Bracketing

[Guy Roberts]

Happy new year everyone!
I have been using the auto bracketing on the EM1 and I like the speed at which the pictures are taken, and that each burst represents one photograph, but I find the 2 stops too much of a gap between exposures.
In shooting menu 2 the bracketing stops can be adjusted, but you have to take each shot individually which is a bit fiddly and I find I lose track of how many shots I have taken in a sequence and end up with incorrectly exposed shots, if that makes sense.
is there any way to change the exposure gap between shots in the auto bracketing mode?

Guy

[Michael Meissner]

If you turn on sequential mode (either low speed or high speed), the camera will take all shots in the bracket while you hold the shutter down. Thus you would have to just hold the shutter button down until the camera stops taking pictures.

[RAH]

If you want to automate it (instead of using burst mode and holding the shutter down), you can set up a Custom self-timer, set to the same number of shots as the bracketing. You can even give it anti-shock of 0, and a starting self-timer delay. Half-second is the minimum time between shots. I have found that in use, the .5 seconds between shots is kind of slow, but there is no way around this, as far as I can see. Anyway, using this technique makes it unnecessary to hold the shutter button down as in burst mode.

I use this technique to "roll my own" HDR with one stop between shots instead of the 2 stops that the camera does (maybe that's what you are doing too, Guy?). It is better than the camera's HDR because it allows use of the self-timer delay and anti-shock. I have this entire thing set to a Myset and attached to a mode dial position. Once you establish it on the camera, to take the set of images, you just press the shutter and let the camera do the rest, with a nice delay before it starts.

[Guy Roberts]

If you want to automate it (instead of using burst mode and holding the shutter down), you can set up a Custom self-timer, set to the same number of shots as the bracketing. You can even give it anti-shock of 0, and a starting self-timer delay. Half-second is the minimum time between shots. I have found that in use, the .5 seconds between shots is kind of slow, but there is no way around this, as far as I can see. Anyway, using this technique makes it unnecessary to hold the shutter button down as in burst mode.

I use this technique to "roll my own" HDR with one stop between shots instead of the 2 stops that the camera does (maybe that's what you are doing too, Guy?). It is better than the camera's HDR because it allows use of the self-timer delay and anti-shock. I have this entire thing set to a Myset and attached to a mode dial position. Once you establish it on the camera, to take the set of images, you just press the shutter and let the camera do the rest, with a nice delay before it starts.

Thanks Rich
I can find the custom self timer but I can't figure out how to get it to bracket the exposure at the same time.
Can you explain how you did that please?
Guy

[Guy Roberts]

Thanks Rich
I can find the custom self timer but I can't figure out how to get it to bracket the exposure at the same time.
Can you explain how you did that please?
Guy

Figured it out Rich, thanks.
Guy

[Guy Roberts]

If you turn on sequential mode (either low speed or high speed), the camera will take all shots in the bracket while you hold the shutter down. Thus you would have to just hold the shutter button down until the camera stops taking pictures.

That works, thanks Michael.
Guy

[RAH]

Figured it out Rich, thanks.
Guy

Glad you figured it out, Guy. Sorry I missed your post asking for clarification till now. Just to complete the info, if I remember correctly, you first set up the bracketing in the camera, then set up the custom self-timer (with the exact same number of shots as you requested in the bracketing). I think that is all you have to do, although it may be a lot of button pushes with the pesky Oly menus. I kind of forget exactly how I did it on the camera (I just documented the idea for myself in an info manager), because once you've got it attached to a Myset, it just runs itself with one shutter press.

Speaking of which, I got a LOT of pushback on another forum about the idea of using larger steps between HDR shots than 1-stop. One guy called 1-stop brackets "micro-steps." A lot of people thought that Oly cameras with their 2-stop gap were correct. I think the idea is that, especially if you shoot raw, the software can restore a lot of info even in drastically over and under exposed images, which it seems to me you get if you do a 5-shot bracket with 2 stops between each shot. I am VERY confused about the whole thing now. :-(

[Guy Roberts]

Hi Rich

i don't tend to do HDR anymore, but I like to bracket to get the correct exposure for the part of the scene I feel is important. I also find that it is easier to pull details from shadows than from highlights so I tend to like exposing to the left, which I believe is not the best thing to do, but it works for me.

Guy

[RAH]

I agree, Guy, that you need to take an exposure using the most important part of a scene and then do your bracketing around that. But with a +-2 stop bracket, a 5 shot group will have a +4 and -4 stop shot at each end. Anytime I do that, it always seems to me that these end images are totally blown out and totally underexposed, enough to appear to be useless. Just about always. But the people on this forum seem to think that this is a good thing, because even a blown out shot has plenty of info for the (supposedly) powerful HDR algorithms to ferret out. Hmm. I do agree that each end of an HDR bracket should be over and under exposed, but to my eyes +-4 is way too much.