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Customizing the Olympus E-3 Making the Camera Work Your Way |
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My other articles related to the |
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Some time ago I wrote an article Customizing your E-500, which turned out to be perhaps the most popular piece in the Photo at that time, generating lots of reader feedback. It was followed with another one, dealing with the E-510 and E-410. In response to quite a few requests, here is a similar article about the E-3. It is based on my six weeks spent with the camera (thanks are due to my friend Don), enough to develop some preferences regarding most of the settings, and to provide you with some advice and help in tailoring the E-3 to your needs and taste. Note of February, 2009: This is the final version of the article (as far as anything here is final). Some information was added or revised when I was working on a similar write-up for the E-30; during that time I spent another two weeks with Don's E-3, which gave me a chance to verify some details and update the text considerably. |
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If the E-510 was very customizable, the E-3 is even more so, with a few more options to tweak, so that the camera works the way you want it to — well, to a large extent at least. This flexibility may seem a bit overwhelming at first: there are about 100 parameters you can (and should) preset; this may affect not only the convenience of working with the camera, but also the results it will deliver. The settings and preferences available can be roughly divided into three groups; to make my job easier and to avoid repetitiveness in the text, I'm going to color-code them as follows:
Unavoidably, there will be some overlap between the first three groups; the borderlines are somewhat fuzzy, so my color coding is just a general guidance, not a rule. NOTE: Upgrading the firmware will revert all your camera settings to factory defaults. You will have to repeat the customization process every time you perform an upgrade. In the following walkthrough I will follow, just to focus your attention, the order in which the preferences or settings are listed in the menu system. As mentioned above, most of these parameters do not really customize your camera; they may be more or less frequently changed during a shooting session, sometimes from one frame to another. This section provides just some reasonable defaults; storing them in one of the two available Reset slots (or two My Mode ones will allow you to restore the whole configuration quickly.
There are two menus dedicated to these settings: These settings are not available from the menu system (which makes the menu structure simpler; I would like some others to go as well), but you may want to adjust them, so that they are saved as a custom reset or one of My Modes for a quick recall.
Even if you get a quick shot with this compensation while it was not really needed, you can stretch the image tonality to get the highlights right (at some expense in noise); if, however, your highlights burn out, you will not be able to restore them.
I prefer keeping this at Read here about other available flash modes.
What the "low" sequential speed means is set from another menu. Read here about other drive modes. This setting has three positions: Off, IS1, IS2, with IS1 being stabilization in two dimensions, and IS2 — in one (vertical only). It is listed here, because its value is being stored in custom reset or My Mode slots. While the feature may be used quite often, I believe it is better set to Off by default. This setting screen also allows you to enter a focal length of a legacy, manual lens you may be using with image stabilization. While the setting is irrelevant until you actually mount such a lens, you may enter here your most often used value if you wish. Like the one above, this setting should rather default to Off: you do not want the camera to enter Live Mode on a reset. (It is possible that you may want to have it enabled, though, in one of your My Mode presets.) |
| Except for the two first entries (quite out of place here), this menu deals exclusively with the parameters of the imaging engine. Of these, only ISO and Noise Reduction affect raw images; the rest are just stored as values in those, so that they can (but do not have to) be used "as shot" in the raw-to-RGB conversion in postprocessing. | 
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Pre-empting your question: some of the menu item images below are highlighted (yellow background) — it does not mean anything; I just happened to have them shot this way. This not a setting, but an operation (or rather a choice of two): erasing all images from the currently selected card, or formatting it. While the erase operation is faster, formatting may sometimes be necessary if a card is corrupted or has been formatted in a different device. This also seems to be rather misplaced: from this sub-menu you can set, reset, or recall a complete camera setup. This function will be discussed in a separate section. This sub-menu allows you to predefine a number of Picture Modes, each being a set of image processing parameters; the final effect is not unlike giving you a choice between a number of "films" to use. (One distinction: Picture Modes are chosen independently of the ISO setting.) The Picture Modes can be also recalled from here, but it is much easier to do it from the Control Panel. There are four color Picture Modes, one monochrome, and one — user-defined.
The contrast, saturation, and sharpness values you choose for a given mode are not absolute, they are applied on top of base offset assigned by the designers to each mode and, for no good reason, kept secret from the photographer. While Olympus software applications (be it Master or Studio) do not offer any insight into the actual (i.e. summed-up) image parameter values, Mr. Phil Harvey wrote the most powerful EXIF data reader in existence, EXIF Tool, which allowed me to extract also the absolute values. EXIF Tool is a command line application, and therefore may be difficult to use. This is why Mr. Bogdan Hrastnik of Slovenia wrote a very helpful front end for it, called EXIF Tool GUI. If you put both programs in the same folder, you need only to run the second one, and it will show you all possible EXIF information in a windowed environment. Olympus SLR users may also download my own little file, exiftoolgui.ini, and put it in the same directory; then the program's Custom tab will show only the relevant parameters decoded from the Olympus proprietary data, so that you will not have to search for a needle in a haystack, scrolling through screenfuls of all the weird stuff camera manufacturers put into the EXIF data. The table below shows the base (hidden) values in the first column, and then my recommended adjustments (the Adjust column), followed by the resulting absolute settings (shown as Total). |
| Picture Mode | Parameter | Base | Adjust | Total |
| Vivid | Contrast | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sharpness | +1 | -2 | -1 | |
| Saturation | +1 | 0 | +1 | |
| Natural | Contrast | 0 | -1 | -1 |
| Sharpness | 0 | -1 | -1 | |
| Saturation | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Muted | Contrast | -1 | -1 | -2 |
| Sharpness | -1 | -1 | -2 | |
| Saturation | 0 | -1 | -1 | |
| Portrait | Contrast | -1 | -2 | -3 |
| Sharpness | -1 | -2 | -3 | |
| Saturation | 0 | -1 | -1 | |
| Monochrome | Contrast | 0 | -1 | -1 |
| Sharpness | 1 | -2 | -1 | |
| Filter | - | Red | ||
| Picture tone (tint) | - | Neutral (none) | ||
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The table may need a few comments:
After customizing all "films" to your liking you will have to choose the one to be used as default when the camera undergoes a custom reset. Natural seems to be an obvious choice here. You can choose between Normal, Auto, Low Key, and High Key. While Olympus does not explain what these settings really do, it looks like Low Key and High Key move the central part of the tonal curve down or up, respectively, therefore making the mid-tones darker or lighter (with smaller impact on tonality near the ends of scale). This is what I see in histograms when comparing otherwise identical images. (If you are not familiar with tonal curve manipulation: this is not the same as just decreasing or increasing the exposure!). The Auto setting is new to the E-3; it seems to extract more detail from shadows by lifting the part of the tonal curve to the left of mid-tones. This may be useful when photographing bright scenes with large areas in shadows, which otherwise could become unreadable. My feeling is that the Auto, Low Key, and High Key settings do not bring into play anything I couldn't do easily in postprocessing, especially if your images are saved raw (although out-of-camera JPEGs also leave enough latitude for these adjustments). This is why I rarely venture outside the Normal setting which is the default and also a part of my custom reset setup. The Auto gradation became a part of my preset Custom Picture Mode (which is otherwise identical to my Normal, so that I can quickly switch to it. Note that the gradation setting is saved only as a part of that mode, but not of any others, a slightly confusing design.
This menu option is shown with an icon Two of combinations I use most often are Large/Superfine and Large/Fine; if you are not using the raw format, the real choice will be just between them. Actually, I find the latter sufficient for all I'm doing, so this is my custom reset default. (Only for some samples, intended for intense pixel-peeping, I sometimes switch to Large/Superfine, at the expense of using 50% more storage space.) Changing this setting "on the run" is a bad idea. I've seen too many cases of using a setting by accident, just by forgetting about it; the most painful one was when somebody spent a few hours shooting product pictures and ending up with 1024×768 JPEGs.
Some photographers, even advanced ones, leave the WB at Auto all the time. Manual setting works usually better, as long as you remember to change it when shooting under different conditions. Most of the time (outdoors) I keep it at In addition to a number of WB presets (described here), the camera allows you to define an individual correction for each of the presets; this correction will then be applied every time that preset is used. You can tweak each preset to your liking, but I really never felt a prevailing need to do this, so I leave this alone.
The adjustment is done separately in the red/blue and green/magenta dimensions as described in the If you really care about tweaking the color balance precisely, you will be probably saving images in the raw format anyway, and in such a case all this becomes irrelevant, as the WB compensation happens only at the stage of converting the raw image to RGB.
The E-3 also allows you to define one custom white balance (CWB) setting. I've put 2500°K in that slot, as this is useful when shooting under lower-wattage bulbs, for which the standard incandescent (3000°K) setting is too warm. The color temperature for this setting can be entered directly from this menu, or through the Control Panel (by pressing the While this menu can be used to choose between one of the available four Reference WB slots (which are also stored in the reset data), the only way to fill such a slot is by use of the Function button (if it is assigned to this function, otherwise forget about it). This makes sense. More importantly, you can assign an individual adjustment to each of the Reference WB settings. Storing Reference WB as a part of a custom reset setup makes more sense than it may seem at the first glance. For example, I'm using one of the slots for the daylight fluorescent panels I'm using in much of my tabletop shooting; the next time I just choose the slot, without having to re-do the measurement. This sets the image sensor gain, or, roughly speaking, its responsiveness to light. I prefer to do it manually, with the default at ISO 100, moving to higher values only when needed. If you leave this at Auto, the camera will move the ISO up when it considers the required shutter speed too slow for safe handholding (the upper limit of this adjustment is defined elsewhere). Better depend on your own judgement. This option turns on the low-light, static noise reduction which is done by subtracting a "dark frame" from a taken picture (again, see my noise article). Even if it is set to On, it will be actually activated only at longest exposure times, generally from two seconds up. This means that you can leave it on all the time. When you switch to the sequential drive mode, noise reduction will become temporarily disabled (and no longer accessible from the menu), to avoid the extra delay between frames. Anyway, this setting is applicable only if you are using those long exposures, so for most photographers it is largely irrelevant. By this Olympus refers to removing the random (non-static) noise from recorded images during the raw-to-RGB conversion. This always leads to some detail being lost in the process, even if the result may look more pleasing than the original. The process should not be confused with Noise Reduction, addressing the static noise at long exposures, and described in the previous section. For more on the two kinds of noise, refer to my Noise in Digital Cameras article. There are four values of this setting: Off, Low, Standard, and High. The first one, most likely, does not disable the filtering entirely, just sets it to some base value. How these presets work also probably depends on the ISO setting. Noise filtering should be always considered in combination with image sharpening applied. A more detailed analysis of this subject for various ISOs can be found in a separate article, to which you can refer if you want to choose your own settings here. If you want the short version, here it is: set NF to Low (assuming you're mostly using my Natural Picture Mode described above) and forget about it. The default Standard setting is too fuzzy for my taste. The E-3 does not allow this setting to be memorized separately for every ISO value (or for individual Picture Modes); this might have been a nice feature. |
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As opposed to the Camera 1 menu, this one sets various picture-taking options which affect both raw and JPEG images.
Remember again, I'm not recommending that you use these Camera settings all the time, but that you set them as your personal defaults to be restored when the custom reset (or My Mode) option is used. | 
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You may be a bit surprised that I'm putting this setting into my Red (set and leave alone) category, while Olympus makes it accessible via a (semi-) dedicated button, but read on.
First of all, the choice between
Second, using The latter completely eliminates the need for an external control for this adjustment. My sincere advice: set the metering pattern default here to either ESP or center-weighted (for most users it will be ESP, unless you are accustomed to the other one), assigning the spot mode to the AEL function. The ESP setting has two flavors: one "plain" and one denoted as "ASP+AF". The latter puts higher weights on the matrix area over the currently used AF sensor. The choice is made from a sub-menu into which the ESP branches, and the chosen flavor will be then used whenever the ESP metering mode is active. On the other hand, using the AE lock with spot metering will be very effective in protecting the highlights from burning out in high-contrast images. Most people who complain about limited dynamic range of their camera just do not know what spot metering may be used for.
The Unless you are using a remote setup of multiple (compatible) flash units, keep this setting at Off and forget about it. If you are using such a setup, you may activate this just before the multiple-flash shooting session.
The choice here is between Single AF, Continuous AF, and Manual Focus (two more modes, S-AF+MF and C-AF+MF, use AF in conjunction with MF). Usually the selection will not be done from the menu, as the two other ways to do it (Control Panel, direct button) are more convenient. Single AF makes a good default, as it works best in most cases, except for rapidly moving subjects, but then you can switch to Continuous AF as needed with an external control. The S-AF+MF and C-AF+MF modes are included for compatibility with all Four Thirds lenses; the latest ones (at least the 12-60 mm ZD; I'm not sure about others) allow you to "touch up" the focus manually regardless of this setting. I am not quite sure how useful is the mixed C-AF+MF mode: continuous autofocus with manual adjustment? Frankly, I've never had a need to use it, and I never did. You may have to experiment with this setting on your own to see how much it is worth in the context of your shooting needs and habits. On the first level, this menu entry allows you to choose between the full 11-point array (when the camera decides where to focus), a five-point cross pattern (referred to as Dynamic Point, just to make it harder to guess), and a single spot. Suit your preferences here; I've settled down on the cross, but many users prefer a single point as giving them most control, while some go for all points, a kind of snapshot mode. On the second level, you can use this menu to choose the AF area for the two latter modes. This may make sense in some situations (like shooting from a tripod), but not as a preset. Leave the spots at center in your default, if applicable.
A well-hidden extra option here is that once you've selected the target position, you can "register" it by pressing simultaneously the Function and From where I stand, this may not be the least useful feature on the E-3, but it certainly belongs to the bottom 10%. For the single-spot mode you can additionally set the AF point sensitive area to "regular" or "small", but this is, for reasons known only to Olympus, done from one of the Settings sub-menus. Olympus calls this Anti-Shock, but this is really the old mirror lock we've known since the Seventies. It helps to avoid, in critical applications, vibrations caused by the mirror action. Obviously, this is useful only in tripod shooting.
Once you set the delay to a non-zero value, the sequence of drive modes (accessible by pressing the dedicated Some of these "mixed" modes do not make sense: for example, adding a mirror lock delay before every frame in a "high-speed" sequence. Some others are questionable, like applying a self-timer delay, then raising the mirror up, and applying a delay again. What would be wrong with raising the mirror right away and using just one delay? Messy. This may seem like a bit strange way of providing this functionality, but at least mirror lock can be, once set here, activated without going into the menu system, and that's most important. From my past experience, the delay of 2 seconds is long enough for most of the mirror-induced vibrations to die out, and this is my recommended default — if you are planning to use mirror lock at all. Otherwise, set it to Off, to time and confusion when changing drive modes. Out of four kinds of bracketing provided by the E-3 this is the most useful; in critical applications you will possibly use it a lot. Set the default to Off, activating as needed. Another setup, with this bracketing enabled and the drive mode at Serial High, may be handy when saved in one of My Mode slots. Useless and wasteful, see here (interestingly, Olympus just follows the crowd providing this option). Instead of using WB bracketing, if expecting WB problems, switch to the raw mode. Set this to Off and ignore. This may be useful in exceptional situations, when you want to experiment with different -to-flash ratios, mixing both kinds of light. For any other purpose normal exposure bracketing should be fine, unless I'm missing something. Anyway, set this to Off, to be activated only as needed. This is really autoexposure bracketing by means of changing the ISO only. (Yes, at extreme ISO value it works only in one direction, leaving some frames identical.) Again, Off by default. This group of camera settings is huge: more than seventy items. It contains mostly user preferences, customizing not just the shooting parameters, but the ways in which the camera works, including the way in which shooting parameters are being set. While my assignment of various settings from the previous chapter to the color-coded groups was, to some extent, arbitrary and reflecting my shooting habits, most of the settings described here will be in the Red group: to be set just once, as soon as you know what your preferences are. |
| This menu underwent a total shake-up, compared to the E-510. Most notably, it now branches into nine sub-menus (denoted with letters from A to I), grouping, mostly at least, functions of similar nature. | 
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| Obviously, this submenu groups preferences related to focusing, except for focus lock, which is in Settings B. | 
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This setting allows you to enable or disable the autofocus aid light, used when the available light is not bright enough for reliable autofocus. Depending on the flash you are using, this AF light can be generated in two different ways.
In either case, the setting allows to turn the AF aid off. It is irrelevant if the flash is not raised or if the external flash is turned off. I prefer to have the AF Assist turned On. You may want to disable it when using the built-in flash to trigger slave units, when it may release them prematurely. This allows you to choose in which direction you will have to turn the manual focusing on Olympus Four Thirds lenses in order to change the focus towards infinity. The feature, although far from being essential, allows you to stick to your habits acquired with manual lenses you are (or have been) using. Unless that is the case, just ignore this choice. You are photographing a sports game, using the C-AF mode. From time to time someone a few feet in front of you gets up to bring himself a beer; your AF system is desperately trying to change the focus, then — to change it back. This feature disables such an adjustment when the focus change would be large and sudden. I would keep it On, even if my experience in continuous AF is very limited, as I use it very rarely. By default, the AF point used in a successful focus estimate briefly lights up in red in the viewfinder. This behavior can be disabled here. Most of us will want to keep it On. According to Olympus, this changes the effective area of the AF sensor used in the single-point mode. The choice is between Normal and Small, the latter denoted by [.]s in displayed indicators and covering just the AF point outline shown in the finder. I wasn't actually able to see a difference in how both settings work, so I'm keeping the default Normal. This is used to choose how turning the control dial (while the AF point selection button, [...], is pressed) moves from one such point to another:
Play with the camera using all three settings decide what you like best; it is personal. I found Spiral most to my liking — but I do not move my AF point around often. !!! If this is activated, turning off the camera will reset the lens to infinity. In most cases this saves you a fraction of a second in the first picture taken when you turn the camera on again; the camera is also more transportable in this state. Set this to On. When the camera is in the bulb exposure mode (manually-timed shutter), and set to manual focusing, you can turn the focus ring, either accidentally or on purpose (to get a special effect: a picture partially de-focused). Here you can disable the focus ring for the time when the shutter stays open to avoid an unintended defocusing. Very few camera users use bulb timing, and those who will, have an idea what they want here. I keep this option at Off, not that it matters. |
| These may be options most important in customizing (as opposed to using) your camera, as it adjusts the controls to your liking. Changing these preferences too often may lead to confusion and erratic camera behavior, so setting them once and forever (or almost so) may be a good idea. | 
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If you are using two or more different Olympus cameras, you may try to make them respond to controls in a similar way (as much as it is possible due to differences in controls). The two control dials in the E-3 are used not only in conjunction with direct buttons (about that, read here), but also alone, controlling the basic exposure parameters. How do they exactly function in the latter capacity is adjusted from here. Obviously, the adjustable parameters (and therefore dial functionality) depend on the exposure mode you are in. Here are the options:
Note that in my recommended setup the front dial always (where applicable) controls the exposure compensation. The rear one changes the control variable (where applicable, again) or aperture. Only the shutter speed moves from the rear dial (shutter priority, when it is the control variable) to the front one (manual, where it is the secondary one after aperture). This could not be avoided. I've got used to this arrangement within a few hours after it was set up, and I like it better than the best one I was able to come up with for the E-510 (which only has one dial).
Getting rid of the exposure compensation This is actually a sub-menu used to define how the camera's AE and AF functions behave when the [AEL/AFL] (or Lock) button, right of the finder eyepiece, and/or the shutter release are pressed. This choice is made independently for each focusing mode: single, continuous, and manual. In each case you choose one of the pre-packaged combinations. Switching between SAF, CAF, and MF is not done from here; you can do it either from the Control Panel or with use of a direct button. The factory-default presets here make good sense. Still, if you know what you want, they may be worth changing to your taste. (Another option is to follow my advice, skip the details and jump straight to my recommendations, which are not much different.) Here is the complete listing of available options. I just hope it is less confusing than the description in the camera's manual. (If not, suggestions how to improve it will be appreciated.)
I'm sorry if this description was too long; this could not be helped. On the bright side, this is a part of the setup which you will be doing just once. Now, the short version:
My recommendation:
Use either the defaults, shown in the menu as When this is set to OFF, the Lock button works like described in the previous section: you have to keep it down in order to keep the autoexposure frozen (or, in the CAF Mode 3, see above, autofocus continuously adjusting). When this is ON, that button will act as a toggle: the first press will turn the lock (or CAF) on, the second — off. The reading will stay locked (or CAF active) after the picture has been taken. The feature is useful when the exposure has to stay identical for a number of frames (like in panorama sequences), but it may also be quite dangerous: it is too easy to forget that the lock is active. This is why I would recommend keeping this setting at Off, unless working in the toggle mode is already your second nature. Even when shooting panorama sequences, I prefer to set the exposure in metered manual before the first frame. The Function, or [Fn] button at the top-right of the camera's back can be assigned to just one of a number of available functions. This is, obviously, an important choice, as the number of external controls is always limited. The available options are:
By providing these eleven (!) options Olympus is trying to make everybody happy (at the same time making everybody confused). There is, however, nothing really wrong with it, as the setting, once done, remains hidden and does not stand in your way when operating the camera. The choice is, indeed, simpler than it may look. Unless you need to switch rapidly to and from a designated My Mode, or to switch easily between the two underwater modes, assigning the [Fn] button to the Reference White Balance seems to make most sense, as this feature remains totally inaccessible in any other way, period. If you are not using Reference WB (and you really should, otherwise you're missing a very handy tool), then you can put any secondary-importance function on this button. Frankly, I do not know what I would have chosen in such situation: perhaps just a duplication of the exposure mode button? If you wish, you can swap the Function button with the Lock one, see below. The functionality of this menu item is described elsewhere. Leave it alone until you have all other settings tweaked to your needs and taste. You can adjust the length of the "grace period", within which you may use a control dial to adjust the setting assigned to a "direct button". The available options are
While in the beginning, still gaining familiarity with the camera controls, you may want to use a time-out of 5 or 8 seconds, after a few weeks you will probably want to set it to three seconds. Here you can swap the functionality assigned to the Lock and Function buttons, if you find the role reversal up to your liking. Actually, I did that once, a few months ago, on my E-510, but after a few weeks reverted to the default assignment, marked as Off.
The cursor keys can be set for AF point selection in a short period (30 seconds or so) after the shutter release was half-pressed, without a need for pressing the I keep this option disabled. It was introduced only in Version 1.3 of the firmware (February, 2009). |
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Only three functions are in this group, although I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more in one of firmware updates; for example, "Use sequential drive mode with bracketing". We'll see.
February, 2009: Nope. | 
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This option defines the camera's behavior in the S-AF (single-focus) mode, being disabled by default. Activating it will make the camera take a picture whenever you press the shutter release button regardless of whether it was able to focus properly. The default Off setting seems to make more sense, so I would keep it. This setting also determines if the picture will be taken if the flash is not yet recharged. Similar to the above, but for the C-AF (Continuous AF) mode. That mode is recommended for fast-moving objects, and the camera uses the predictive AF then anyway (extrapolating the subject movement and "outguessing" its future position). Because of the predictive AF and because in such situations it is better to risk an out-of-focus frame than no frame at all, the default On setting here makes sense. See the remark above on flash. While the drive mode setting allows a choice (among others) between high and low sequential speeds, only here you define what "low speed" actually means: from 1 to 4 frames per second. My preference is 3 FPS, as differing more from the "high" value of 5 FPS. |
| These are really secondary-importance adjustments, and, unless you are up to setting your camera up right now, you may safely skip this section until that time. | 
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From here you can enable or disable the beep the camera makes when autofocus is achieved, at least in the single AF mode. I prefer to keep this On, as quite often I am too focused on other things in order to watch the AF confirmation light in the viewfinder. In rare situations when the beep may be found disturbing, I just break my no-menu rule and just disable it. This defines the period of inactivity after which the camera will enter the low-power sleep mode, disabling the LCD and all controls; then when any control is pressed, your E-3 will almost instantly (with just the dust-off delay) spring to life. This time-out can be set to Off (never go to sleep), 1, 3, 5, or 10 minutes. Entirely a matter of taste; I prefer 3 minutes. The infrared remote receptor is disabled in the sleep state; when you are using the RM-1 or RM-2, you may want to disable the sleep feature.
Similar to the above, but governs how soon will the monitor backlighting go off (which saves quite a lot of juice). The choice is between 8, 30, and 60 seconds plus Hold. I find Even with Hold the monitor will go off when the sleep time comes. After the camera goes to sleep, its internal clock still keeps ticking, and (by default) the camera will turn itself off for good after four hours. To be activated again, it has to be turned off and on again. This feature can be disabled (set to Off) from here, but I prefer to keep the default. This is the mode in which the USB interface is turned on when the camera detects the connection. Here are the options:
The default Auto option is a safe choice, but if you never operate the camera remotely, Storage will be more convenient. With this if set to Off, the Live View display will be accounting for the picture-taking parameters i.e., it will approximate the resulting picture. In the ON position, the display may be brightened for better visibility (at the expense of some jerkiness). The live histogram does not work right with the boost enables, so it has to be ignored. By default I prefer to keep the Live View Boost off, except when shooting in infrared; in that case this may be the only way to make the preview visible. You may have a framing aid (which is the proper English term) superimposed on the Live View display. There is a choice between:
Depending on that choice, one of these will be shown in the sequence of live display modes when the [Info] button is repeatedly pressed. Suit yourself, but after some playing around I just reverted to Off. |
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This group of settings changes the limits, steps, and time-outs. Once again: set them once and never come back.
A notable exception is that here you also decide what metering pattern will be used with the AE lock; this may be one of the more important decisions you will have to make in the customization process. | 
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This is the step used in exposure compensation, shutter speed, and aperture adjustment. The choice is between 1/3, 1/2, or 1 EV. While 1 EV is OK for shutter or aperture (except in metered manual mode, where the other factor does not adjust automatically), exposure compensation requires more precision: 1/3 or 1/2 EV will do, depending on any habits you might have developed already. While I keep this at 1/3 EV, some people may be happier with 1/2 EV: with almost the same precision you go through fewer steps when making changes. This is the step with which the ISO (sensor gain, or effective sensitivity to light) can be adjusted. It can be chosen as 1/3 EV (ISO 100, 120, 160, 200...) or 1 EV (ISO 100, 200, 400...). The finer, 1/3 EV step has no real advantage: I find that the usual 1 EV is good enough for any purpose, and it requires less scrolling through available values. Therefore 1 EV is my recommendation (feel free to disregard it). EV stands for Exposure Value, or a product of scene brightness and exposure time; it is often used to describe differences in the amount of light or in response to it. The scale is logarithmic: 1 EV more corresponds to twice the amount of light; 1/3 EV — to about 26% more (note: 1.26×1.26×1.26 = 2). The values in the 1/3 EV ISO sequence are approximate, but this accuracy is more than good enough for any purpose. This is actually not one setting but two independent ones.
This determines if the Auto ISO will be accessible in the manual exposure mode. The choice is between P/S/A (autoexposure modes only) and All (which includes manual exposure). In the original version of this article I was wondering why I would ever want to use auto-ISO in manual exposure. A few months later I know. If you choose All and set ISO to Auto, the manual exposure mode becomes a shutter-and-aperture priority AE: you set these two parameters, and the camera will adjust the third one (ISO) as needed to provide proper exposure, if possible. Manual is no longer manual, but some users may like it this way; besides, all it takes to disable this feature is to move the ISO setting off Auto.
Unlike in P, A, and S autoexposure modes, you will not be able to dial in any exposure compensation (with or without using the Anyway, this is a minor decision. I've set this to All, if just to play with the new feature when it strikes my fancy. This is a choice which metering pattern will be used when the exposure is locked with the [AEL/AFL] button (not by half-pressing the shutter release!).
Spot metering Here you set the time limit after which the shutter will close even if you are still holding the shutter release depressed. (No, I do not expect someone to hold down the button down for twenty minutes, but the release can be locked with a wired or infrared remote, to the same effect.) The default of 8 minutes seems OK: when was the last time you have used an exposure longer than that? |
This sub-menu is shown as  CUSTOM | 
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This is the fastest shutter speed which the camera will use with flash. While the default is 1/250 s, you may set that limit to any value down to Longer speeds increase the input of the ambient light to the final result, softening the harsh flash light a bit, but this may cause WB problems, common with mixed light sources. These problems will be most visible in the program or aperture priority mode, as then the camera will set the shutter as it pleases, usually close to the 1/2F (one over double focal length) rule, to maximize the ambient light share. They can be, however, easily avoided, see the next setting. I would recommend here to set the highest value, i.e., 1/250 s, for a number of reasons. If longer shutter speeds are desirable, use shutter priority to get exactly what you want. This feature allows you to avoid mixed-light problems mentioned above. It is new in the E-3. The shutter speed used with flash in program and aperture priority AE modes will never get below the value set here (unless you choose the Slow flash mode. The default of 1/60 s usually provides some softening of the flash with ambient light, but if you want to avoid that (for consistent white balance), you may consider raising it all the way to 1/250 s. I don't mind the slight yellow cast when using flash under ambient light, so I keep it at 1/60 s.
You can choose how the
I find the On option more intuitive; see also my remarks of flash compensation in general for more arguments in favor of this choice. |
| In a way similar to the Camera 1 menu, the preferences in this group control some aspects of the raw-to-RGB conversion, directly affecting generated JPEG images, but not raw ones. Still, they are being remembered in raw files, to be used as the "as shot" settings in postprocessing. | 
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Here you can define common color corrections (both in Red/Blue and Green/Magenta) which will be shared by all WB settings, including Auto and Reference ( These corrections will override ones, if any, previously defined for the individual WB presets or reference WB slots (it will also be applied to any reference WB readings made afterwards, but not to the custom °K setting). Therefore if you would like to use a specific correction for some WB choices and a "global" one for all others, define the latter first as described below, and then override it for the specific settings as described here. And, really, do not mess with this setting much, or, at least, do not mix it with individual corrections. The adjustment is done in "steps" of undocumented size. A positive correction shifts colors towards red or green; negative — towards blue or magenta. (Arrow keys are used to switch between color dimensions and to move the values up or down.) Unless you think the E-3 colors need to be shifted overall in a given direction (say, all to become warmer), leave this setting alone. That's what I did. A choice between sRGB (used by practically all computer displays and printers) and Adobe RGB, said to provide a wider color gamut. If you are not 100% sure what Adobe RGB really is and how you can benefit from it, just forget about it and use the default sRGB. Every lens has a degree of vignetting or light fall-off: images are getting progressively darker towards the corners. This is especially visible in wide-angle lenses, and can be (partially) addressed by using a strongly retrofocus lens design. A large part of this phenomenon is purely geometric in nature (as opposed to being an optical flaw of the lens itself), and cannot be cured by any means. Actually, this is the part which is smaller for retrofocus lenses. The E-3 can compensate for light fall-off, doing it at the stage of raw-to-RGB conversion, with use of the lens information passed from it to the camera circuitry. This information tells the camera how much to brighten the image towards the corners to level out the effect. Here you can turn this function on or off. I see no reason not to have this set to On. Here you define the four JPEG resolution/compression presets which then will be available for a quick recall from the menu (or, better, from Control Panel). Each of these presets gives you the choice of two factors:
Every preset will be named with a concatenation of the two corresponding acronyms; for example, LSF standing for Large+Superfine; those names will then be used everywhere as needed. I never had a need for more than two such combinations: one for more and one for less critical uses. Certainly, the first two presets have to be LSF and LF; while the other two do not really matter (for me at least), I've set them as LN and MN, just in case of an emergency, running out of card space. (This happened to me once, during a trip to Japan in 2002, when a 256 MB card used to cost $200). Now we came to the place where you define what Medium and Small, used above, mean. The following choices are available:
If you are not using non-native resolution files, these choices do not matter; just in case, set the largest sizes available: 3200×2400 and 1280×960. |
| Some preferences regarding card file system access are set here. Some more of the same kind are scattered over the Settings 2 menu. | 
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Setting this to On allows you to delete the currently viewed image with a single press on the red trash can button, without any confirmation. I would suggest keeping this at Off, but setting the Yes/No default to Yes; deleting a file would then require a confirmation with just a single button press. This is relevant only if you save images in duplicate, as raw ORF and JPEG. When the Delete (trash can) button is pressed while an image is being viewed, the camera may delete just one or both versions, depending how this preference has been set. I've set this to RAW+JPEG (both), to avoid confusion. This defines how the numbers in file names (see Edit File Name), are assigned when an empty card is mounted. There are two choices:
I prefer Auto, as it provides images with ordinal numbers regardless of the date, folder, and card used. If the card is not empty and contains, in the currently used folder, a file with a serial number above the current counter, the latter will be moved up. A good rule to follow is to assure that a card inserted into the camera does not contain any images; this will allow to avoid surprises.
This criptic name refers to an option defining the default (highlighted) answer to a Yes/No query on file delete. If this is set to No, then deleting a file requires pressing a cursorkey in addition to the [OK] button. I found this a bit annoying, therefore my cameras have this set to Yes. (I still have to delete an image by accident.)
This double protection seems too much to me; I prefer the Yes setting, where I need to press just [OK] after the Delete button to confirm the operation.
This choice does not affect other confirmation screens; for example resetting the camera to a the custom preset.
This setting is completely irrelevant, just leave it alone.
Adobe, I believe, started embedding the DPI (dots per inch) information into bitmapped images. This is, to be frank, moronic: a 2000×3000 pixel image file is that, regardless of what DPI you set there. Unfortunately, many people were made to believe that this is somehow significant, and, perhaps for some compatibility purposes, Olympus now puts this information into its image files.
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Here the designers put some (exactly: two) of the things which did not fit anywhere else (the rest is in the Settings 2 menu; decisions on that were probably made by tossing a coin).
The good news is that you will be never coming back to this menu again. | 
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When you select this and press [OK], the camera enters the cleaning mode: the mirror goes up and the shutter opens, so that the dust barrier in front of the image sensor becomes accessible for cleaning — if you remove the lens, of course. Be careful: if the battery gets low during that time, the shutter will close, with the mirror returning down, and one or both will be likely damaged. The E-3 has an external light receptacle, placed between the grip and lens mount, and used to help the Auto WB circuitry to do its job. (This is very much like an ambient light meter, although not as effective as a hand-held one pointed away from the subject, the most accurate method.) By default this detector is turned on, and I would leave it this way, although it matters only when you use the Auto White Balance. |
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This menu is a relict form the previous Olympus models, being a grab bag of odds and ends.
Be warned: the logic stops here, proceed at your own risk. | 
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This is not really a preference setting, but a maintenance function. A properly set clock allows your pictures to be correctly time-tagged. Set this once to your home time zone and leave it there, adjusting once a year if needed. The camera does not automatically switch to the daylight savings time (it would have to know its location and the local law). If you want to account for that, the setting has to be changed by hand. I chose not to do it, and keep the "winter" time all the time (this is the "real" time zone time, more closely related to the actual time of the day. I've also given up on moving the camera's clock every time when arriving to a different time zone. Sooner or later you'll forget to do it, and then things may get messy. It is just not worth the trouble. Accurate time stamps become more important if you are carrying a GPS recorder and then use a software application to tag your files with the location where the picture was taken. The choice between Compact Flash and xD-Picture card is not really a preference setting, and it should be rather in one of the Camera menus, not here. Anyway, set it to the card you use more often, and in need you can always change it from the Control Panel, without diving into the menu system. Keep in mind that CF cards usually are faster and less expensive; this is my default. This allows you to (slightly) change the Olympus file naming convention, which combines the date picture was taken with a serial number. Actually, you will lose nothing by just skipping this section; I'm providing it just for the record. A file name format is Pmddnnnn.JPG or _mddnnnn.JPG where the name elements mean the following:
For example, PB260832.JPG means a picture taken on November ('B') 26, with a serial number of 832, saved in the JPEG format in the sRGB ('P') color space. This convention can be slightly modified: the first two characters can be set to any of your choice (the defaults are shown in the menu as Off). For Adobe RGB images (JPEG or raw; in the latter case this means just a flag) the first character is hardwired to '_', and only the second one can be redefined. You will be able to change it only if the camera is actually set to use the Adobe RGB color space. There is nothing wrong with the default settings here, but some users, with more than one Olympus camera, may want to set the first letter different for each. Why not? I rename my files as soon as get them off the camera anyway, to include full date, with the leading year. If you do something like that, then this section becomes irrelevant. In addition to setting the display brightness manually, there is also an Auto option here, using a small light receptor near the monitor to measure the ambient light and to adjust the display accordingly. This sounds like a good solution, but I found it a bit distracting: the display reacts to slight changes in camera orientation. Adjust it to your liking; I'm fine with the default (zero) manual setting. Depending on the market, the choice of selectable UI languages may vary. You can also install one additional language using the Olympus Master to access Olympus Web server. This is the signal standard used when the camera's monitor output is sent to a TV set. You may choose between NTSC and PAL, depending on your country. This stands for "Recording View" which is a brief review of the just-taken picture on the monitor. Here you define for how long the image is displayed. This can be set to any value between 0 and 20 seconds, with 0 disabling the review (this will extend the battery life), and 3..7 seconds being a reasonable choice for a quick check. There is also an option to set this to Auto — in this mode the camera automatically enters the "regular" image review mode with all its implications: you can browse images, magnify a fragment, switch between viewing modes, delete a file, etc. In other words, the Auto option saves you one (green) button press, compared with doing the same explicitly. To be used occasionally (every six months or so, or as needed) to map out the few bad pixels which may show on your sensor. Displays the installed firmware version for the camera body, lens, and external flash (if mounted and on). Storing and Recalling Setups The camera setup, including almost all parameters listed above, can be saved as a package in one of two available custom reset slots or in one of two My Mode ones. While both ways are largely similar, there are some important differences in how they are used and how they work; these will be discussed as needed. In either case, restoring (or switching to) a setup by one of these methods is faster, easier, and less error-prone than doing it one-by-one.
Two different setups can be saved in, or recalled from, two such slots available. This is done from a menu option named Custom Reset Setting in
Selecting RESET in [3] instead will clear the slot. Keep in mind that both setting and resetting a slot are done without the usual confirmation. Once your chosen settings have been stored, the whole package can be restored at any moment:
Pressing [OK] when the (top) RESET option is highlighted will reset the camera to factory defaults, after a Yes/No query. This does not destroy the packages stored in the other reset slots (or in My Mode ones. A few of the preferences or settings I am discussing above are not stored in custom reset slots, for a number of reasons. This means that they will not be restored to your presets when a custom reset is performed. In most of the cases these are settings which rather should survive the reset process (and be the same for both reset slots), but in a few the assignment seems to be arbitrary: why would the Continuous AF Lock be not stored, being clearly a shooting preference? As we have no choice here but to accept whatever design decisions were made, quoting the full list of excluded settings wouldn't make much sense. It is available as a table in the camera manual: Functions that can be registered... (p. 134 of the English version). One case, however, has to be mentioned: exposure mode (or shooting mode). This means that after a custom reset you have explicitly to switch the camera to program, aperture priority, or whatever your usual choice is. Once you have set up the camera according to your needs, preferences, and taste, the whole setup should be stored in one of the reset slots, so that the camera can be easily restored to your preferred state. I am not sure how to use the second slot; maybe it can be useful for your alter ego? Variations of the setup aimed at particular applications or shooting conditions are better served by My Mode slots. Even if you have used one of the previous E-System SLRs, you may have no experience with this feature, as it required assigning the [Fn] button to it, and that button was perhaps more useful for other purposes. In the E-3, My Mode presets become genuinely useful, as they can be accessed as any other exposure modes (say, aperture priority). There are two My Mode slots available, of which one is "current" (or, as Olympus puts it, "executed"). This distinction is meaningful only if the [Fn] key has been assigned to temporary My Mode activation, otherwise it is completely irrelevant. Storing a camera setup in one of these slots involves a procedure identical to that in the E-510. It is not quite straightforward, therefore I would recommend reading this while actually handling the camera.
Importantly, My Mode also stores the current exposure mode (like aperture priority), unlike a custom reset slot. If you have set the [Fn] button to temporarily invoke the "current" My Mode, then pressing the [OK] button in point [3] above will make that mode "current". This is irrelevant if you are assigned the [Fn] button to some other purpose (like I did). The major difference between custom restore and My Mode is that while the former resets the camera to a given state, the latter is rather used for quick switching to a given preset combination and back. Activating a My Mode preset is done in one of two ways. I already mentioned the first one: pressing and holding the Function button will temporarily recall that preset. This, however, requires giving up any other functionality we could use that button for — and I'm not giving the Reference WB up so easily. The other way is to access My Mode as one of the exposure modes. Originally, switching among exposure modes takes us from Program to Manual and Bulb; as soon as any My Mode slots are filled, they will be added to that sequence. Thus, a My Mode can be activated by pressing the Mode button (to the left of the prism) and turning the rear control dial. If that is done, both the top status display will show a My 1 or My 2 icon next to the symbol of the exposure mode. This may mean, for example: "I am My Mode 2, based on aperture priority, with custom settings". If you change any parameters while in My Mode, these changes will not be remembered: leaving that My Mode and entering it again will bring you the settings as originally saved in that slot. This makes sense: if you've been messing with the settings while in My Mode and want to revert the changes, just exit this My Mode and enter it again. If you adjust any settings before entering My Mode, all will be remembered when you exit it. This makes sense, too: you do not want leaving My Mode to do a reset. How to utilize the two My Mode slots? You may have your own ideas on that, but I prefer to use the first one for my default setup (like the custom reset), just to have a "panic button" option, with a way back to what I was doing before; the second one can be used for a particular kind of shooting you do often (say, tabletop or portrait). Well, this was a long piece of reading, but that could not be avoided. This is the price we are paying for having all these options to choose from; nothing comes free. One final piece of advice: resist the temptation of changing the camera settings all the time. A setup which may look good when done on your sofa may turn out to be a disaster in the field. Simpler is better, and here you will have lots of opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot. Do a first setup, using my recommendations modified to your liking (but not just for the sake of being different), and live with it for a month or two. After that you will know better what you would really like to have changed. Rinse and repeat. But not just for the heck of it. Thanks are due to the many Readers whose help was essential in cleaning up and otherwise improving this text. (You know who you are, J-Marc, Geffen, Hans, and others.) Most of all, thanks do Don of Columbia, MD, who was willing to live for the total of two months without his favorite toy, just to give me a chance to get familiar with it, and to share that familiarity with you. |
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My other articles related to the |
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Olympus® is a registered trademark of the Olympus Corporation.
This page is not sponsored or endorsed by Olympus (or anyone else) and presents solely the views of the author. |
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| Posted 2008/02/28; last updated 2009/03/02 | Copyright © 2008-2009 by J. Andrzej Wrotniak |
Camera 1 and 
Camera 2, accessible via camera icons with digits 1 and 2, but some of the parameters can be changed only via direct buttons or from the Control Panel; we'll start from these.
This is the setting most likely to be changed from one frame to another. After shooting, however, I like to put it back at -0.3 EV. This is a relatively safe value, at least for sunny weather outdoors situations, and it helps to protect the highlights from washing out.
This is where you can choose between single-frame and sequential shooting modes (the latter high- or low-speed); from here you also can set the self-timer or IR remote mode. Obviously, this setting should default to 
single frame, to be changed as a need arises.
Camera 1 Menu
Card Setup
Custom Reset
Picture Mode
Gradation
File Format
resembling a shower head turned sideways. From here (or directly from the Control Panel) you choose between the Olympus raw format (ORF) and one of the four JPEG size/compression combinations (the TIFF format is not supported and I'm not missing it). These combinations cannot be adjusted here; they are preset in 
White Balance
Sunny (5300°K). This is what I'm using as my custom reset default, but some people may prefer Auto here, if just to be on the safe side.
Noise Reduction
Noise Filter
Camera 2 Menu
Metering Pattern
(ESP matrix) and 
(center-weighted) depends on your shooting habits and preferences; once you decide on one, you will not be switching on-the-fly to the other, unless you are after unpredictable results.
spot
highlight and 
shadow variants of the spot mode are just gimmicks: the same effect (and more) can be achieved with the regular spot mode and exposure compensation ("I want this to be at +2 EV").
RC Flash Mode
Flash Compensation
Start from zero (remember that my 
Focusing Mode
AF Point Selection
Mirror Lock
AE Bracketing
WB Bracketing
Flash Bracketing
ISO Bracketing
Settings 1 Menu
Settings 1A: AF/MF
AF Illuminator
Focus Ring Direction
Continuous AF Lock
AF Area Pointer
AF Sensitive Area
Lens Focus Reset
Bulb Focusing
Settings B: Buttons and Dials
Dial Functionality
AE/AF Lock
AE Lock Memo
Function Button
in the menu). Pressing the shutter release when the [Fn] button is held down and camera aimed at a neutral surface will then take a reference WB reading, which can be stored in one of four available slots. I find this function reliable and very useful.
My Mode Setup
Button Timer
Lock/Function Button Swap
AF point
Settings C: Release and Drive
Release Priority S
Release Priority C
Low FPS
Settings D: Display
Beep On/Off
Sleep Time
Backlit LCD Time
Four-Hour Timer
USB Mode
Live View Boost
Frame Assist
Settings E: Exposure and ISO
EV Step
ISO Step
Auto ISO Range
Auto ISO Use
AE Lock Metering
Bulb Time Limit
Settings F: Flash
Flash Sync Time
Low Flash Shutter Limit
Additive Flash Compensation
Settings G: Image, Color and WB
Global WB Adjustment
Color Space
Light Fall-Off Compensation
JPEG Presets
Small/Medium Pixel Count
Settings H: Record and Erase
Quick Erase
Raw+JPEG Erase
File Name
Priority Set
DPI Setting
Settings I: Utility
Cleaning Mode
External WB Detector
Clock
Card Selection
Monitor Brightness
Language
Video Standard
Rec View
Pixel Mapping
Firmware Version