OM-1 Field Testing

What can I say, other than, “Wow!”

A camera is a tool, allowing me to capture and communicate the world as I see it. I’ve always leaned towards simplicity in my tools, working at the pace of landscapes with tripods. The OM-1 allows this. While there is the pull of exercising all the bells and whistles, I can still dial everything back to a simple viewfinder with simple controls to point, focus, adjust and shoot. That’s my C1 setting with highlight and shadow warnings on. Base ISO of 200. Aperture priority ƒ5.6 to start. AF-S. Single frame silent shutter. But, at the push of a button, I can switch to High Res mode or Focus Stacking, or HDR or Keystone control. At this stage, I just need to remember which mode is mapped to which button. 😊

I’ve always considered myself to be “in the know” about photography. During high school, I cut my teeth working in an independent photography store (Connaught Camera in Hamilton, Ontario). My boss, the owner, Jim Prestige, was clear about learning every camera and system inside, outside, upside, downside. He wouldn’t even let me on the selling floor until I could calculate sales tax in my head. “I don’t want you to lose a sale because you’re fumbling over numbers,” he would say.

Nikon, Minolta, Pentax, Ricoh, Konica, Olympus, Contax. But not Leica. Leica was for our ‘Leica Man’ who could sweet talk people out of thousands when the other gear was going for hundreds. And not Canon. “Eddie Blacks carries Canon and I can’t touch their margins,” Jim would say. In the few years I was there, working only weekends and Christmas holidays, I was top in sales twice. The first time was when I sold about a dozen Minoltas in a month. At the time I was using a Minolta XD-11 with some beautiful Minolta lenses. Their 100mm MD macro was top-notch.

The second time was when I sold about a dozen Nikons over Christmas. FMs, FEs, EMs and even an F3. Whoa! Now that was a camera!

But enough history . . .

Those are old systems, long gone, and in retrospect, very simple: Point, focus, adjust, shoot. Photography has come a long way!

I am blown away by the options provided by the OM-1. It’s taking me some time to wrap my head around AF Target, AF Area, and AF Tracking; the advantages of S-AF over C-AF and vice versa; SH1 and SH2; ProCapture; plus all the computational photography options. As I said, “Wow!” For an hour at a time, I immerse myself in learning the ins and outs of one group of settings and options and emerge with a new way of tackling the world of photography.

Right now, it seems overwhelming, but I know this system is cutting edge and it is the future of photography. The beauty of it is that I can still point, focus, adjust and shoot.

Yes, I’m impressed

The engineers behind this camera have built into it a myriad of settings that have become fundamental to landscape, nature and travel photography. And more! And that’s where the real learning begins.

The stabilisation built into the camera and lenses is phenomenal. I’m not yet ready to put away my tripod (I’m looking forward to capturing 80mp landscapes!), but for walkabouts, the stabilisation really is surprising.

The thing about noise . . .

Have I said how impressed I am with the noise levels? Even better is the fact that all of these photos were processed through Lightroom Classic. It handles OM-1 noise well, but not perfectly. It seems lighting conditions have an effect on noise, beyond what you would expect from simple ISO and exposure. I made a few shots at ISO 1600 where I found the noise at 100% a bit on the salt-and-pepper side. Let me say, though, that In a print, the noise would not at all be noticeable. I’m just pixel-peeping.

However, I knew I should have a look into this noise “issue”. Having heard about the wonders of OM Workspace, I processed the same image through it, only applying the AI Noise Reduction before exporting the image back to LR as a 16-bit TIFF. Thes is the only way I can maintain original quality out of OM Workspace, as it does not produce DNGs.

Guess what? No noise. I mean zero. Yet all the same fine detail is there. Wow!

Now for the leap . . .

The area of photography I am now gunning towards is capturing birds. An 800mm fov lens, really opens up the potential for birds in flight and birds in general. I’ve been pleased with the responsiveness of the system. The camera goes from sleep to active in the time it takes me to raise it to eye level. And, its ability to acquire focus (once I’ve set it up properly) is brilliantly fast. The photo below is an example of just this. I heard the geese, raised the camera and fired, taking only a split second to frame the pair. I was in single-shot mode, not prepared for this kind of shot, but still came away with 3 photos. The sun had just risen providing some beautiful lighting.

However, it is the potential offered by Pro Capture that is next on my list. But first, I just need to re-map my brain into a new way of approaching photography using this unique technology. What Pro Capture does is, after half-pressing the shutter release, it begins saving frames. So, when the shutter release is fully pressed, it takes the photo AND it keeps previous frames it had been saving. Not minutes of photos (thank goodness), but rather whatever limit you choose as the photographer; e.g. 50 frames. Tom Stirr has a good article about it as does Espen Helland (who also produces very helpful videos over on YouTube).

Think of a bird on a branch. You half-press the shutter, waiting for it to take off. Once it takes off, you fully depress the shutter and voilà, you have the moment before it took off, the moment it took off and the moment after it took off. Henri Cartier-Bresson would call it cheating, I’m sure, as you no longer need to anticipate the exact decisive moment – Pro Capture does it for you. At least that’s how it works in theory. I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around shooting a millisecond after the decisive moment, when I’m so used to anticipating it. But, as I said in my last post, this old dog can learn new tricks. I can’t say I’ve had great success, the few times I’ve tried it, but my technique is progressing.

Stay tuned!

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