Olympus E-M1 MkIII - amazing...

[GX680III]

I freely admit that most of my digital work had involved a Contax 645 or Hasselblad H2 with a multi-shot Ixpress back - but that's a hefty kit to lug around with a couple of lenses.  So, I tried the Fuji XT-1 as I really like Fuji glass - a legacy from working with the GX680III - and loved it BUT when Olympus brought out the E-M1, as a big shooter of macro work, its in-built focus-stacking was a game changer.  Away went the Fuji and in came the E-M1 which I thought was the ultimate mirrorless camera.  Olympus glass has always been pretty impressive and the Pro lenses are excellent.  But Olympus kindly made me an offer I couldn't refuse and I'm now the happy owner of the MkIII - and its IS is beyond my wildest expectations.  Hand-held multi-second exposures are pin sharp; hand-held Hi-Res is truly amazing and the starry sky AF is superb.  I'm amazed at being able to take photos that had always required the use of a tripod and perhaps even a flash but I can now travel without a tripod even when using the longer lenses and zooms.  The IS takes care of it all - between 7 and 7.5 stops of stabilisation depending on the lens!  The last time a camera blew me away was in 1977 when I bought a Contax RTS.  I remember the excitement at seeing the quality of images it delivered through all those lovely fast Zeiss lenses - Ektachrome pushed 2-stops, 5fps motor drive and bulk-back; all to deliver indoor sports shots without being allowed to use an action-stopping flash.  And 43 years later, Olympus has brought out that child-like wonder once again.  I've only had the camera a few weeks and haven't scratched the surface of its capabilities but it's already delivering piccies of exceptional quality with a modest selection of Pro and non-Pro lenses.  It's such a pity that the camera arrived just after the CoVid-19 lockdown - but that has meant there's no excuse not to plough through all 330-odd pages of the user manual...  And, with the camera's in-built IS, all those lovely Zeiss f1.2 and f1.4 legacy lenses are getting an airing too...

[SrMi]

Glad to see you like the camera, I am looking forward to replacing my MkII with MkIII.
IMO, Olympus in-camera focus stacking is quite limited: the result is JPEG and it can use at most 15 shots. That is typically not enough except for landscape work. You can still use focus bracketing to generate RAWs and focus stack/merge them in the computer, but it requires manually setting the number of shots and the step size (aka trial and error approach).
On the other hand, the new Fuji X-T4 allows setting the first and last focus point and computes the number of shots and step size automatically. I hope this approach gets ported to other cameras as well.

[Arlen]

But Olympus kindly made me an offer I couldn't refuse and I'm now the happy owner of the MkIII - and its IS is beyond my wildest expectations.

As another EM1 MkI owner, I'm wondering what was the offer?

[SrMi]

I wonder what is your experience with handheld multi-shot shooting (50Mp).

[SrMi]

Since no response to my question ;-)...

I got the M1 Mk3 and really like the HHHR mode (hand-held high resolution). The important thing is to use Iridient's O-Transformer to demosaic the 50Mp ORF file. LR is unfortunately not doing a good job.

[TonyVentourisPhotography]

The mkIII has been great.  I have the EM1X and love it, and the mkIII was exactly what I wanted.  A smaller bodied camera that had the key features of the EM1X in something that fits into small bags with a lens attached. 

SrMi, you are correct...lightroom does some crazy things with the high res files by default as opposed to the JPG version.  I don't want to advertise, but on my Olympus blog I offer some presets for high res mode in lightroom that fix that. 

I use HHHR and regular high res mode all the time, especially for clients.  And it took a while, but I got the settings under control that deliver a file that works and looks good out of lightroom.  Far better than the initial lightroom file. 

My only issue with Olympus is when I have to use other cameras now.  They all feel like they are missing "basic" features and my handheld shots sometimes aren't nearly as sharp as they should have been.  I need to be much keener when shooting other systems.  The IBIS really spoils you!

[Chris Kern]

On the other hand, the new Fuji X-T4 allows setting the first and last focus point and computes the number of shots and step size automatically. I hope this approach gets ported to other cameras as well.

I'm curious about your experience with the automatic focus-bracketing feature of the X-T4.  I don't understand how the firmware calculates the appropriate step increment from just the nearest and farthest points that you want to have in-focus.  It seems to me that parameter needs to vary depending on the specific 3D geometry of the subject in order to properly keep all intermediate features of the subject focused.

Notwithstanding my skepticism, I'm hoping this feature will be back-ported to the X-T3.  Since the two cameras share the same sensor and processor, it should be relatively straightforward to code this.

[rdonson]

Focus bracketing is available on the Fuji X-T2, X-T3 and X-T4.

[Chris Kern]

Focus bracketing is available on the Fuji X-T2, X-T3 and X-T4.

It took me a while to get a sense of what parameters were appropriate for the non-automated focus bracketing on the X-T2 and X-T3.  I've mostly used the capability for macro shots, which of course results in rather shallow depth-of-field slices, but now I'm fairly comfortable guessing what frame counts and step values are needed to shoot a particular subject at a particular subject distance.

I like the idea of automating this process, and obviously the nearest and farthest in-focus points inevitably must be two of the parameters.  But my experience is that the particular geometry of the subject―how much specific features are offset from the baseline depth of the object―has a considerable effect on how "steep" the steps need to be.

I haven't used an X-T4 yet, but I would assume the way its automation is implemented would be better suited to shooting subjects like landscapes than for macro photography.

[rdonson]

I haven't used an X-T4 yet, but I would assume the way its automation is implemented would be better suited to shooting subjects like landscapes than for macro photography.

I've used it a lot on my X-T2 but just a single test on the X-T4.   

On the X-T4 (in front of me now)
Manual you have:  Frames, Step and Interval
Auto you only have:  Interval

IMHO it works well for macro and landscape on my X-T2. I mostly use it for landscape though.  Fuji doesn't divulge how everything works.  A lot is calculated in the camera. 

I typically set Frames high as it simply stops when gets to infinity focus.  I don't recall ever setting it for more than 50 and I think it always stopped before I hit that 50 mark.

Step is 1-10  (Fuji magic)

Interval is 0-10 sec

You can download the X-T4 manual from Fuji.  The most interesting pieces are on page 137-138 in manual or 161-162 in the PDF

I've only had the X-T4 for a short time so I really haven't put it through is paces yet for focus bracketing.

[Chris Kern]

I typically set Frames high as it simply stops when gets to infinity focus.  I don't recall ever setting it for more than 50 and I think it always stopped before I hit that 50 mark.

If memory serves, I've needed 75 frames to shoot a couple of macros.  Or at least I thought I did.  (Some samples here.)  Initially I was using Photoshop to create the stacks.  The post-processing was painfully slow, at least on my hardware, a 2013 Mac Pro.  Eventually, I switched to Helicon Focus, which is efficient enough that I no longer am concerned about processing time.  So when I'm not certain how many frames are appropriate, or how narrow the steps should be, I just select more of them and narrower ones, respectively, and let the software sort out which ones are really needed to create the stack.

I've taken to deleting the original raws and just saving the DNGs emitted by the Helicon software.  Actually, since I have a more-or-less instantaneous back-up process, the raws wind up getting saved on one of my file servers, but I haven't felt the need to resurrect them yet.

[rdonson]

Nice work, Chris.

My macro is the Fuji 60mm f/2.4.  Not exactly a great macro lens.  That's probably why most of my focus bracketing is for landscape. 

Here's a focus bracket with my Fuji 50-140 f/2.8.  I take a lot of shots for scenes like this and then simply don't use the shots after the subject is sharp.  That way the background is blurred in a natural way. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/63115962@N00/32728553137/

[SrMi]

Focus bracketing is available on the Fuji X-T2, X-T3 and X-T4.

Only X-T4 has an auto focus-bracketing mode.

[Chris Kern]

Here's a focus bracket with my Fuji 50-140 f/2.8.  I take a lot of shots for scenes like this and then simply don't use the shots after the subject is sharp.  That way the background is blurred in a natural way.

Yup: you achieved exactly what you intended in that picture: the foreground and tree are perfectly focused, while the background appears completely natural.  If you hadn't told me that was a focus bracket, I probably wouldn't have realized it on my own―which is exactly the point, of course, since you don't want the technique to distract the viewer from appreciating the image qua image.

By the way, I'm using the Fuji 60mm f/2.4 for my macro shots.  I located a used one in excellent condition at a good price on the website of one of the big New York retail stores.  Its autofocus performance is slow and sometimes hesitant, but that doesn't bother me because for macro work I focus it manually.  It's very sharp, has good contrast, and the quality of the bokeh is excellent.  The snap below was made with that lens (using autofocus) and I can't find anything to complain about in the smoothness of the background.  No doubt the 80mm f/2.8 macro would focus faster, and the image stabilization would be nice for general handheld use, but it's heavy and expensive.  And as far as I know, the current third-party macro lenses don't couple electronically, so you can't use them to take advantage of the focus bracketing provided by the Fuji bodies.

[SrMi]

It took me a while to get a sense of what parameters were appropriate for the non-automated focus bracketing on the X-T2 and X-T3.  I've mostly used the capability for macro shots, which of course results in rather shallow depth-of-field slices, but now I'm fairly comfortable guessing what frame counts and step values are needed to shoot a particular subject at a particular subject distance.

I like the idea of automating this process, and obviously the nearest and farthest in-focus points inevitably must be two of the parameters.  But my experience is that the particular geometry of the subject―how much specific features are offset from the baseline depth of the object―has a considerable effect on how "steep" the steps need to be.

I haven't used an X-T4 yet, but I would assume the way its automation is implemented would be better suited to shooting subjects like landscapes than for macro photography.

I tried auto mode for macro and it worked well (see attached example). I assume that the camera uses a practical CoC to compute the step size and then shoots until the far focus is reached. It does not need to precompute the number of shots. AFAIK, in all focus bracketing implementations, the real focus step is computed from the specified step parameter, aperture used, and object distance. That seems the hardest part to me.

[rdonson]

Here’s the latest I got from Fujifilm on focus bracketing.

https://fujifilm-x.com/en-us/stories/advanced-month-5-focusing-20-focus-bracketing?utm_medium=Weekly%20Advanced%2020&utm_source=adestra&utm_campaign=weekly_educational_email_journey

[rdonson]

By the way, I'm using the Fuji 60mm f/2.4 for my macro shots.  I located a used one in excellent condition at a good price on the website of the big New York retail stores.  Its autofocus performance is slow and sometimes hesitant, but that doesn't bother me because for macro work I focus it manually.  It's very sharp, has good contrast, and the quality of the bokeh is excellent.  The snap below was made with that lens (using autofocus) and I can't find anything to complain about in the smoothness of the background.

Chris, you’ve got me rethinking my use of the 60mm and going after some macros.

[rdonson]

SrMi, I’m going to give the “auto mode” a try.