA battery)

As far as I know, there are only 5 manufacturers of these Lithium Ion cells: 4 in China and 1 in Japan. Even Tesla doesn’t manufacture the Lithium Ion cells for its own car batteries, they use cylindrical Panasonic 18650 Lithium Ion cells.

OM-1 MkII: The Long Exposure Noise Reduction

The longer the exposure, the warmer the sensor. The warmer the sensor, the noisier the photo. This is based on physics. There’s no way around it. You like it, you don’t like it, the longer the exposure, the noisier the photo will get. It’s mostly chroma noise (the red dots). This applies to all camera manufacturers: Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony… So how do we get around it?

OM-1 MkII: The Right Way of Metering

The OM Systems/Olympus OM1-mkII has 5+ metering modes:

  1. Digital ESP metering aka evaluative/matrix metering
  2. Center-weighted averaging metering
  3. Spot metering metering
  4. Spot metering highlights metering
  5. Spot metering shadows metering

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