{"id":7701,"date":"2016-07-02T23:07:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T13:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=7701"},"modified":"2016-07-02T23:15:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T13:15:47","slug":"olympus-om-d-e-m1-for-sports-using-c-af-tracking-and-the-olympus-mzd-300mm-f4-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=7701","title":{"rendered":"Olympus OM-D E-M1 for sports using C-AF Tracking and the Olympus mZD 300mm f\/4 lens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I come from many years of using a long line of Olympus cameras &#8211; none of which had continuous autofocus tracking that actually was useful (OM film cameras, C8080WZ, E330, E510, E-M5 digital cameras), so even though I have owned the only Micro Four Thirds camera with on-sensor PDAF, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:olympusomdem1\" target=\"_blank\">Olympus OM-D E-M1 <\/a>, I have never bothered to really try C-AF Tracking &#8230; until today.<\/p>\n<p>Today I took the E-M1 with the awesome <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:olympusmzd300f4\" target=\"_blank\">Olympus mZD 300mm f\/4 lens<\/a> for a spin at a local Australian Rules Football footy ground in heavy overcast with the prime aim to see if the folks on the internet are correct that C-AF Tracking mode actually works well with this kit.<\/p>\n<h2>So I set the E-M1 up as follows:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>almost the latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=omd:em1_firmware\" target=\"_blank\">firmware<\/a> installed &#8211; E-M1 = 4.0; lens = 1.0; (just realised there is v4.1 available, although this update is not said to change AF capability, so updating to that tonight!)<\/li>\n<li>Noise Filter = OFF and Picture mode = vivid (just in case I use CDAF as these settings give faster CDAF &#8211; which I didn&#8217;t actually end up using)<\/li>\n<li>Shutter priority exposure mode with shutter speed 1\/1250th sec, aperture automatically used f\/4 and ISO was on auto-ISO and automatically used 800<\/li>\n<li>Exposure compensation to &#8211; 0.7 as the shadow\/highlight indicator in EVF was suggesting the whites on the jumpers was otherwise blowing out<\/li>\n<li>High speed burst mode (10fps)<\/li>\n<li>AF mode = C-AF + Tracking<\/li>\n<li>AF region = centre 9 squares<\/li>\n<li>EVF refresh rate HIGH<\/li>\n<li>C-AF Lock = LOW (to reduce chance of loss of lock when a player ran in front and AF re-acquiring lock on that player instead)<\/li>\n<li>Release Priority C = OFF (gives more focused images but less images and you do get more shutter delay as it needs to lock focus before releasing shutter)<\/li>\n<li>IS on<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Technique:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Point and shoot and hope for the best &#8211; no I did not wait to gain AF lock, I just pressed the shutter when the action was in frame &#8211; it does help to have the action in the AF region &#8211; you may want to expand the AF region for your own needs but this does risk AF lock on the background or a player to the side in the foreground.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Outcome:<\/h2>\n<p>Pleasantly surprised seeing beautifully sharp images pop into the EVF on playback<\/p>\n<p>See example below, these have been cropped, and have had a touch of toning and vignetting applied as this lens does not vignette to any appreciable amount even wide open.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/a248d0ed6fd4598f94a81eb504a935ac\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo2_1280.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"footy\" src=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/a248d0ed6fd4598f94a81eb504a935ac\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo2_1280.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>no crop for this one:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/631546ee625cf3f960c9e283df2fb320\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo4_1280.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"footy\" src=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/631546ee625cf3f960c9e283df2fb320\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo4_1280.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>and a short ~50% cropped sequence:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/67.media.tumblr.com\/103a2255bb6b42624c3e0a4385bc43b1\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo5_1280.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"footy\" src=\"http:\/\/67.media.tumblr.com\/103a2255bb6b42624c3e0a4385bc43b1\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo5_1280.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/67.media.tumblr.com\/0879cb5809a37bcf4a90ccd002b49d73\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo6_1280.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"footy\" src=\"http:\/\/67.media.tumblr.com\/0879cb5809a37bcf4a90ccd002b49d73\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo6_1280.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/61c84bb9ee342dab436f623a35d5d600\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo1_1280.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"footy\" src=\"http:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/61c84bb9ee342dab436f623a35d5d600\/tumblr_o9othmJt1P1u97iuzo1_1280.jpg\" width=\"600\/\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion:<\/h2>\n<p>Although I am not a sports shooter, the C-AF Tracking seemed to work at least as well if not better than my Canon 1D Mark III sports dSLR, and I was able to get more telephoto effect and image detail hand held than I could with the Canon.<\/p>\n<p>I was very pleasantly surprised the I could just point and shoot and the camera did the rest reasonably well.<\/p>\n<p>The main issue is at 600mm equivalent field of view, it does take a bit of practice to ensure you get the action in the frame when it is moving quickly over the ground &#8211; and it is for this reason, Olympus introduced the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=7670\" target=\"_blank\">Olympus EE-1 Dot Sight as I have discussed in a prior post<\/a>. I feel that the Dot Sight would largely address this problem and be a very handy addition to this kit.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I come from many years of using a long line of Olympus cameras &#8211; none of which had continuous autofocus tracking that actually was useful (OM film cameras, C8080WZ, E330, E510, E-M5 digital cameras), so even though I have owned the only Micro Four Thirds camera with on-sensor PDAF, Olympus OM-D E-M1 , I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[399,18,241,14,397,396,394],"class_list":["post-7701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lenses","category-photography","tag-c-af-tracking","tag-four-thirds-micro","tag-micro-four-thirds","tag-olympus","tag-olympus-300mm","tag-pdaf","tag-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}