Top 5 Focus Tips & Tricks for Wildlife | Olympus OM-D

Here are my Top 5 Tips and Tricks for photographing wildlife with the Olympus OM-D system. I use an EM1X and an EM1ii, but these tips will work on other Olympus models as well.
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0:00 - Intro
0:27 - 1. Mode Settings
02:08 - 2. Orientation Linked
03:04 - 3. Set Home
05:46 - 4. AF Limiter
10:36 - 5. Manual Focus
Olympus Settings for birds in flight: • Olympus Camera Setting...
Back Button Focus - Olympus: • Back Button Focus | Ol...
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[@EspenHelland]

Any good focusing tips you can't do without?

[@shinysurfer]

Not a focusing tip per se, but more of a visual aid to find where to focus. When doing birds in flight against busy backgrounds like trees on the shoreline of a lake, I find that setting the picture mode to black and white really helps in finding the bird, probably to do with contrast areas being easier to spot as opposed to colours. Great video as usual Espen!👍🏼

[@jonnyanderson2271]

Sufficient light helps me to focus on subjects. To be fair, I mainly use automatic focus, which doesn’t work for me all the time. I suppose I need to start practicing using manual focus. Roughly where about in the UK do you live? Just a region, I’m just interested that’s all.

[@Bassbarbie]

At the moment I have my Lens function button set to give me my custom mode 1 which uses C-Af with tracking as opposed to my more usual C-Af, so I can quickly go to it. However I'm now thinking I might see if I can use your 'Home' settings instead!

[@davidellis6757]

WOW... Reset the setting on my OMD EM1.2 and changed to back button focus. That has revolutionised my keepers and tonight I have had fantastic success with it. ProCap L... finger was aching a little but that trick works an absolute treat. Thank you Espen, brilliant again.

[@johnnonimus5175]

I like to choose for Fn Lever Settings "mode 2" in this way you can change completely the focus settings to whatever you want just by switching the Fn Lever. You can also memorize the different settings you choose to C1 etc... as you wish. So in C1 I like to have caf 5x5 and switching the fn lever I have in an instant caf with all focus points. Also I like to change the color of the autofocus area pointer to deep red (so its always visible) by changing d3 grid settings display color R180 G0 B0 a75%. Thank you for the tips and especially for the af limiter. Greetings from Greece. Stay safe!

[@EspenHelland]

Good tips John! I really like to have my video ready with the flip of the lever :)

[@icaadanne1]

Great video, lots of good tips, had to change my settings right away, and it makes things so much faster and easier now😁

[@EspenHelland]

Great to hear 🙂👍

[@marklaurendet1861]

Thanks for the tips especially on how to set the distance with the limiter

[@alfredmartinezifernandez9644]

This is one of my favorite videos.

[@EspenHelland]

Thank you Alfred :)

[@DTAnglesey]

Very helpful video Espen, thank you for sharing your settings!

[@EspenHelland]

My pleasure!

[@klaustomasini]

Hi Espen, thx for your very interesting videos, I use the FN 1 & 2 to switch between AF single spot and 5x5 spots in any setting at E-M1X

[@ansomeBob]

@8:10 what a fantastic tip, I've been shooting E-M1s for 5 years and never knew that :-)

[@willingleton4763]

Good stuff! Thanks Espen.

[@keithhider2170]

Really useful tips - thank you.

[@joerghummerjohann4854]

Fantastic & helpful, thanks a lot, dear Espen! I've got two "HOME" issues which might help on my E-M1ii (no joystick) First, I've set a Fn button on the front side to "AF field home" , so by pressing it, the AF field jumps back to the center Second, I'm using the lever to change between small AF field and a group for birds in flight. Quick and robust Cheers, Joerg

[@EspenHelland]

Good tips Joerg!

[@Ricardo-SW]

Excellent one- thank you!

[@DracoPL]

This is really impressive how adjustable AF setting are in Olympus cameras. Sony should learn from that...

[@mtcrun]

As always, great video Espen! I hadn't noticed that we could set a different orientation linked HOME for both portrait orientations - very helpful. I think the issue you are describing with pressing your joystick to return to HOME is that the focus point needs to have been moved to activate the ability of the centre push to return to HOME. It’s both a help and a pain; as it prevents an accidental press from changing the point but slightly slows things down. I’ve yet to find a setting that changes this behaviour.

[@maggiecampbell6627]

Great video Espen. Have changed my settings and looking forward to trying them out.

[@EspenHelland]

Awesome to hear Maggie, hope it works out for you 🙂

[@Bigfarmer8]

Espen, great video! I watched it camera in hand to go through the settings immediately. Unfortunately I have only my trusty E-M10 MKII.... :-)

[@raytbrown2]

Awesome focus orientation tip when moving from portrait to landscape or back again. PS: I prefer both boxes ticked as it provides a faster choice than scrolling. (Just flip the camera.) Thank you so much.

[@EspenHelland]

Good tip 👍

[@mawavoy]

Thank you for a very useful post!

[@EspenHelland]

Glad it was helpful!

[@chetanunindracusin664]

Great tips thank you

[@davidellis6757]

Another great explanation of some technical issues I for one have with focus. Spent a lot of today out in the field and come home to 99.9% out of focus material.. Will try this stuff out next weekend 👍

[@EspenHelland]

Good stuff

[@richard141724]

Thanks!

[@EspenHelland]

Thank you 🙂🙏

[@joanantonim.p.2400]

Thank you very much... 👍👍👍🙏 "Saludos... 👋👋😃 "

[@andrewnoden9117]

Hi Espen, Andrew here in Ottawa Canada, very useful video, hope all is well. Take care, cheers Andrew

[@EspenHelland]

Glad it was helpful!

[@grephusingati7807]

Amazing thanks

[@waywardone666]

Happy new Year to you Espen. Just found your vid here and since I am still struggling with good animal photos with my Olympus Combo, I found your tipps here excellent. Re-Set my Camera and will grap it later for some first trials. You showed me at least some really helpful things I haven't thought of yet! Thank you very much for your effort! Cheers from Germany :-)

[@EspenHelland]

Happy to hear it 🙂

[@fsi2210]

I also use home to toggle between caf and bird af. Not a bbaf tho, instead I use AF stop on lens. Have Pro Cap H set to a C button. AF limiter is one of my most used settings, that's set to +/- button ( 0 - 7m , 7 - 30m and 30 - 250m)

[@EspenHelland]

Nice one 👍 I’ve started using the other AF limiter settings as well

[@timothylee5824]

Excellent video. I use an EM-5 iii and wasn't able to find a way to assign a button to switch over to MF (my lenses don't have the MF clutch). Seeing the tip about setting home, I set home to MF, and then programed that to the Ael/afl button. I have the function lever to toggle between saf and caf and with a button press can move back and forth to MF. It works quite nicely. Wouldn't have discovered this workaround without your tips. Thanks!

[@EspenHelland]

Awesome to hear! Cheers Timothy 👍

[@Maisysmumma]

Looking for the link to other videos...just learning the OMD MarkIII need loads of tips!!

[@EspenHelland]

There's links in the description, and a playlist :)

[@ansomeBob]

I'm not sure if this would help with BIF but Robin Wong did a video about "CLUSTER AREA Shooting On Olympus OM-D", something I hadn't come across before.

[@EspenHelland]

Thanks will have a look :)

[@petersmitham8273]

That was extremely useful thanks!...👍📸🌈🇬🇧

[@EspenHelland]

Glad it was helpful!

[@extremelydave]

Well, there go another 50 million grey cells used to remember something. Getting low!!!

[@EspenHelland]

😅

[@MysteriousBeingOfLight]

Very nice explanation! Do you sell any of your presets you use by any chance ? Cheers

[@EspenHelland]

Thanks 🙂 do you mean editing presets?

[@MysteriousBeingOfLight]

@@EspenHelland Yes exactly 🙏🏼

[@justinholding02]

You guys should try the autofocus in the R5...

[@Bassbarbie]

I have the Oly Em1iii and the R5. Whilst the R5 is great for picking out birds in flight there are times when it doesn't focus as well as the Olympus. For example I cannot get it to focus on my bird feeder using the usual Af. If I change it to detect animals - then it will focus, even though there are no animals/birds there. Both have their good points.

[@justinholding02]

@@Bassbarbie with which lens? My EF 300mm f/2.8 IS II works like a charm

[@EspenHelland]

I hear good things

[@Bassbarbie]

@@justinholding02 the EF 100-400 ii. Now you’ve mentioned it, I shall try it with a different lens. It’s repeatable and odd! I noticed when I had the R, that it wouldn’t focus if you only have horizontal lines, I needed something vertical. Using the eye focus works on the R5, but the Olympus has no trouble finding the feeder.

[@justinholding02]

@@Bassbarbie nice lens for a zoom lens, I just sold mine because it wasn't getting used much anymore. I did test it a couple of times on the R5 with decent results, but I did notice that if I wanted to focus from a distant subject to a nearby one it would sometimes pump around a bit. I've also invested in a few RF lenses and I must say they are lightning quick at focussing. The AF system on the R5 is very complex, but once you've tuned it to your needs, it's absolutely brilliant. Do you find any benefit from using a cropped sensor camera anymore? I got rid of all my APS-C gear after I purchased the R5. The cropability is impressive and I'm really loving the image quality from the new sensor.