Day Two … Live Guides and SCN mode

I’m not sure how many other cameras have a similar features but the Olympus OMD E M10iii has two further features to assist the new camera user.

Ok I have read the manual to get an overview of how these work. They are very straight forward to use, particularly if you are used to using smartphone apps. They make a great next step from using the fully Auto mode and give you a little more control. To access their power you use the little “shortcut” key on the top left hand side of the camera. it does have slightly different functions depending on which mode he camera is in, yet they show a limited set of the main function you might wish to use in that mode, without having to navigate through the main menu (and/or the manual)

If you use the shortcut key in Auto mode, you will see a small set of live guide button on the right hand side of the back LCD screen. Pressing it a second this key with your eye to the viewfinder will show the live guides in the viewfinder (not sure why you would want this, because the best way to use these guides in in the Live View screen). This set of Live view guides lets get sliders to change the obvious things about the image you are about to capture, and you can use the touch screen to adjust the sliders much like you would do on a smartphone.The best part is you see the resulting changes on the Live view screen, its a lot like post processing before you take the shot.

• Colour (Saturation <> muting)
• Colour Temperature (warm <> cool)
• Brightness (Darker <> Lighter>

Just changing these three things, along with good framing (zooming in, or out of perhaps moving closing and filling more of the picture with your subject is probably enough to take a good auto image to a great photo. So many former smartphone photographer will probably be happy to continue using this approach for some time.

There are also a couple of specialized function, but you would probably leave those till later

• Blur (Blur <> Sharpness)
• Motion (Blur <> Stop motion)

Finally right at the bottom of the Live Guides is an item called Shooting Tips, which bring up more guides for common shooting situations and gives advice in example pictorial form. These are actually pretty neat and much more useful to a new photographer than a traditional boring manual or think how to book. Yet they are buried at the bottom of the live guides, I probably would have missed them if I had glanced at the manual and deliberately looked at all items in the Live Guide list. However it you are new to the M10ii definitely press the short cut key and scroll down to the bottom of the live view items.

Under the Auto key (if you move the mode dial clock wise) is the SCN  Scene Mode. Many other camera system have something similar which will change a few to several of the camera setting to best suit the type of scene about to be photograph. This Olympus implementation is pretty amazing if you use the shortcut key to access the set of options you get a set of picture tiles of the six main scene types and then tapping your figure on the most appropriate tile brings up some useful advice and a further set of sub-menus to refine the settings further. Think about it with two taps of your finger you can choose some very specific setting to better capture the photo you are about to take. Compare this with finding all those settings amongst the combination of dial and menu setting. I think this would really help a new camera owners to come to grips with their cameras capability.

These features work with jpeg file output. If you are shooting in RAW the camera will switch to jpeg+RAW and while the the jpeg files will be adjusted to match the Live Guide or SCN mode the RAW file will not be adjusted. So stay tune for working with RAW using tradition settings of the P A S M modes. For now just play in Jpeg, and enjoy getting great photos.