I'm running with the wolves tonight
Originally published 27 April 2022
I’m running with the wo- ok, so maybe not quite wolves, I’m running with dogs. Gee whiz, fine, you got me, I did no running whatsoever. I just love this song, and doggos.
Anyway, during Easter I got to play a bit with Maisie at the beach. And since it’s the beach, there were so many other dogs running around, too! So I thought it would be a good chance to put the OM-1 autofocus (AF) system to the test.
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 142mm, f/2.8, 1/8000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
This one’s a comparatively short write up; it’s pretty much mostly focused on testing the AF so I didn’t really shoot with taking good pictures specifically in mind.
Among the new features touted on the OM-1 is the better subject detection, be it human face and eye-detect, or with some animal recognition (mainly dogs/cats but it seemingly works for other animals too, though less accurate). I say “better” since it supposedly improves on the E-M1X and E-M1 iii’s respective subject detection modes, but because I only have the E-M1 ii, I haven’t experienced those features before, in a manner of speaking. The E-M1 ii has human face and eye-detect, but it wasn’t always reliable so I never bothered using it much if at all. If I were taking pictures with people in it, I would either simply use the focus point and put it on a face, or use manual focus with either of my Voigtlander lenses.
Here the animal eye detect seems to work really well, even when in the shade…
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 135mm, f/2.8, 1/1000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/8000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
It doesn’t seem to have trouble picking up the subject when stationary or slow-moving. In the sequence below, you can see that only about 4 pics (#14, 15, 17 and 18) are out of focus - the camera seems to have focused past the eyes and onto the body. I wonder if it’s because the dog had it’s head lowered, so maybe the spots also made it more difficult to pick out the eye. It seemed to have lost track of the eye but then hunted and corrected itself after 3-4 frames.
Considering I set the frames per second (FPS) to 25 FPS, it found focus again rather quickly. If I were to have shot this with the E-M1 ii, it would have been on Continuous-AF using a single focus point. The E-M1 ii would have focused on the dog but I doubt I would have been able to keep it focus on the head, much less the eye, as consistently as the OM-1. So the E-M1 ii could still pass here, but not as well as the OM-1’s 80+% hit rate.
A couple more doggos…
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/6400s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 79mm, f/2.8, 1/6400s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
The next sequence shows how well the OM-1 can stick with the subject, once it picks it up that is. You can see that the first frame is not in focus at all, probably because the camera hasn’t separated Maisie yet from the other dogs. But even on the very next frame it seems to have worked out where it should focus and starts to move where it predicts Maisie will go, i.e. closer to the camera. And then by the third shot it nails focus, which it keeps to the end of the sequence. Bearing in mind this is also at the full 150mm end of the Olympus 40-150mm, it obviously is quick at driving focus properly. Maisie here is running faster than the walking dalmatian from before, which makes the animal detection/eye AF impressive to me.
This next sequence below adds another challenge for the OM-1. The longer fur on the dog’s face can obscure the eyes, but throughout the whole sequence I couldn’t notice if any were out of focus. And while this dog is tinier, it’s moving relatively quickly towards me (still at 150mm) and by the end you can see it’s almost to the stage where I couldn’t point the lens down any further to keep the dog in the shot without zooming out.
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/5000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 106mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
For the next burst, I made sure to let the OM-1 pick up focus on the brown dog before I started the shot. You can see that the dog was running and had a quick change of direction. Despite all this the OM-1 still managed to keep pace with it!
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 90mm, f/2.8, 1/6400s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/5000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
And lastly, this dog was running quite quickly. The OM-1 managed to keep focus on the dog, and continued to keep the focus on the body once the eye and face were no longer in the frame. This one was at 106mm, but the dog was also closer. You can see I couldn’t keep up with panning the camera and I effectively got left behind. Surprisingly, the pictures are still pretty sharp even with the quick movement (but I think the shutter speed being 1/5000s has a lot to do with that).
I came away from this exercise really impressed with the OM-1. I am sure that other systems are still better with the accuracy of their AF systems (don’t need to @ me Sony or Canon fans). But compared to the E-M1 ii, the difference in AF performance has basically opened up the extent of what I can shoot. In the previous post re: Anna’s grad, I relied on the human face/eye-detect when I was shooting with the Sigma 56mm. And while I only posted the photos I liked most, the culled photos were basically all in focus!
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/3200s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
The crazy thing is that, prior to using the OM-1, I would describe the E-M1 ii’s AF system as very good to begin with. I was using the E-M1 ii since I got it, up until the dragonboat post. So it wasn’t as if the E-M1 ii was failing me at getting great photos - the OM-1 is just that much of a step up for my shooting experience.
So when people say gear doesn’t matter - it’s true to an extent. I would be happy sticking with the E-M1 ii (and I’m keeping it anyway as a second body) if I never got the OM-1, but I would still be well aware of its limitations. In some ways it made me a more skilled camera operator (still not quite accepting to call myself a photographer :lol: ) because of what I needed to learn to accommodate those limitations.
For example, since I didn’t rely on the E-M1 ii’s face/eye-detect when photographing people, I either had to learn to be quick with moving the focus point to someone’s face and learning how much to stop down the aperture as appropriate to make sure I had enough of their face in focus, or even going as far as getting better at using manual focus to work around the fiddly focus point setting.
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 62mm, f/2.8, 1/2500s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
But with the OM-1, I can simply rely on the face/eye-AF and put more of my attention into setting the composition and thinking about the content of the photo rather than the technical aspects. And as seen here, it also works well with the animal tracking.
So while I could have done all the shoots with the E-M1 ii, the OM-1 gives me significantly more chances of getting useable photos. And so, in certain respects, gear does matter - or at least, it can matter for what you need/want to do.
Well that’s that, so here’s the rest of the photos from the beach:
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/3200s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 142mm, f/2.8, 1/2500s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 100mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/6400s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 106mm, f/2.8, 1/5000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 115mm, f/2.8, 1/3200s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/1250s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/6400s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 150mm, f/2.8, 1/5000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 @ 125mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s, 200 ISO | OM System OM-1
Thanks for visiting. Hope you enjoyed all the furry goodness!
I’m still testing out the OM-1 as much as I can - I’ve just recently shot a couple of football games and will look to write about it when I get some time over the next few weeks.